9 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
“The Duke of Burgundy”
Being in a relationship means doing things you don’t want to do. Abstract cybercrime thrillers may not be your thing, but if your partner is into Michael Mann, then odds are high you saw Blackhat. It’s all part of the routine - not so much about placating your...
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“Cake”
In Daniel Barnz’s Cake, rom-com queen Jennifer Aniston is given the chance to stretch her acting muscles beyond the fluffy fodder for which she’s well-known. Aniston plays Claire Bennett, a woman suffering from constant physical and emotional pain, and the for...
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“Mortdecai”
There’s just never enough ham on the buffet for Johnny Depp these days. Unfathomable as it seems for anyone who grew up watching him in the ’90s—with his indelible performances in Cry-Baby, Ed Wood, Dead Man, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—Hollywood’s once...
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“Strange Magic”
"At least it can't get any worse," a character suggests roughly halfway through Strange Magic, a promise the film has no intention of keeping. This riff on William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream does indeed feel as if it sprung "from the mind of Georg...
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“Son of a Gun”
A good crime film, like a good crime, doesn’t make concessions for its audience. It’s an inherently tragic genre, from Spies through to GoodFellas. But in the wake of Scorsese’s charismatic sociopaths came movie gangsters who are downright cuddly: Guy Ritchie’...
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“R100”
In R100, Takafumi Katayama (Nao Ōmori), a workaholic father burdened by loneliness over his wife’s catatonic state, decides to sign up for a one-year contract with a gentleman’s bondage club. Membership comes with a few decidedly inconvenient stipulations; mos...
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“Mommy”
Xavier Dolan has a message for his detractors: “Eat my shorts.”
Literally, it’s right there in the opening frame of the 25-year-old French-Canadian’s new film, Mommy: a close-up on a teenage boy’s shiny pair of boxers, hanging in the breeze on a suburban Qu...
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“Song One”
At 86 minutes in length, Song One feels long. Occasionally, a warped sense of time and duration can be of benefit to a film - last year’s Ida doesn’t breeze by, and it’s all the better for it - but in the case of Kate Barker-Froyland’s debut as director, the e...
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“Red Army”
I can't recall the last time I saw a documentary in which the people behind the camera were so clearly out of their depth as they are in Red Army. Now, it takes someone with a fair share more gumption than that possessed by the average reedy doc filmmaker to g...
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“Black Sea”
There’s a forgotten Nazi U-boat loaded with gold lying at the bottom of the Black Sea. There’s a crew of British and Russian character actors (and Scoot McNairy) out to get it. There’s a creaky old submarine. Element B loads into Element C to go after Element ...
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