Posted May 06, 2015in Film Review
Though he may have cleverly tricked you into thinking otherwise, Joss Whedon is, at his core, an action director. The reason he may have tricked you into thinking otherwise, is because there is no action director alive who manages to instill his heroes with such a sense of genuine humanity
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Posted April 29, 2015in Film Review
“Ex Machina” is a terrifying film. It does not get its sense of foreboding from jump scares or gore. There are no demons or ghosts or anything else traditionally scary anywhere to be found. Instead, “Ex Machina,” the directoral debut of screenwriter Alex Garland, is terrifying for two reasons: 1)
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Posted April 22, 2015in Film Review
When you start talking about the disappearance of Johnny Gosch, it can be difficult not to start sounding like a conspiracy theorist. The fact that a young boy could be taken from a street in the middle of West Des Moines and disappear so completely is odd enough. Add in
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Posted April 15, 2015in Film Review
In the 5th century B.C., Hippocrates, the father of the medicinal arts, laid out the code by which all physicians practice their art. Perhaps the greatest tenant therein: Do no harm. Do your job as well as you can, but above all else, make sure that no person walks out
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Posted April 08, 2015in Film Review
The franchise has developed a reputation for being a kind of dumb, kind of fun action franchise. But now that there are seven installments, I was genuinely curious as to whether or not one needed to be versed in the past iterations in order to fully enjoy the current one.
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Posted March 31, 2015in Film Review
Pint-size producer and documentarian Dick “The Stick” Prix (pronounced “Pree”) is renowned for his ability to take seemingly innocuous, clean-as-a-lilly subjects and find their dark sides. Take for instance his 2011 critically acclaimed documentary “Finders Keepers, Losers Sweepers,” a fascinating look the secret world of nighttime high school janitors, which
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Posted March 25, 2015in Film Review
For starters, here’s a caveat for this week’s review: I am not a teenage girl, so I acknowledge that I am not the target audience for “Insurgent.” Now, the caveat to my caveat: I am also not the target audience for “Frozen,” but I can still tell a good movie
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Posted March 18, 2015in Film Review
Is there an actor alive who has more undeserved goodwill than Liam Neeson? He certainly seems like a pleasant enough fellow in interviews and commercials, and this “I’m going to do action movies now” turn has been enjoyable enough. But when was the last time he actually made a good
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Posted March 11, 2015in Film Review
Remember last week’s discussion about the difference between entertaining movies and good movies? Neill Blomkamp has given us another example to work with in “Chappie.” On a purely emotional, gut level, “Chappie” does everything it sets out to. It is moving, funny, exciting and gut-wrenching. Taken purely from that point
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Posted March 04, 2015in Film Review
I did not realize “Focus” was bad until I realized I had spent an hour wondering what side of the road Brazilians drive on. There is frequently a more than semantic difference between a film that is “good” and one that is “entertaining.” Good films are usually entertaining (though in
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