9 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
“Nightcrawler”
Meet Lou Bloom. He’s a young, ambitious go-getter, a diehard professional always on the lookout for good career opportunities that offer plenty of upward mobility. He’s also a charming psychopath, which is a nice way of saying that he’s a snake wrapped up in J...
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“Horns”
In a time when cinema has become almost exclusively a cynical and pat medium, in which marketability foregoes the quality of the product being sold, originality has become a mythic, widely discarded possibility. The concept that every story has already been to...
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“The ABCs of Death 2”
2012’s anthology film The ABCs of Death set out with a noble mission: to assemble an international crack team of the finest under-the-radar directors in the scare-‘em game, assign each one a letter of the alphabet, and tie a blood-soaked ribbon around 26 self-...
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“The Overnighters”
At the foot of Lady Liberty, there's the famous quote meant to welcome immigrants to the young nation: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." It's arguably not reflective of US immigration policy, but it's a part of the ...
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“John Wick”
For all its B-movie pulp bravado, John Wick – a rather absurdly entertaining comeback vehicle for the preternaturally youthful Keanu Reeves – is best looked at not as an action movie, but as a dance picture.
Directed by Reeves’ regular stunt double Chad Sta...
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“Low Down”
Opening with a line from The Night of the Hunter really sets the tone for your movie. It isn't going to be a happy one. Low Down is not a happy movie, but it is haunting, like a song that lets its notes linger in the air. Its small-scale human tragedies come a...
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“Citizenfour”
One of 2014’s more compelling documentaries, Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour channels the measured cool of its subject—former National Security Agency analyst-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden—and eschews the sensationalism of so many docs for a chilling, informa...
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“Default”
Action cinema tends to elect its bogeymen based on current world events. In True Lies, America fought against Palestinian terrorists. In 2008, John Rambo brought down a brutal Burmese military regime almost singlehandedly. Most recently, The November Man and J...
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“White Bird in a Blizzard”
A good mystery is never about the reveal. The reveal is a backdrop, or a catalyst for characters to be jerked out of complacency and into orbit. Circumstances of chaos and desperation deliver them from one point to another, always the same shore, regardless of...
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“The Heart Machine”
The Blu-ray release of Her includes a short documentary called Her: Love in the Modern Age, a concise and straightforward survey of a bunch of people discussing how technology has changed the trajectory of romantic relationships in the 21st century. It’s not a...
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