8 years ago
All posts by Sean Burns
“In the Heart of the Sea” Doesn’t Know Dick
In the Heart of the Sea doesn’t get to the heart of much. In fact, Ron Howard’s seafaring adventure is as confused a picture as I’ve seen in quite some time. Adapted from Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 best-seller about the sinking of the whaleship Essex, the film...
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“Chi-Raq” Is A Glorious Provocation
Spike Lee doesn’t always make it easy for us fans. His restless, prolific output can often swerve from brilliant to asinine, sometimes within the space of a single movie, sometimes within the space of a single scene. But stick with the guy long enough and ever...
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“Uncle Nick” Is Agonizingly Unfunny
There’s a famous story in which Errol Morris was taking so long to edit his film Gates of Heaven that Werner Herzog promised to eat his shoe if Morris ever finished the movie. This, of course, resulted in Les Blank’s delightful short Werner Herzog Eats His Sho...
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“The Night Before” Feels Like A Rough Draft
Seth Rogen, our generation's pothead Peter Pan, is afraid to grow up again. Ever since his spot-on screenplay for Superbad (co-scripted with regular writing partner Evan Goldberg), Rogen has mined comedic gold from coming-of-age anxieties, whether high school ...
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“Miss You Already” Is The Rare Honest Tearjerker
However horrible it most assuredly is in real life, dying of a debilitating disease often looks quite lovely in motion pictures. The afflicted tend to become blessed with infinite wisdom and generosity, bestowing advice upon those left behind as they beatifica...
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“Heist” Is A Brazenly Derivative, Time-Killing Knockoff
Robert De Niro vapes in Heist, which I guess is almost as much a sign of changing times as Robert De Niro even appearing in a film like this at all. Following The Bag Man and Freelancers, Heist is the latest of the cinema legend’s straight-to-video throwaways ...
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“Bone Tomahawk” Isn’t Fooling Around
I’m not sure if the disparate genre elements in Bone Tomahawk all hang together quite as well as they should, but one thing for certain is that first-time writer-director S. Craig Zahler isn’t fooling around. A sci-fi horror cannibal exploitation picture by wa...
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“All Things Must Pass” Is A Warm and Wistful Music Doc
Last week, I went to a record store for the first time since I can’t even tell you when. It’s something I should do more often, as I’d kind of forgotten the sheer time-killing enjoyment of aimless browsing and flipping through the stacks for discoveries and su...
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“Trash” Is Almost Predictably Lousy
First, a brief moment to note the pun-tastic woes of Rooney Mara, co-starring in two critically disliked films opening on the same day, helpfully titled Pan and Trash. These folks make it awfully easy for us sometimes. As a pal pointed out, this is actually t...
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“The Keeping Room” Is Exceedingly Difficult To Watch
A title card tells us it’s 1865, followed by a quote from William Tecumseh Sherman – so we all know what’s coming. Director Daniel Barber’s grim, handsomely mounted The Keeping Room wallows in that mournful inevitability, substituting dread for suspense. It’s ...
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