7 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
“Pitch Perfect 2”
If comedy is hard, then comedy sequels face an even more difficult obstacle. Often hampered by the sense of regurgitation and superfluous additions used to heighten the stakes, second chapters within the genre tend to feel forced. And, unfortunately, Pitch Per...
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“Mad Max: Fury Road”
It begins with the sound of a machine and ends on the image of a revolution. Thirty years after his hero walked off into a nuclear sunset, George Miller returns for more than just a greatest-hits package, orchestrating a go-for-broke action symphony that’s als...
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“Our Man in Tehran”
“It's not a movie, people's lives were really in danger!” With those words, Our Man in Tehran tips its hand at the outset, firmly positioning itself as a rebuttal to the most recent Hollywood adaptation of the Iran Hostage Crisis incident known as the Canadian...
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“Absolution”
There’s an extraordinary moment at the very end of the new Steven Seagal picture, Absolution, that almost makes it worth watching. Since said moment is one of the very last shots, and sitting through this entire movie is not something I would wish upon an enem...
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“Every Secret Thing”
Sometimes there’s so much talent involved in a terrible movie that you find yourself staring at the screen, wondering what the hell happened. Such is the case with Every Secret Thing, a middling little number that feels like a rejected pilot for one of those s...
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“The Film Critic”
When Shia LaBeouf’s plagiarized short film Howard Cantour.com was released, I remember being a little disgusted. Its portrayal of what amounted to a petty, heartbroken, ax-wielding critic for whom junkets existed as a roundtable for silly gossips and inconsequ...
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A World Filled With Schlemiels: On “Make Way for Tomorrow”
Make Way for Tomorrow is a prime example of the cinema functioning as an emergency broadcast system. Its timelessness is shocking to behold nearly 80 years after its release in 1937, primarily because it suggests that humanity, for all its pride in evolution, ...
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“Good Kill”
Years go by, decades end, cultures change, and yet no matter the place and time, human beings constantly dream up new, horrible ways to kill one another. In the late 1600s, Sweden gave us the howitzer. In 1836, Samuel Colt invented the revolver and ushered in ...
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“The Connection”
The French Connection remains the most visceral and least urbane encapsulation of urban crime of the New Hollywood movement. William Friedkin's squalid depiction of cops and crooks revels in ambiguity, both moral and narrative. It's a work of technical virtuos...
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“Slow West”
When working in a genre as well-worn as the Western, the temptation is strong to toy with storytelling form. We’ve seen this in efforts as varied as the revisionist Unforgiven (1992) and last year’s parodic A Million Ways to Die in the West. But John Maclean’s...
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