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Royal Flash - PG
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December 28, 2009
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N/A
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Robin and Marian - PG
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December 28, 2009
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N/A
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The Ritz - R
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December 28, 2009
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N/A
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Cuba - R
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December 28, 2009
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N/A
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Superman II - PG
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December 28, 2009
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N/A
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Superman III - PG
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December 28, 2009
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N/A
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Finders Keepers - R
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December 28, 2009
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N/A
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The Return of the Musketeers - PG
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December 28, 2009
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N/A
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Up in the Air - R
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December 25, 2009
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N/A
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Vertigo - PG
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December 7, 2009
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N/A
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Watchmen - R
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This movie is a bizarre patchwork of sequences that are either campy (often due to music choice) or so meticulously designed down to the last detail that they fail to come alive. The design thing stifles the actors too - they're treated not like actors but like part of the design. Carla Gugino is no more part of the scene than her age makeup is. This is clearly the work of a visually ambitious but unintelligent filmmaker. He crafts striking tableaux (though mostly he reconstructs them from the images of the graphic novel) but can't construct a long-form narrative cinematically. Obviously no adaptation of Watchmen would do complete justice to the original, because the fact that it's a comic book is its whole raison d'etre, but a really good artist could have done wonderful things with structure - clockwork, for example, provided a huge opportunity that was missed. Some parts of the film are actually exciting, and it's all great to look at, but overall it's just sort of lifeless. It takes more than reverence for images to make a good film. My favorite thing in the film just might have been the presence of Mickey from Seinfeld, in what is perhaps the film's most lively role.
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December 2, 2009
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N/A
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Pet Sematary - R
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Bad horror films are so weird for me - especially when they contain some actually effective moments. This has a couple instances that might fit well in a real, serious movie, but they're just extremely jarring when placed amid a slew of really bad cheesy scenes and bizarre throwaway one-liners. The movie veers quite unpredictably between camp and material that seems genuinely serious or disturbing. And Herman Munster is in it.
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December 2, 2009
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N/A
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The Tale of the Fox (Le Roman de Renard) - Unrated
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It's not so much one tale as a bunch of short tales strung together to make a feature. This was in fact the only feature from Starewicz, the early master of stop-motion animation. Very episodic but extremely clever, and a remarkable technical achievement that set the bar for stop-motion for many years. It's also rather cynical, showing how the devious, cheating fox always manages to get out of every situation and never loses his control over all the other animals. Very unjustly overlooked. Hopefully the homage paid to it by the recent Fantastic Mr. Fox (it owes an awful lot to Starewicz) will get more people to notice this one, but somehow I doubt this will get the recognition it deserves.
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December 1, 2009
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N/A
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Inglourious Basterds - R
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This is a nifty idea: a tongue-in-cheek, reference-laden alternate-history piece in which the entire fate of the Third Reich is literally contained in a cinema. A disjointed film, for sure, but it's got some good scenes and a nice construct in a dreamworld of history woven from impressions of old movies. My favorite scene was probably the one with Mike Myers and Michael Fassbender talking about UFA, with Rod Taylor (!) as Churchill sitting in the background. Toward the end it really got into an entertaining, exciting groove, but then suddenly I felt weird: do we really need this? Do we really need to machine-gun a dead Hitler, with Eli Roth as our Jewish revenge-seeking surrogate? I'm still not sure. I liked the tender Hitler-Goebbels chemistry, though.
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November 28, 2009
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N/A
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Young Mr. Lincoln - Unrated
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Abraham Lincoln. He's a young guy. Doesn't talk much, and when he does he talks pretty slowly, but he knows a few things. He reads a lot. He's a pretty good thinker. He has a gawky backwoods charm. He plays the Jew's harp. And you don't want to go up against him in a rail-splitting contest. Oh, and he can quiet down a lynch mob and kick ass in a courtroom defending murder suspects. Betcha no one figured he could do that, huh? That's the film in a nutshell; an entertaining picture, a nice yarn of American lore spun by John Ford.
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November 28, 2009
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N/A
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Burn After Reading - R
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I'm a sucker for sendups of bureaucracy, so the way this was wrapped up was really effective for me. What do all these wacky shenanigans amount to? Nothing more than an infinitesimal void between the obscured back pages in the records of a big corporation.
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November 28, 2009
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N/A
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Protocols of Zion - R
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Interesting but disappointing. Marc Levin takes the fascinating subject of anti-Semitism and conducts some explorations into potentially loaded territory (interviews with neo-Nazis, street thugs, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, and such) in order to ask and answer the big questions about it. Unfortunately, he doesn't dig deep enough. He conducts some nice interviews and gets some interesting opinions and notable quotations (e.g. the white supremacist who says he doesn't consider Hitler to have been suicidal), but he doesn't really go anywhere beyond scratching the surface. He goes for breadth rather than choosing to explore the depths, which makes this merely a thought-provoking starting point for discussion rather than an innovative film.
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November 28, 2009
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N/A
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The Ring - PG-13
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I'm very iffy when it comes to 'horror' films. Probably because I just don't respond to 'scare' moments and such conventions. In terms of imagery and construction, though, this is really rather good, especially the amazing centerpiece that is the mysterious video (how can you not go for the concept of people being randomly killed by video art?). The overall look of the film works too - all those greys. Yes, it does have its token sudden 'jump!' bits, but the atmosphere and visuals are haunting and mysterious enough to warrant a viewing.
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November 28, 2009
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N/A
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Fantastic Mr. Fox - PG
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Eh. The movie is entertaining enough, but something's missing. Everything seems to go too fast, too frenetically. The animation style works at times but is generally disconcerting - especially in the hoedown scene when the camera is supposed to be doing a circular pan, but in fact it moves in a straight line. The spatial design is frustrating; things are too flat. I admire the animation's nod to Starewicz's Tale of the Fox, but Starewicz handled space (and cynicism) far more effectively. (Also, in Starewicz's films, characters didn't talk too much.) There are a couple clear references to Disney's Robin Hood - the hoedown scene is one, and in an early scene you can hear the 'Love' song from Robin Hood being played - but those only serve to highlight how Anderson tries and fails to measure up to the older movie: that film had extremely charming characters (foxes and others) and a Roger Miller soundtrack; Anderson's movie's characters aren't as appealing, and the music by Desplat, who has written brilliant film scores before, is pretty average, aside from some welcome touches of bluegrass banjo and Jew's harp. The Anderson-Baumbach style of overtly idiosyncratic and self-conscious dialogue (making a big deal of characters' 'issues' and having them wonder out loud about existentialism) is annoying and feels labored; it doesn't help the story. And the title font is still irritating. [On a side note, the way the rat character moves reminded me of Jesus from The Big Lebowski.] Yes, this film has its moments, and there's some fun to be had, but at the core, where the soul should be, it's just sort of... empty. The Wallace & Gromit feature, to name one film in a similar vein, is far better. I can just imagine Roald Dahl's reaction to this one: in his cold, sneering voice, he's croaking out something to the effect of: Who let these bloody hipsters loose on my estate?
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November 28, 2009
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N/A
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The Rising (Mangal Pandey) - Unrated
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To be honest, movies like Braveheart and Spartacus are really not a whole lot better than this. And Spartacus, at least, is definitely inferior to this one. An entertaining Bollywood epic with musical numbers.
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November 21, 2009
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N/A
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The Day of the Locust - R
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This is a movie that builds slowly but surely, the intensity hidden below the surface finally erupting in a climax that has to rank as one of the most horrifying sequences in film history. Unpleasant, difficult, scathing, and ultimately shattering. On a side note, I heard René Clair get mentioned in a line of background dialogue. Pretty cool.
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November 3, 2009
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N/A
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They Shoot Horses, Don't They? - R
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Despite its setting and the year it was made, this movie is shockingly appropriate for our current media-obsessed generation. People slave and humiliate themselves to horrifying lengths, and it's all for the sake of the show that's being put on. The viewers - us - gobble it down; we'll watch anyone suffer in order to feel good about ourselves. How is the harrowing and cruelly exploitive dance marathon in this film any different from the degradation found in today's reality TV?
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November 1, 2009
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N/A
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The Year of Living Dangerously - PG
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Good, but I wanted more of those shadow puppets. They were the richest material in the film, but severely underused.
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October 29, 2009
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N/A
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Lola Montès (The Fall of Lola Montes) (The Sins of Lola Montes) - Unrated
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I'm so glad to have seen this on the big screen. It is the very definition of lush - everything just looks so gorgeous, and the vivid colors and the opulence and the spectacle are simply intoxicating. This visual beauty, as well as the fascinating framing device of the circus reenactment, draws us in seductively. It starts to drag somewhat toward the end, and there is quite a bit of melodrama, but maybe that's the point: what, in the grand scheme of things, is all this - empty pursuit of social climbing, hollow pleasures - is it all just folly, cheap showmen's fodder after which kisses of this beautiful woman can be bought for a dollar? And still the spectacle in all its CinemaScope glory bowls us over. Now that there's a newly restored print, hopefully this movie can be more widely seen as it was originally intended.
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October 29, 2009
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N/A
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And Then There Were None - Unrated
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Agatha Christie's classic mystery is reimagined stylishly under the deft hand of director René Clair. The result is a damn good suspense film laced with impeccable dark comedy. The cast is superb, and there are also some interesting camera angles and framing to be found here.
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October 29, 2009
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N/A
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1194 ratings
175 reviews
