7 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
‘Battle of the Year 3D’: The Oscar Race is Over
I am an unrepentant fan of dance movies. I've seen every Step Up, You Got Served, Save The Last Dance, Stomp The Yard (does that count?), and everything in between-- usually on opening day. They are unquestionably predictable, unrepentantly silly, and star bla...
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Villeneuve’s ‘Prisoners’ Packs Powerful Performances
Denis Villeneuve (Incendies) has a great gift for building tension without resorting to pathos. It deserves true recognition, especially considering the immensely delicate and emotional subject matter his new film, Prisoners, touches upon. Most filmmakers woul...
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Hemsworth & Bruhl Vie For Position In Strong Scripted F1 Drama ‘Rush’
Ron Howard, the director responsible for respectable, initially celebrated works such as A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man, falls victim to the pitfalls of retrospective criticism more than most. You can find highly positive contemporaneous reviews of A Beau...
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‘Insidious: Chapter 2’ Is Scarily Ambitious But Not Fully Successful
While it isn’t quite as satisfying as a lot of his other work, it may ultimately be more memorable, just because of Wan’s willingness embrace the sillier elements of the genre other filmmakers might wish to play down.
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Luc Besson’s ‘The Family’ Amounts to Nada
A grumpy Robert De Niro walks into a movie theater with an even grumpier Tommy Lee Jones. They each take their reserved seating on the front row, only to be informed that the film they were originally gonna watch, Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running, was mis...
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‘Wadjda’ To Shape The Future of Saudi Film
Wadjda comes with the burden of expectations that would be tough for any film to live up to. Reports conflict on whether it's the first "real" Saudi Arabian feature film, or just the first one fully shot inside the country. Certainly, the Saudi film industry i...
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Dull Documentary ‘Salinger’ Misses the Catcher, Goes Over the Crazy Cliff
Everything about Salinger is a build-up to its final minutes. Over the course of years of ultra-secret filming, director Shane Salerno supposedly uncovered some major revelations about the infamously reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye. The Weinstein Co...
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‘A Teacher’: A Queasy Kind of Love, Handled With Grace
This review was originally part of our Sundance NEXT Weekend coverage.
Female high school teachers having affairs with male students has long been the object of lurid tabloid attention and melodramatic movies of the week. But A Teacher takes a reserved, co...
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‘Touchy Feely’ Is A Flat And Hollow New Feature From Lynn Shelton
Lynn Shelton’s latest film Touchy Feely is a complete mess, albeit, an interesting mess at times. It’s the kind of film that lays out a very routine idea of its world and its characters, only to completely come up short in regards to thorough characterization ...
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