7 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
‘Drug War’ – Johnnie To Plays Gangster Chess
A lot of critics have tossed around the term "genre exercise" (or something similar) in regards to Drug War. It's accurate, but I feel like that phrase is too reductive, and not just when applied to this film, but in general. Think about what it suggests. "Oh,...
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‘Computer Chess’: A Wholly Original Comedy
There's no other movie like Computer Chess. It's an idiosyncratic beast that plays by its own rules and no one else's. Very, very few people are going to like it, but those who do will cherish it forever, and probably keep it alive on the cult circuit for year...
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‘The Wolverine’: More Superheroes Like This, Please
The Wolverine is the first Marvel movie since Iron Man to feel like a movie and not a feature-length, candy-colored advertisement for the Marvel “universe” and whatever money-raking project they have in the pipeline. It treats its protagonist as a person, not ...
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‘A Girl and a Gun’ Is Not Nearly Enough (Sorry, Jean-Luc Godard)
Opening one week after Paul Feig’s The Heat – in which Mellissa McCarthy kept her refrigerator stacked with firearms that she ultimately shared to our delight with Sandra Bullock – Cathryne Czubek’s documentary A Girl and a Gun comes in handy as an introductio...
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The Trouble With the Terrible ‘Turbo’
The most tried-and-true formula in the history of storytelling is the tale of the underdog. In the proud tradition of David, The Miracle on Ice, and Susan Boyle comes Turbo, the snail who dreamed a dream of being a race car driver. Turbo doesn't have to face a...
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‘R.I.P.D.’: A Banal ‘Men In Black’ Knockoff
As a general principle films that are screened for critics the night before their release (as R.I.P.D. was) tend to be, shall we say, terrible. However, as someone who attempts to not unfairly malign a piece of cinema before it begins to flicker onto the silve...
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‘The Act of Killing’: A Maddening and Unforgettable Documentary
The Act of Killing is one of the best documentaries of the year, and I don't ever want to see it again.
Watching this film is both ideologically riveting and morally repulsive. From very early on, I wanted to walk out of the theater, but I couldn't. It'...
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‘The Conjuring’: A Hollow Thing of Beauty
Audiovisually, The Conjuring is the Four Seasons Hotel of horror films. That is a compliment. Every moment of this 112-minute ghost story invites you to luxuriate in it. Every shot is rich, layered and inviting; each zoom and pan seems to have been calibrated ...
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Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Only God Forgives’ Is Like A Sleepwalker In Hell
Republished from our coverage of the Los Angeles film festival.
When I was a kid, there was this toy that was a kind of do-it-yourself aquarium that when you added a special powder mix to the water, it turned into a gel and made all the plastic dolphins, d...
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Having A Goofy Old Time with ‘Red 2’
There’s a devil-may-care quality to Red 2 that makes for fun summer entertainment. I would be tempted to describe it as ‘breezy’, but it’s too feeble even for that. It’s really nothing but a bunch of scenes on a preposterous string, rattled and flung into the ...
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