7 years ago
Reviews (10 posts found)
SXSW Review: Young Love Genuinely Depicted In Coming of Age Gem, The Spectacular Now
B+
Addiction is a tough nut to crack in cinematic storytelling. Treat it too seriously, and a film can often devolve into a PSA of unsubtle, parodic levels. Treat it too lightly, and the portrayal can come off as trivial. It’s a tightrope that filmmakers mu...
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SXSW Review: Jeff Nichols Strikes Gold Again with Mud
A
Few modern directors capture the American spirit so perfectly as Jeff Nichols. A resident of Austin, Texas, Nichols has managed to give a voice to the working class American in each of his films, a voice so clear and distinct that one can’t help but feel ...
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Beyond the Hills: Something Wicked This Way Comes
A
There's a moment in the final act of Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's monastery-set drama Beyond the Hills that, under the hands of any other director, could've been played up as something from a conventional, generic psychological horror film. But thi...
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Dead Man Down: Critic Man Yawn
Dead Man Down, the new directorial effort from Niels Arden Oplev, desperately tries to deliver the pleasures of both a noirish thriller and an action bonanza. Unfortunately, it fails at both. Some slick cinematography and a game cast are wasted, as you feel th...
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Dueling Reviews of Sam Raimi’s Divisive Disney Fantasy Oz the Great and Powerful
By: Tina Hassannia
Grade: C-
Warner may keep a draconian eye on any cultural product with a smidgen of resemblance to the beloved classic The Wizard of Oz--for which they have owned the rights since 1996--and while that particular film has comprehensively pe...
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The ABCs of Death: A Diary of Frustration
Words can not describe the experience I had watching The ABCs of Death, a series of 26 shorts named after each one of the letters of the alphabet and the many ways we could all die. I came into it expecting just a lot of typical 5-9 minute horror shorts and ca...
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Jack the Giant Slayer: More of a Human-Sized Failure Than a Giant One
C+
It's impossible to imagine a good Jack and the Beanstalk film. The fairy tale itself simply isn't cinematic. When you add to the equation the sheer degree of difficulty in creating believable effects work for giants, beanstalks, and a kingdom in the sky,...
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Stoker: Korean Style Meets American Gothic in Beautifully Depraved Coming-of-Age Tale
A
At what point does style become substance? Many of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers were really quite pedestrian, predictable stories, but the director’s mastery of style and craft turned many of those films into beautiful works of art. The same could be said...
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The Last Exorcism: Part II: The Fun of a Straight-To-DVD Sequel in Your Multiplex
D-
In the spectrum of laziness, The Last Exorcism: Part II is somewhere at or near the nadir. It's dispassionately directed, thinly scripted, and just plain unscary. Not one element works in it. Not one scare is executed properly. Not a single aspect of thi...
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British Actioner Sweeney Fires Blanks
C
Having opened last year in the UK, the British action flick The Sweeney is getting a limited American release in theaters soon. Based on the '70s TV series of the same name, the Flying Squad (aka The Sweeney) are an elite police unit tasked with taking do...
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