7 years ago
Theatrical (10 posts found)
Coming to a theater near you
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”
There’s an art to manipulating a moviegoing audience. Every movie practices this art. Filmmakers have to sculpt their viewers’ responses to their work, even if only to a limited extent; some do it less than others, or perhaps they do such a good job exploiting...
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“Jurassic World”
It’s impossible to discuss Jurassic World, the large-scale fourth entry in the dinosaur-laden franchise, without acknowledging the T-Rex in the room: Jurassic Park. The 1993 film by Steven Spielberg looms large over this one, not just because of its unshakable...
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“Set Fire to the Stars”
Like all projects based around the lives of actual human beings, the Dylan Thomas biopic Set Fire the Stars has to contend with the problem of dramatizing reality. “This happened,” the biopic tells us, but savvy viewers know that even the best biopics tend to ...
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“Madame Bovary”
Emma Bovary is famously recognized as one of literature’s least sympathetic heroines. Entitled and selfish, her only driving motivation is an unquenchable hunger for material wealth and passionate affairs with men upon whom she can project her naïve romantic f...
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“Blind”
Blind, the directorial debut from Norwegian screenwriter Eskil Vogt, is really four films stuffed into one. On the one hand, it’s the story of Ingrid (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), a former teacher adjusting to life as a blind woman after a debilitating accident. Th...
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“Police Story: Lockdown”
Those expecting Jackie Chan to be a virtuoso of swinging limbs should be warned that Ding Sheng's new film Police Story: Lockdown isn't like other martial arts pictures that made Chan a household name. He's over 60 now, and the high-flying acrobatics that have...
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“Insidious: Chapter 3”
Note. This review contains spoilers for Insidious and Insidious: Chapter 2.
She died in Chapter 1. And she provided a considerable amount of help to the characters of Chapter 2 (of course, in spirit) in their fight against life-threatening demons. With writer...
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“Love and Mercy”
Brian Wilson is one of the most extraordinary musicians to ever take on this world, given the lifetime of drama he’s endured and the masterpieces that he’s transported from inside his head into studio sessions. His life narrative of pop compositions, a lost ma...
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“Hungry Hearts”
It used to be that filmmakers served up witchcraft, mutant babies, and the Devil himself as allegories for the anxieties of new parenthood. In Saverio Costanzo’s Hungry Hearts, we get something both blander and possibly more frightening: the 21st-century obses...
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“Spy”
Note. This review originally ran as part of our coverage of South by Southwest 2015.
Despite having almost literally the most generic title it could possibly have, Spy is a dizzyingly funny espionage comedy, with a non-farcical, non-spoof plot that works on a...
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