The populace has been indoctrinated. Now that Marvel and its corporate overlords at Disney can safely assume that every sentient creature on Earth is familiar with each of the Avengers, here’s Thor: The Dark World, coming just five months after Iron Man 3. Even if there are any pop cultural holdouts—no doubt they’re cold and […]
Film
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Lust, Caution
Blood and regret in Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy's The Counselor
It’s perhaps best to think of the Counselor (Michael Fassbender) not as a lawyer but as an investor. An investor who has made a terrible investment. That isn't to say he's stupid. He's clever enough to know how handsome he is. He's clever enough to have fallen in love with the gorgeous Laura (Penélope Cruz), […]
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Firing Range
Guns, monsters, and Blue Caprice
“I’ve created a monster,” says John (Isaiah Washington), looking appreciatively at Lee (Tequan Richmond). John (old, calculating, furious) and Lee (young, quiet, and a terrifyingly good shot) are sitting in their 1990 Chevrolet Caprice; navy blue, it has a hole sawed out of its trunk that's just large enough to fit the barrel of a […]
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Unreasonable Mount
The Summit sorts the tragedy of K2
dIf you wonder what drives someone to want to climb mountains, look elsewhere. The documentary The Summit does not attempt to justify people risking frostbite and skull smashing in order to get a life-affirmingly fantabulous view. Director Nick Ryan is on a different, more specific mission: to sort out what went wrong in early August […]
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Scary! Funny! Furry!
Gremlins helped breed a genre of comedy-horror films
There’s a good reason to have conflicting emotions about the 1984 film Gremlins. It is a wonderfully entertaining film, but also one that is equal parts adorable, scary and silly. A brief recap, as it has been nearly 30 years since its release: In search of a Christmas present for his grown son, a father […]
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Fifth Estate is One-Fifth Stinky
WikiLeaks film springs a leak in its storyline
When I arrived at the screening for The Fifth Estate, there was a small knot of wild-eyed people hovering around outside, pushing flyers that to convince me that the film is a propagandistic, anti-Assange, WikiLeaks-bashing hack job. I refrained from asking, “have you actually seen the film?” Because: The Fifth Estate is nothing of the […]
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Magical Thinking
Lynn Shelton gets touchy feely
A frequent criticism of mumblecore films is that nothing really happens in them, which has always struck me as a weak line of reasoning. Life doesn’t have a plot (spoiler!) and it’s still pretty interesting most of the time. But Lynn Shelton's new film Touchy Feely tweaks the formula a bit: Nothing really happens, except […]
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Tom Hanks on a Boat
Captain Phillips: A Movie About Tom Hanks on a Boat!
Captain Phillips shouldn’t be as good as it is. It’s a big studio picture, based on an inspirational true story, starring one of the world’s hugest movie stars, directed by a guy most famous for his Bourne movies: Broken into pieces, Captain Phillips should mass-market sap. But it’s the opposite of that: lean and smart […]
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The Fast and the Envious
Rush: A Peek into Ron Howard's Mind
Director Ron Howard’s new biopic Rush—about rival Formula One drivers in the '70s—is good. It’s not great, and it’s not "meh"… it's just solidly “good.” In other words, it's exactly what one would expect from solidly “good” director Ron Howard. However, a closer look makes one suspect that Rush says more about its director than […]
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One Hundred Minutes of Solitude
Gravity: A reminder the universe doesn’t care if you live or die
In the Netflix era, it’s remarkable to be reminded what going to the movies can feel like: dwarfed by bright images on a massive screen, drenched in sound, hearing a collective gasp rush through a crowd of strangers. It is an experience that’s grown increasingly rare: We have grown used to watching things on our […]
