7 years ago
review 10
Back to Basics in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”
The Star Wars prequels are failures for many, endlessly catalogued reasons, but among the most egregious is the reliance on volumes of exposition to establish background and intervening details. Instead of letting actors suggest individual and collaborative hi...
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David O. Russell’s Fulfilling “Joy”
David O. Russell has always displayed a knack for formulating a dose of playful, hectic kitsch. From American Hustle’s big hairs, sideburns, and bare-chested outfits to the chaos-seeking, loudmouth families in The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, his chatt...
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Looking for Solutions
in “Where to Invade Next”
Note. This review was originally published as part of our New York Film Festival 2015 coverage.
Just the mention of Michael Moore is enough to send some viewers into spasms of protest. The Oscar-winning documentarian has a history of provoking the right side ...
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Exploring Past and Present
in “45 Years”
Set against the black of the screen, the only sound we hear in the opening credits of Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years resembles that of a cartridge changing, as if one of those seemingly ancient negative projectors were being perused, the names and production companie...
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“Dracula Untold”
Ambiguity isn't tolerated by studios anymore, especially when it comes to high-profile characters who can serve as franchise-starters. And characters don't come with a higher profile than the lord of vampires himself, Dracula. Origin stories boomed with Batman...
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“Fifi Howls From Happiness” A Rich, Vivid, And Unpredictable Iranian Documentary
The history of 20th-century Iran is brimming with fascinating, complex tales of personal and social travails and triumph. The country went through name changes, revolutions, several dynasties, countless heads of state, and the Islamicization of the government ...
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Dardennes, Dolan and Berlinale Winner the Highlights of the 2014 Sydney Film Festival
This past Sunday, the 61st annual edition of the Sydney Film Festival came to a close. Of the more than 180 films that screened at the festival, a dozen fought it out in the Official Competition, with the $61,000 prize eventually going to Luc and Jean-Pierre D...
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“Brick Mansions” Offers Parkour But Not Much Else
Brick Mansions takes place in a dystopian Detroit (only four years from now) where huge mansions lie abandoned and taken over by gangsters. Hospitals and schools have been removed and to combat the anything goes nature of the newly formed compounds, law enforc...
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Looking Back: “So Dark the Night”
Like Edgar G. Ulmer or Roger Corman, Joseph H. Lewis is the kind of director devoted cinephiles like to discover. Routinely saddled with shoestring budgets and week-long schedules, these Poverty Row auteurs dealt with their slapdash screenplays and inept casts...
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The “RoboCop” Remake Stays (Mostly) True to the Subversive Spirit of the Original
Few Hollywood films, past or present, are as savagely subversive as Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop. Released in 1987 at the (then) height of commercial excess and populist blockbuster entertainment, the film’s outlandish one-word premise and over-the-top sci-fi gunp...
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