7 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
‘Elysium’ Leaves its Head In the Clouds
Science fiction has long been a platform for storytellers to address the problems of today in the world of tomorrow. Social justice, poverty, disease, ethics, and all manner of contemporary issues have been staples of science fiction films for decades. Take Pl...
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Finishing the Cycle with ‘Rising from Ashes’
For all its speed and excruciating physical effort it requires, there’s an uncommon grace to cycling, which allows human beings to zap in mid-air as if they were insects. Riding a bike offers a fluidity of motion surpassed only by swimming. Movies as different...
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Four Extraordinary Women In the Extraordinary Doc, ‘20 Feet From Stardom’
The entertainment business is full of dreamers. Anyone who loves singing, writing, filming, acting, painting, or any form of artistic expression enough to pursue it as a lifelong profession is almost certainly certifiably insane. You have to love the art enoug...
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‘Europa Report’: Effective Low-Budget Sci-fi
Europa Report is one of the most immediately involving science-fiction films in recent memory. Filmed in the format of a Discovery Channel style documentary but with found-footage elements, Ecuadorian director Sebastian Cordero draws you in with an incredibly ...
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Paul Schrader’s ‘The Canyons’ Examines and Reveals the Artificiality of our Culture
Cinema is not quite dead, but according to Paul Schrader’s newest film, movie theaters certainly are. The battered and boarded-up theaters that highlight The Canyons' opening frames signify that the medium has moved on, in both form and function. As the traile...
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Discussing ‘2 Guns’: A Passable Washington and Wahlberg Action-Comedy Joint
2 Guns, the new action-packed Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg joint, is now playing in theaters across the country. Two of our writers, being the dedicated cinephiles they are, attended a screening and decided that an informal discussion might lead to more...
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‘Blue Jasmine’ Is Woody Allen’s Most Intricately Constructed Film In 20 Years
Woody Allen has carved a long career out of psychoanalyzing characters’ neuroses, illnesses, and mental obstacles. More often than not, it’s been a potent mixture of affecting drama and self-aggrandizing humor in keeping with Allen’s own sense of himself, and ...
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‘The Spectacular Now’: A Charming, Tender, and Deeply Resonant Coming-of-Age Tale
This review has been republished from our coverage of LAFF.
It's becoming more and more apparent that coming-of-age films have been reaching something of a renaissance period lately, with each consecutive year offering up at least one genuinely great entry...
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‘Museum Hours’: The Most Intimate of Spaces
Vienna through Jem Cohen's eyes is a patchwork quilt woven from ordinary urban landscapes that somewhere during the film turns into a work of art. Every proportion, field of depth, asymmetry or contrast suddenly gain multidimensional meaning. But it's not the ...
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‘Blackfish’: An Equally Horrifying and Problematic Documentary
The only reason Blackfish isn't the most disturbing documentary of the year is that this is the year The Act of Killing came out. But while the latter film focused on existential horror of the evil that people are capable of inflicting on one another, Blackfis...
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