Welcome to the Summer Movie Preview. Last weekend’s arrival of “Captain America: Civil War” was the early dawn of 2016’s summer movie season. There will be big actors, enormous explosions and the largest budgets the American film industry has ever seen this year. The following mandatory fun list includes the bigger flicks of May and […]
Old Mill Stadium 16 & IMAX
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Marvel Swings For The Fences
“Captain America: Civil War” is an ideological trip to the MCU
Captain America debuted in Marvel Comics in March of 1941, based on the character of Steve Rogers, a young man whose parents have died, who grew up during the Great Depression. Trying to enlist for World War II to fight the Nazis, he fails to pass the physical requirements, but is invited to take part […]
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Punks vs. Skinheads
“Green Room” paints Portland in a violent light
Jeremy Saulnier’s modern classic, “Green Room,” viscerally punches the audience in the face with every death. The script gives each character at least one moment to be human, even those who wouldn’t deserve it in a lesser film. Nothing is easy here, every choice is fraught with dire consequences and repercussions. There aren’t very many […]
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Hazed and Confused
Linklater sets his sights on college life
If there were a running theme to the films of Richard Linklater, it would have to be the search for meaning. Each entry in his filmography spends at least a little time on the idea that as humans live through defining moments, they tend to miss the true import until either retrospect or nostalgia kick […]
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Life in the Remake Jungle
“The Jungle Book” amazes with a new twist on Kipling’s classic
The story is already well known. “The Jungle Book” is about Mowgli, a man cub (human boy) raised by a family of wolves in a jungle. When an angry tiger decides Mowgli must die, the boy begins an epic journey through the dangerous and deceptively beautiful jungle to live with the rest of the humans. […]
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This Movie Has Sand Dragons
Oh, and they breathe fire
For a completely goofy, “Clash of the Titans” throwback, “Gods of Egypt” is drawing a lot of controversy over the apparent whitewashing of the cast. There are a ton of white people in this movie, but there are also a few people of color in prominent roles, but the central Egyptian gods are mostly white […]
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Make ‘Em Laugh
Deadpool wisecracks his way straight to the heart
In the Marvel Universe, there really isn’t anyone like Deadpool. Created in 1991 by extremely terrible comic book artist Rob Liefeld, Deadpool (real name, Wade Wilson), began his comics career as a villainous killer-for-hire in X-titles like “The New Mutants” and “X-Force.” He’s a ripoff of DC Comics’ villain Slade Wilson, also known as Deathstroke, […]
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Yawn of the Dead
Jane Austen’s Zombieland
“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” is exactly what it sounds like. Maybe a little better than it sounds for some and a little worse for others. For most of the population, just the word “zombies” in a title will put them in the seats as the continued stratospheric ratings of “The Walking Dead” keeps proving. […]
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Hail, Coen!
The smartest filmmakers on Earth return
Reviewing a new Coen Brothers film is an exercise in futility, especially only after one viewing. Their work is never as simple as it first seems on the surface and, regardless the genre they’re dabbling in, there are always multiple layers to unpack. “Hail, Caesar!” is the latest in their almost unbroken string of classics […]
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Space Damon
Or how I stopped worrying and learned to grow poo-tatoes
The Martian will be compared a lot to 2013’s Gravity. Mostly because both films focus on a single person fighting back against overwhelming odds in an environment that wants to destroy them (the vacuum of space in Gravity and the surface of Mars in The Martian), but the films have one major difference: The Martian […]