7 years ago
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Mama Who Bore Me: On Motherhood, Horror, and Jennifer Kent’s “The Babadook”
In some way, Sigmund Freud was right: Many of us are haunted by our mothers, and they can be scary as hell. Perceived as caring nurturers, our mothers hold a singular power over us, and when that power is used for evil, the deliciousness of the reversal is too...
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The Curious Case of Anthology Horror
Anthology horror is having a moment right now. This happens every other decade or so; like the numbnut denizens of The Purge expunging the violence from their systems by perennially slaughtering unlucky bystanders (usually of the lower-class variety), filmmake...
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“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1”
You can call what’s going to follow “half a review”, as for reasons that evidently don’t stretch beyond doubling up the box office of the franchise’s final installment, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part 1 is also cut up in half. This is the first half of Su...
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Sex(ist): On Cinematic Nudity
No surprise that David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s controversial best-selling novel Gone Girl became a big hit upon its release. One aspect of the film that generated unexpected chatter, however, was Ben Affleck’s penis. Days (weeks?) after critics...
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“Truth” is Better Than “Fiction”: Documentaries That Trump Their Fictional Equivalents
Biopics are as beloved by Oscar voters as they are joked about by almost everyone else. And many a thinkpiece has been written about why Hollywood loves biopics, and why so many of them are so very samey. But I come not to mourn the biopic. Nor do I come to bu...
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“The Imitation Game”
“Are you paying attention?” asks a brisk voice at the start of Morten Tyldum’s slick and sophisticated World War II-era biopic The Imitation Game. The voice belongs to the genius WWII code-breaker and math prodigy Alan Turing, the magnificent subject of Graham...
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American Psyche: The Best of Frederick Wiseman
Recently awarded a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 71st Venice International Film Festival, 84-year old Frederick Wiseman has been directing (and producing) his films for more than half a decade, incessantly turning his perceptive gaze towards - pr...
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“Dumb and Dumber To”
Credit the Farrelly Brothers with this much: given Hollywood’s toxic insistence on character arcs, life lessons, and labored backstories, it’s kind of a relief to discover their signature morons haven’t changed in the slightest. The world may have moved on sin...
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Play Dumb with Me: Looking Back at the Farrelly Brothers’ “Dumb and Dumber”
With The Lion King, The Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, and Natural Born Killers among its crop of releases, 1994 proved to be a colossal year for American cinema. It was also the year of Jim Carrey, a B-level comedian from Toronto who had b...
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A Comedy in Long Shot: When Comedians Get Behind the Camera
When The Daily Show host Jon Stewart announced he was taking a 12-week break from his program to direct his first feature-length film, the Internet erupted into cheer. The man we’d been watching for years was finally going to lend his comedic eye to film.
H...
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