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Recent Reviews
- Good Kill – An artistic exploration of drone assassinations
- Citizenfour – a fascinating and important topic, but a disappointing documentary
- Interstellar – Probably the best film of the year, certainly the most enjoyable!
- Laggies – a delightful little film about late-blooming misfits
- Two Days, One Night – it’s (almost) exactly what you expect it to be
- Whiplash – a disgusting, stupidly manipulative piece of absurdity.
- Still Alice – big stars, big production, but still just a Hallmark movie of the week
- Wild – it’s surprisingly well-made and fun to watch
- Black Sea – diverting, but sadly predictable
- Birdman (Or the Expected Emptiness of Pretension)
- Mr. Turner – Planet of the Ape
- The Imitation Game – It’s an abomination
- A Brief Word on the 2014 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
- Kill The Messenger – The important and tragic story of Gary Webb, the mainstream media, and the CIA
- This is Where I Leave You – the latest in a long line of “family reunion” movies
- A review of summer cinema – it was pretty grim!
- The Trip to Italy – It never should have been made
- A Most Wanted Man – Superficially entertaining, but poorly-made and overrated
- Magic in the Moonlight – It’s pissing me off!
- The Purge: Anarchy – Surprisingly, it’s rather good
- I Origins – ambitious and entertaining
- Boyhood – a bit one dimensional, but its one dimension is lovely, impressive and fun to experience
- Obvious Child – cute, dignified and gutsy
- Snowpiercer – a fantastic, riveting science fiction action allegory
- Edge of Tomorrow – it’s fairly entertaining
- Begin Again – confronting the future of pop music head-on
- The Fault in Our Stars – not super-moving, but definitely enjoyable
- Hellion – a gritty tale of fucked up parents and children
- Night Moves – a cool, subtle portrayal of hippy-liberal activism turned violent
- Cold In July – an outstandingly fun and unusual film, and a paean for the 1980s
- Austenland – so horrible, I’m speechless
- Elena – 80 minutes of torture
- Lucky Them – Toni Collette takes center stage and lights up the screen!
- Belle – it means well, but God is it slow (and dull)
- Finding Vivian Maier – an okay documentary on a fascinating artist
- The German Doctor (Wakolda) – Diverting, but feels more than a little contrived
- Chef – it’s heart is in the right place
- Jodorowsky’s Dune – a bizarre and amazing documentary
- Hateship, Loveship – it goes down well
- Divergent – entertaining, but there’s a lot wrong with it
Category Archives: 2011
A Dangerous Method – good performances, mediocre script
I thought all the performances in A Dangerous Method were very strong. Fassbender is very engaging as Jung. Keira Knightley continues to strike me as an underrated actress, turning in another fine, understated performance. Viggo really transcends his usual screen persona … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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The Descendants – Boring and overrated crap
My wife and I saw this because we like George Clooney and we liked Sideways. What we learned is that Alexander Payne desperately and obviously needed his Sideways screenplay collaborator Jim Taylor on this film – Payne’s screenplay for The … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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The Muppet Movie – It’s heart is in the right place
I really wanted to like The Muppet Movie, because I admire Jason Segel as a writer and comic actor, and I really appreciate his heartfelt and un-satiric approach to the material and to The Muppets as a cultural institution. And … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Tower Heist – the worst film of the year, and maybe of the last 10 years
Tower Heist is deeply painful to watch, and its awfulness slimes you for days afterward, as you desperately try to expunge the memory of what you have seen and heard. It is so awful that for weeks I could not … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Martha Marcy May Marlene – more mediocre indie trash
This film seems better while you are watching it; afterward, as I thought about it, I was more and more distracted by the film’s shortcomings. In the end, I’m kind of sorry I saw it. It is depressing, superficial, ambiguous, … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Limitless – pretty good, despite the gangster
Limitless is a “narration movie,” by which I mean a movie that relies on narration to tell the viewer almost everything that is going on, all the way through the film. I usually hate this kind of film, but occasionally … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Moneyball – They missed almost everything that made the book fascinating
Moneyball is a great book and a great story. This frightfully dumbed-down movie version is okay at best. I didn’t hate the film, I suppose, but I do think it is very sad that no one could think of a … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Margin Call – A good movie showing different levels of financial sleazeballs
Margin Call might not be a great movie, but it is a solidly good film that I will probably watch again at some point. In an exceptionally weak year for movies, it is easily one of the best things I’ve … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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Our Idiot Brother – the amazing Paul Rudd makes it work
The critics panned this movie because it is so charming, earnest and good-natured they didn’t know what to make of it. It blew their fuses. They’re used to praising shit like The Social Network. Their minds are jello at this … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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The Ides of March – decent, but nothing special
The Ides of March is a decent film, but I doubt I would ever feel the desire to experience it again. The story is very linear and it’s all right there on the surface – no character development, no story … Continue reading
Posted in 2011
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