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Articles tagged with: movies

16/31: In the Shadow of the Moon, or “A Teeny Oral History of Communally Experiencing the Space Program, Courtesy of My Parents”
December 17, 2011 – 12:14 PM | 11 Comments
16/31: <I>In the Shadow of the Moon</I>, or “A Teeny Oral History of Communally Experiencing the Space Program, Courtesy of My Parents”

I never get tired of the stories of the Apollo missions. Apollo 13, of course, is one of those poppy-fields movies that I can never not watch, and I think I put In the Shadow …

15/31: Rampart
December 15, 2011 – 12:21 PM | 6 Comments
15/31: <I>Rampart</I>

The title of the film refers to the LAPD Rampart scandal of the late ’90s, but the story follows a single cop, Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson), who’s trying to hold everything together by any means …

14/31: Candyman: The David Klein Story
December 14, 2011 – 7:01 PM | 10 Comments
14/31: <I>Candyman: The David Klein Story</I>

“In life, you only have to be a genius for 15 seconds.”
Despite that promising quotation towards the beginning of Candyman: The David Klein Story, and the intermittent presence of Weird Al Yankovic, the documentary is …

13/31: The Help
December 13, 2011 – 9:12 PM | 10 Comments
13/31: <I>The Help</I>

I give The Help sooo much credit; it won me over despite my utter determination to hate it. You can ask Couch Baron, to whom I spent a good ten minutes bitching on IM about …

12/31: Martha Marcy May Marlene
December 12, 2011 – 4:39 PM | 7 Comments
12/31: <I>Martha Marcy May Marlene</I>

I didn’t realize how tense I had gotten, physically, while watching Martha Marcy May Marlene until that last black screen. What an outstanding slow build of “can’t look”/”can’t look away” — you’d think the inciting …

11/31: J. Edgar
December 11, 2011 – 4:22 PM | 15 Comments
11/31: <em>J. Edgar</em>

I have no idea what the movie is trying to do. I only know that it fails on almost every level save the acting, and even that isn’t great; it’s merely not as disastrous as …

10/31: Shame
December 10, 2011 – 8:46 PM | 9 Comments
10/31: <em>Shame</em>

The specific buzz around Shame, and Michael Fassbender’s performance, did not fill me with anticipation. Sometimes, when a performance is repeatedly called brave or groundbreaking, the distinction between the bravery or originality of the performance …

9/31: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
December 9, 2011 – 2:13 PM | 22 Comments
9/31: <I>Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</I>

It has all the tools for a great movie: a good old-fashioned ’70s-Cold-War-paranoia plot; a roster of fantastic actors and Hey, It’s That Guys, including Colin Firth, Ciaran Hinds, John Hurt, and the dude who …

8/31: Beginners
December 8, 2011 – 3:24 PM | 5 Comments
8/31: <I>Beginners</I>

Watching a lot of movies in a row can scramble the brain, but it can also let those movies reflect on and inform one another. For example, the Oscars Death Race is a time of …

7/31: Meek’s Cutoff
December 7, 2011 – 5:46 PM | 7 Comments
7/31: <I>Meek’s Cutoff</I>

A one-star reviewer of Meek’s Cutoff on the IMDb complained that there’s no dialogue for the first 15 minutes. This is one of the many things I liked about the movie. These people have gotten …