8 years ago
All posts by Sean Burns
“Two Men in Town”
Frustratingly close to being something very special indeed, Rachid Bouchareb’s Two Men in Town boasts a painterly visual sensibility and some of the more nuanced performances this killer cast has delivered in quite some time. The mood of the film is deliberate...
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“The Wrecking Crew”
Director Denny Tedesco calls The Wrecking Crew “the most expensive home movie ever made,” which pretty well sums up the movie’s strengths and limitations. Shot here and there over the course of decades, it’s a grab-bag of interviews and archival footage intend...
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“Compared to What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank”
No great shakes as a documentary but a hugely entertaining repository of zingers, Compared To What? The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank follows the indefatigable representative from Massachusetts’ Fourth district during the waning days of his 40-year politi...
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“Focus”
Focus is two movies for the price of one. You get a sparkling, sexy comedy and its lackluster, dispiriting sequel, both in the same sitting. I enjoyed the first half of this picture as much as anything I’ve seen in a while. The exhausted CEO of Will Smith Fami...
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“The Humbling”
All the world's a stage for legendary actor Simon Axler, and he wants to get off. Played with no small amount of self-deprecating wit by the even more legendary Al Pacino, Simon has of late - but wherefore he knows not - lost all his mirth. Pushing 70, without...
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“Still Alice”
I’ve been hearing for a while now that it’s Julianne Moore’s year. If you ask me, every year should be Julianne Moore’s year, but nevertheless, this is the conventional wisdom being passed around by those who make their living spending an unseemly amount of ti...
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“Giuseppe Makes A Movie”
In the late 1990s, Giuseppe Andrews was a steadily employed child actor who you might remember from Independence Day, assuming you remember anything from it all; I’m stumped. Before accidentally tripping into show business, Andrews lived with his father Ed – a...
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“Two Days, One Night”
In discussing Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s altogether remarkable Two Days, One Night, it’s indeed tempting to praise the movie for all the things it doesn’t do. This is a film of uncommon emotional directness, of simple truths presented unadorned. The Belgia...
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“Annie”
It recently came to my attention that my fellow film critics don’t think much of John Huston’s massive, gargantuan 1982 adaptation of the Broadway musical Annie. Sadly, I must recuse myself from this particular conversation in accordance with my brilliant frie...
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“Goodbye to All That”
With his rumpled good looks and relaxed drawl, the fine character actor Paul Schneider brought an easygoing everyman charm to the early films of David Gordon Green, and supplied anchors of authenticity in terminally whimsical efforts like Elizabethtown and Lar...
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