7 years ago
Willem Dafoe 10
Netflix Weekend 8/15: Lars von Trier and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
This week I’ll be highlighting a filmmaker whom I have a much more complex relationship with than previous entries: Lars von Trier. Anyone who knows me know that I’m often hot and cold on his work, feeling that at his best, he’s transcendent, and at his worst,...
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“A Most Wanted Man” A Precise And Moody Curtain Call for Philip Seymour Hoffman
The bulk of the planning for the September 11th attacks did not take place in an Afghan manse or a Saudi backroom -- it happened in an apartment in Hamburg, Germany. Contrary to what the public may think, terrorism is not Middle Eastern, not even Islamic terro...
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“The Fault In Our Stars” Earns The Tears You’ll Inevitably Shed
As tempting as it is to roll eyes at the subject matter of teenage love fettered by terminal illness, Josh Boone’s The Fault In Our Stars -a refreshingly sober melodrama, respectful of such a weighty topic it dissects- requires one to check that attitude at th...
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The Second Criterion: “The Last Temptation of Christ”
I was a hardcore Bible kid, growing up. From fourth to sixth grade, I went to a Baptist elementary school. After that, I went to a Baptist middle school. For high school, I was in a Catholic high school, Catholicism being my family's main religion and not near...
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“Nymphomaniac Vol. II” Gives Us The Whole Story And Much More
The problem with the release of Nymphomaniac isn't that it was split into two volumes – it’s that those volumes were released on different days. The idea of splitting a film into multiple volumes, in of itself, is actually an extremely exciting one. Can you im...
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“Nymph()maniac: Vol. I”: Lars Von Trier Waves His Freak Flag
Reviewing Danish troublemaker Lars von Trier's latest film, Nymph()maniac feels like nothing more than a fool's errand. That's partially because the movie opening in theaters this Friday is just the first half of the entire production, whose second entry relea...
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Wes Anderson’s Latest Diorama “The Grand Budapest Hotel” Isn’t His Tidiest
Wes Anderson is cinema’s inner child incarnate. His perfectly crafted interior universes - labyrinthine submarines, exotic trains, prestigious private schools - are populated by imperfect sad souls, live-action Charlie Browns who are forever mourning or resent...
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New Images Welcome You to ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’
Wes Anderson's latest creation, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is another intricate and ornate cross-section into a world that normal people don't have the privilege of visiting. This Europe of the past, a sprawling and magnificent hotel set in the 1900s before the...
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Lars Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” Gets US Release Date
We've seen the posters covered in O-faces, we've heard buzz about its reported five-hour length and the fact that it will be split into two films, we've seen the trailer that pushed the limits of YouTube's standards and practices as far as it could go, and we ...
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‘Out of the Furnace’: A Sore Disappointment
Out of the Furnace saddens me. It's a movie that fights so hard to be great, only to wind up stranded in some middling zone of effectiveness. It has a concept and story that I want to work, told by a cast and crew of artists whom I almost uniformly like or lov...
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