7 years ago
Featured (10 posts found)
“Spectre” Is Workmanlike Filmmaking
The best Bond films were wise enough not to take themselves too seriously, generally aware that they were selling a fantasy package of moral escapism, aspirational heterosexuality and killer theme tunes, the majority of which have endured as richer cultural ar...
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“The Peanuts Movie” Is A Respectful Love Letter to Fans
The Peanuts Movie is a love letter to fans and a respectful ode to creator Charles Schulz’s timeless characters. It neither embraces the current trend of justifying and explaining every element that made its subject so beloved, nor does it stitch the diminishi...
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“Spotlight” Is An Exceptional Ode To Journalism
In 2002, The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team—consisting of a group of top-notch investigative journalists—unveiled the deeply rooted, systemic sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church, which led to the surfacing of many molestation cases across the US...
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“Trumbo” Is Unworthy of Its Extraordinary Subject
In a screenwriting career that spanned three decades, the man born James Dalton Trumbo did a little of everything. He penned feather-light romances like Roman Holiday, sweeping war pictures such as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a swords-and-sandals epic in Sparta...
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“Brooklyn” Is Tasteful, Competent, and Utterly Harmless
It’s 1951, and young Irishwoman Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) is moving to America. She hugs her mother and sister goodbye, goes through some trouble on the boat trip across the Atlantic, and ultimately settles in—you guessed it, Brooklyn. Between dealing with a...
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“Inside Out” Stands Out On Blu-ray
It’s been a very good year for Pixar; November, in particular, is a banner month for the studio. In a few weeks’ time, just before Thanksgiving, the animation studio is releasing its second film this year, The Good Dinosaur, a first in its history. That releas...
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“In Jackson Heights” Is Galvanizing and Unsettling
The opening rooftop shot of In Jackson Heights gazes down at a street block that contains several intersections within a short distance. It’s as much an indication of the New York community’s overlapping cultures as the subsequent montage of life in the area, ...
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“Love” Is Basically “Annie Hall” With Money Shots
Some time ago, I lived next door to a couple who, by all accounts, were terrible for each other. I’d lie awake at night, listening through the paper-thin walls to their galvanic arguments, usually set off by some ludicrous imagined slight conjured up in a fit ...
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The 20 Best French Horror Films Ever
In France, the idea of horror is a little different than in Hollywood. In the past, French horror directors generally eschewed jump scares in favor of a feeling of creeping death. Cameras were distant, characters were blank and horror was imposing, if not a na...
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The Unnerving Dream Logic of “Mulholland Dr.”
Early in Mulholland Dr., writer/director David Lynch makes a statement that clarifies his larger ambition, in a scene with two men who aren’t shown in any other portion of the film. If you have the subtitles on, or have especially good hearing, you can hear on...
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