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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
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – sugar-coated storytelling of the good variety!
I finally liked Ewan Mcgregor in a movie! He is such a weirdo in all his roles, but here he gets to do his strange, flat-affect thing and also be kind of sexy and smile a bit. He and Emily … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The Hunger Games – How to take a great book and turn it into “Twilight.”
The Hunger Games: They managed to take a book that is written so beautifully I’m sure I will want to re-read it over and over in the coming years, and make from it a movie that I never need to … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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21 Jump Street – idiocy, delivered on-time and in sufficient quantity
Sometimes you just want to watch something idiotic, get a few laughs, and have the experience not be deeply offensive or insulting. Such is the mood my wife and I were in yesterday, leading to our attendance at 21 Jump Street in … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The Woman in Black – ripping off great horror films, and doing it badly
The Woman in Black can be described (charitably) as The Changeling meets The Shining meets Ringu, but it somehow manages to avoid every single last attribute that made each of those films great. All the disaggregated components of those films are here … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Wanderlust – it’s pretty damn funny
Wanderlust was much better than I thought it would be – the preview definitely does not do it justice. I found the film consistently funny from start to finish, something pretty unusual in modern comedies. It does feature some fairly … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The Secret World of Arrietty – a refreshingly different animated film
Animation nearly always leaves me cold, because it is so damn predictable: the same raucous cacophony of cheesy crap over and over and over. Arrietty is different. It is slow, quiet, detailed, almost meditative. It drags a bit here and … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Safe House – another insufferable piece of trash
It occurs to me that nobody wants to make the effort to tell a good story in this genera of film anymore. This film is just like Salt (except not as fun as Salt was,) in that they start with … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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Big Miracle – an enjoyable throwback movie
Big Miracle is my second movie in less than a week which is set in an Alaskan shit-hole. But unlike The Grey, this film is dignified, fairly interesting, and fun, even though it is very light fare. It’s curious to … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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The Grey – getting 2012 off to a bad start
If you want to see this movie because you saw the preview and think it’s going to involve Liam Neeson killing wolves with his bare hands, my recommendation to you is: go see another movie. But it SHOULD have involved … Continue reading
Posted in 2012
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