7 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
‘Mama’ Buries Originality Under Formula
C+
One can't help but admire Guillermo Del Toro. Not only is he a true movie-buff who makes ambitious, original, off-the-wall films, but he also supports the little guys, extending his influence so that emerging directors can make horror films of their own....
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Sundance 2013: Who Is Dayani Cristal?
D
Oozing with self-importance from top to bottom, Who Is Dayani Cristal? has one goal in mind: to convince audiences all around the world that any attempt the U.S. makes to keep illegal immigrants out of their country is a heartless act deserving of stern c...
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Dustin Hoffman’s ‘Quartet’ Will Make You Feel Old, Bored
D+
It must be a rude awakening for an actor when you start receiving offers to play victims of senility. With the baby-boomers creeping into their fifties and sixties, retirees are one of the biggest growing demographics at the box-office, and theatres need...
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‘A Haunted House:’ Fifty Examples of Marlon Wayans’ Sense of Humor
F
I took copious notes during A Haunted House, shaking off hand cramps and straining to listen to the dialogue over the howls of laughter from the man sitting to my left and the snores of the man sitting to my right. I fell somewhere in between my two aisle...
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Uncompromising ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Delivers on the Hype
B+
Kathryn Bigelow’s pulsating Zero Dark Thirty, which chronicles the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden, bangs its drum to a different beat. By not falling into the trappings of jingoism and lazy storytelling, Bigelow constructs...
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Pseudo-Noir ‘Gangster Squad’ Forgets the Substance
D+
To claim Gangster Squad is a pseudo-noir exercise in style over substance would suggest Ruben Fleischer’s third feature film has any substance.
Interfusing historical figures and fictional characters, the film is set in opulent 1949 Los Angeles, where...
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‘Promised Land’: Mining Hot Air
D+
It would be unfair to Milk to say that Gus Van Sant returns to its realm of soft-peddled liberal pablum with Promised Land. Much as the director’s biopic of Harvey Milk seemed tailor-made for the socially liberal, artistically conservative mindset of the...
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‘The Impossible’ Does the Probable and Predictable
C
On a technical level, The Impossible is virtually flawless. Juan Antonio Bayona, director of the brilliant horror film The Orphanage, takes the audience headfirst into the tsunami that shook Southeast Asia in 2004 with such force and prowess that it can b...
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Flimsy and Dull ‘Interior. Leather Bar.’
One certainly can't accuse James Franco of not stretching himself artistically. In the same summer where he's played an exaggerated version of himself as he goes through the apocalypse, he's also co-directed a documentary/fiction chimera about him filming scen...
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A Musical Review of ‘Les Miserables’
C-
Editor's Note: Below is a review written to the tune of "Master of the House" from the musical 'Les Miserables.' Albeit my natural bias, what you're about to read may just blow your mind. Consider yourself warned.
Tom Hooper:
Welcome, Monsieur, sit yo...
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