7 years ago
Theatrical (10 posts found)
Coming to a theater near you
“Fresh Dressed”
When I began reviewing movies online by watching a documentary every day, I strongly believed that every doc, even not-too-great ones, still had intrinsic, significant worth. “Even if it didn’t move me too much,” I thought, “at least I learned something new." ...
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“Ted 2”
Asking whether we really needed a sequel to 2012’s Ted is almost unfair to Ted 2. Sequels, follow-ups, and part twos (and threes and fours) make up an ever-increasing percentage of our moviegoing diet these days. Questioning their necessity has nearly become r...
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“Big Game”
With nostalgia currently holding the box office in a raptor claw, it's amusing to discover that this summer's most purely enjoyable throwback to those 1980s Steven Spielberg-produced Amblin entertainments is not, in fact, the Steven Spielberg-produced Amblin e...
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“The Algerian”
“Why would a man like you help a woman like me?” says Lana (Candice Coke) to Ali (Ben Youcef) when he comes to her rescue after Lana’s abusive date punches her in public. It’s a baffling question, and not just because it is despairingly clichéd. The situation ...
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“Into the Grizzly Maze”
Not exactly terrible, at least as far as this sort of nature-spolitation schlock goes, Saw V director David Hackl’s Into the Grizzly Maze strands an overqualified cast in the Alaskan wilderness to work out their longstanding family grudges with a thousand-poun...
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“What Happened, Miss Simone?”
“What happened, Miss Simone? Specifically, what happened to your big eyes that quickly veil to hide the loneliness? To your voice, that has so little tenderness, yet overflows with your commitment to the battle of Life? What happened to you?” —Maya Angelou
Eu...
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“Elimination Game”
When Australian cult curio Turkey Shoot was released in 1982, the scope of the B movie wasn’t that far removed from marquee, studio pictures. And yet now here is that film remade in Jon Hewitt’s Elimination Game, landing somewhere between a low-budget Hunger G...
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“The Little Death”
In a scene deep into the second act of Australian comedy anthology The Little Death, a man and his girlfriend walk back to their car in a parking garage following a romantic dinner. They’re stopped by a pair of thugs who glower at them, take their wallets and ...
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“The Face of an Angel”
Humdrum thrillers are hardly in short supply in Hollywood. But when this kind of formulaic and intellectually vapid genre piece is directed by one of the most irreverent directors of the past two decades, the result is particularly disheartening—as is the case...
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“Manglehorn”
Specialness has always had a vaulted place in the movies. It’s a classic hero’s journey: the discovery that you are destined for greatness or, in the case of epic love stories, the quest for “the one.” It’s an alluringly romantic concept, but its real-world ap...
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