The quality control folks in the Hollywood schlock factory are a meticulous bunch: They know their craft, they execute it with pragmatism, and for all they lack in ambition, they make up in consistency. Every now and again, though, the schlock factory’s well-oiled mechanisms pump out the occasional defect—a film that, though decked out in […]
Film
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Welcome to the Jungle
Katniss has got fun ‘n’ games!
Disappointingly competent, 2012’s The Hunger Games…well, at least it got the basics right. It was a fine adaptation—totally, forgettably, blandly fine. So it’s a pretty excellent surprise that its sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, is an order of magnitude better: Catching Fire will please whatever it is that Hunger Games fans call themselves (Hangries? […]
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Freedom on Two Wheels
Breakthrough film Wadjda gives voice to Saudi women
There’s something uniquely liberating about riding a bicycle, a fact that is not lost on Wadjda, despite the fact that she has never ridden one. But that doesn’t stop the free-spirited Saudi 10-year-old and namesake of the 2012 feature film Wadjda from devising schemes to raise money for the forbidden item. Whether by selling handmade […]
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Those Aren’t Pillows!
John Hughes Did It Mo’ Better in Planes, Trains and Automobiles
By the time that John Hughes wrote—and subsequently directed—Planes, Trains and Automobiles in 1987, he had already completed what are arguably the most important contributions to the canon of teenage movies in cinematic history. Starting with the coming-of-age fantasy 16 Candles in 1984, Hughes wrote and directed six silly, but profoundly impactful films in just […]
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The Golden Ticket
Warren Miller Entertainment’s Ticket to Ride does its namesake justice
Let’s get something straight: Warren Miller—writer, filmmaker and original ski bum who started producing snow films in 1950—is in no way involved in Warren Miller Entertainment, and hasn’t been since 2004. In the late ’80s, he sold the company to his son, and after a number of sales and re-sales it ended up with the […]
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Gods and Monsters
Thor is back—and more importantly, so is Loki
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 […]
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L-I-V-I-N
Dallas Buyers Club is just all right, all right
In addition to being an electrician and a part-time rodeo bull rider, Ron Woodroof was also a career partier—a thorough user of drugs and a prolific womanizer. When he contracted the AIDS virus in 1986, the disease was still, in the public’s eye, very much limited to the realm of gay men. Woodroof overcame not […]
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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 […]
