[photo by jazzlawyer]
I love going to the movies as much now as when I was a kid. For me, as wound up in childhood memories as it is, the big screen experience can’t be duplicated at home for any amount of money.
But the punishment I get for living in essentially a one-horse town is [...]

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I avoided this one as long as I could courtesy of my instinctive aversion to hype, but Chocolat turned out to be a much better film than I expected. Juliette Binoche is (as always) radiant, and Johnny Depp– a potentially great actor hamstrung by his own fame– gives a fine, understated performance. Predictable in [...]

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Despite being a fan of many of Bruce Willis’ performance, I’d never seen any of his Die Hard movies until watching this “DVD-TV” production of the first in the series– a film released the year I graduated from high school! DVD-TV is AMCs cinematic version of pop-up video– the film is shown in wide [...]

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Eric Bana stars as Chopper, a renowned Australian criminal I’d never heard of before. Chopper is by turns charming and brutal, but Bana’s performance gives the character a depth that sets Chopper apart from others in the same vein. Chopper doesn’t take pleasure in his rage nor is he coldly detached… if anything [...]

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I’m not sure why this film disappeared without a trace… Edward Norton and Naomi Watts give Oscar-caliber performances of tremendous subtlety. Most of the action in this movie happens beneath the surface– Watts’ ennui leading to a more unwise-than-usual affair, Norton’s simmering anger at her and at himself for having loved her at [...]

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Thanks to a reference by Reginald Shepherd I discovered Robert Philen’s blog. Why is his name so familiar to me? Anyway, a lot of fun reading to be had there (before I go on, a nod toward his entertaining and oh-so-true post on why punk rock is so boring). I recommend checking out his favorite [...]

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One Line Review: Watch it for the acting, but don’t expect a lot of narrative satisfaction.

Lineage: All the President’s Men meets Law and Order and a serial killer of the realistic (aka decidedly not Hannibal Lecter) variety.

Zodiac has pretty much everything going for it except for one critical thing (I can’t imagine this is a [...]

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One Line Review: I wasn’t expecting much and that’s pretty much what I got. Don’t bother unless you get high first. Real high.
Lineage: King of the Hill (the cartoon) + Sleeper + the worst of Mad TV
There are hundreds of funny moments, ideas, and gags in this film– almost none put to good use.
Maya Rudolph [...]

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One line review: it ain’t Unforgiven but it’s good. Rent it.
Lineage: In an experiment, the scientific spirits of Unforgiven and High Noon clone the original 3:10 to Yuma.

Russell Crowe just annoys me for some reason. He’s really a great actor, but it take me 1/3 or more of the film to really get past the [...]

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The opening credits animation sequence is freakin’ cool.
Ellen Page (who really impressed me last year in Hard Candy) is phenomenal in this role.
The single real flaw in the movie is that the first 10 minutes or so of dialogue are overwritten, leaving the characters no room to breathe (I like Rainn Wilson in general, but [...]

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With a plot summary like this (and Tim Roth), how can I resist?
The film opens in Bucharest in 1938, where Dominic Matei (Tim Roth), a linguistics professor in his 70s, is planning to take his own life for reasons that will become (sort of) clear later. Before he can take the poison that he’s procured [...]

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At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is “overlooked,” or why I wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
I already think Roger Ebert is unfairly dismissed by cinema snobs– he is more insightful than many give him credit for, despite his popularity– but my respect [...]

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Written by: Brian Nelson
Directed by: David Slade
Starring: Ellen Page, Patrick Wilson, Sandra Oh*
After three weeks of Instant Messenger chatting, 14 year old Hayley (Ellen Page) agrees to meet 32 year old Jeff (Patrick Wilson) face-to-face for the first time. She is smart and engaging beyond her years, but very clearly underage. He is a photographer [...]

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Written by: Richard Russo and Robert Benton
Directed by: Harold Ramis
Starring: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Oliver Platt, Mike Starr, Randy Quaid
I’m not sure how I’d define the genre of “dark comedy” other than with the reassurance that I know it when I see it. The Ice Harvest is a dark comedy. I know [...]

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Written by: Kevin Smith
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Starring: Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Rosario Dawson, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith
In Clerks II, Randal has once again left a cigarette burning in a Quick Stop trash can, this time resulting in the complete destruction of the place. Dante and Randal find themselves working at Mooby’s, a western-themed McDonald’s clone [...]

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Written by: Milo Addica and James Marsh
Directed by: James Marsh
Starring: William Hurt, Gael Garcia Bernal, Paul Dano, Pell James
Elvis (Gael Garcia Bernal) has just completed a tour overseas in the Navy and sets out to locate his father David (William Hurt), now a born-again Christian and successful minister in Corpus Christi. His father makes clear [...]

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Written by: Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Paul Haggis
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench,
Giancarlo Giannini, Sebastian Foucan

I have to admit that I loved this new vision of 007– the character and the film franchise– from the odd opening graphics and the (apparently) much-maligned Chris Cornell theme to the long-awaited final [...]

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http://www.slate.com/id/2145157/

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Julianne Moore plays Brenda, who walks through a low-income housing development in a daze, her hands badly cut and bleeding, to the hospital. She’s almost incoherent, possibly stoned, but she tells Detective Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson) that she was carjacked. Council suspects she’s hiding something and finally gets her to reveal that her son [...]

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