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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: 2012
Your Sister’s Sister – Illustrating the problem with modern indie crap
I walked into Your Sister’s Sister in the 6th Avenue IFC theater knowing full well that its preview basically contained the entire movie, which is usually indicative of impending disappointment. But it was Emily Blunt and Mark Duplass, and the … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Safety Not Guaranteed – A modern indie film with a difference!
My wife and I both really liked Safety Not Guaranteed. It is a delightful and understated little indie film, one which departs from standard indie fare in important and surprising ways. In its first third, this film feels a bit … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Brave – a nice little kids film, marred by a weak story
I thought Brave would be about a young girl that has to go to battle and display extreme bravery. My wife thought she would fight a dragon to protect her people. Boy were we wrong. Brave is a re-heated version … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Contraband
The moral of this story: If your wife has a good-for-nothing little brother who is running drugs for a lunatic gangster, fucks it up, and as a result is about to get his head cut off and stuck up his … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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To Rome with Love (or rather, with Fame)
This movie is a bizarre hodgepodge of classic Allen topics and the ancient slapstick comedies of Allen’s youth, all refracted through the lens of Allen’s old-age dementia. He’s got the absurdist story of the average guy who is suddenly famous for no reason; he … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Bernie – Linklater tames Black, McConaughey, and MacLaine
Richard Linklater is a hell of a director. He somehow managed to direct this film featuring three actors (Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, and Shirley MacLaine) who are basically famous for over-the-top hamming and dominating films with their tics and exaggerated personas, … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Dark Shadows – Just watch the preview, it’s better than the movie
The reasons my wife and I went to see Dark Shadows were 1) the preview looked sort of fun, 2) we kind of like Johnny Depp’s weird shtick, and 3) the Barry White song at the end of the preview. I … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – Inoffensive and enjoyable
Marigold Hotel is exactly what it appears to be in the preview; my expectations were almost perfectly met. It is a light and fluffy tale of old age in a exotic land, featuring multiple overlapping storylines (one for each retiree,) … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The Five Year Engagement – It tries to do too many things, but it’s still good lighthearted fun
The Five Year Engagement is part Bridesmaids, part Lost in America, part New in Town, and part gross, Judd Apatow crap – it’s kind of a mishmash, a mishmash that does not hang together particularly well. A lot of the … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Damsels in Distress – Whit Stillman loses it
It’s been 14 years since Whit Stillman made Last Days of Disco, that wretched piece of trash that made a mockery of his two masterpieces: Barcelona and Metropolitan. Damsels in Distress is better than Last Days of Disco, largely because it takes itself less seriously, and does … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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