Posted October 15, 2014in Film Review
“Kill the Messenger” 2 stars Rated R 112 minutes Biography Starring: Jeremy Renner, Robert Patrick, Jena Sims Investigative journalism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It never was. “Big scandal” stories like the one broken by real-life San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Stephen Webb, about the CIA’s funding
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Posted October 08, 2014in Film Review
“Inherent Vice” 1 star Rated R 149 minutes Comedy Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Jena Malone, Joaquin Phoenix There’s no way to sugarcoat it; Paul Thomas Anderson has made two duds in a row. If his lackluster half-film “The Master” didn’t you put you off the director responsible for such instant classics
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Posted October 01, 2014in Film Review
“Pride” 2 stars Rated R 120 minutes Comedy Starring: Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West All attempts fail at forcing a by-the-numbers narrative template on a fact-based story about unlikely bedfellows uniting against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s mid 1980s reign of anti-union and anti-gay rhetoric and public policies. Newbie screenwriter
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Posted September 24, 2014in Film Review
“The Boxtrolls” 1 star Rated PG 97 minutes Animation Starring: Ben Kingsley, Jared Harris, Nick Frost This animated 3D children’s picture is as clumsy, tone-deaf and useless as they come. Laika, the Oregon animation production company behind “Coraline” (2009) and “ParaNorman” (2012) takes more than a few a steps backward.
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Posted September 17, 2014in Film Review
“The Zero Theorem” 1 star Rated R 107 minutes Drama Starring: Christoph Waltz, Lucas Hedges, Mélanie Thierry Terry Gilliam’s further slide down the stairs of filmic entropy is best summed up in an oft-repeated phrase by his latest film’s hypochondriac protagonist Qohen Leth, “Q” for short. “We are dying.” The
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Posted September 10, 2014in Film Review
“The Identical” 0 stars Rated PG 107 minutes Drama Starring: Blake Rayne, Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd A shoe-in for a spot on the worst movies of 2014 list, this poorly constructed slice of filmic propaganda is so unintentionally campy you can’t help but laugh. Atrocious costume designs, anachronistic dialogue, wretched
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Posted September 03, 2014in Film Review
“Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” 4 stars Rated R 102 minutes Thriller Starring: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin Oozing with more hard-boiled wit than two Dashiell Hammett novels put together, and more visually compelling than every comic-book movie Hollywood has put out in the past
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Posted August 27, 2014in Film Review
“Love is Strange” 3 stars Rated R 94 minutes Comedy Starring: John Lithgow, Alfred Molina, Tatyana Zbirovskaya Although it suffers from a glaring third-act jump that makes you wonder where four or five ostensibly missing scenes went, “Love Is Strange” resonates as a heartfelt allegory about committed gay relationships in
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Posted August 20, 2014in Film Review
“The Trip to Italy” 4 stars Rated PG 98 minutes Comedy Starring: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Rosie Fellner You couldn’t pick two more entertaining companions for a cinematic road trip in Italy than Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Following on the success of “The Trip” (2010), in which the duo
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Posted August 13, 2014in Film Review
“The Hundred-Foot Journey” 3 stars Rated PG 122 minutes Drama Starring: Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal The foodie-romance genre has been oddly absent from American cinema lately. It’s been seven long years since “Ratatouille” (2007) reminded audiences about their taste buds. Even then, that was an animated kids’ movie
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