In Theaters
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Inside Out: The Problem of Sadness (PG)
In his iconic work, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis said, “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” […]
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Self/Less (PG-13)
Self/less is the latest example of an increasingly common type of thriller, to which, for lack of a pithier designation, I will refer to as the “Idiotic As It Seems, It Might Also Actually Happen Soon” movie. Normally this type of story will involve a character in some sort of life crisis who undergoes a […]
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Jurassic World: It’s No Wonderful Life (PG-13)
“Oh, my God! We finally, really did it! You maniacs….Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” The righteous invective Charlton Heston bellows in the final moments of The Planet of the Apes seems similarly suited to the resurrection and public opening of Jurassic Park. Bewilderingly, though, Jurassic World (both the film and the […]
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Tomorrowland (PG)
In the opening minutes of Tomorrowland, a young boy shows us his homemade jetpack. It is meant to be fun and inspiring, but has one problem: it doesn’t work. It’s always nice when a movie hands you a metaphor for itself. It’s not nice when that movie breaks your heart in the process. There may […]
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It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad Mad Max (R)
It’s hard to appreciate paganism properly. I can’t think of many convincingly pagan characters from motion pictures, because most cinematic pagans are nothing more than Republicans or athletes in togas. They talk like us, think like us, dress like us dressing like pagans, opine like us. Our ancient Greeks are suffragettes and our ancient Egyptians […]
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Avengers: Age of Ultron (PG-13)
Halfway through Avengers: Age of Ultron, the eponymous robot waxes poetical and says to a few of his cronies, “Everyone creates the thing they fear.” It’s possible that this line was added by the writer and director, Joss Whedon, as an indication of how he felt about this movie. In many ways, Ultron is not […]
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Ex Machina (R)
Ex Machina derives its title from the Latin “Deus ex machina,” meaning “god from the machine.” The film’s removal of God from its titular equation is apropos, as is the allusion to classical tragedy. In this polished directorial debut, Alex Garland (writer of 28 Days Later and Sunshine) has crafted something of a modern Greek […]
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The Material Fix Fails The Spiritual Crisis: It Follows (R)
Let me overstate the case: at least so far as Hollywood is concerned, horror is the one genre which yet thrives. I’ll come to back this in a moment. I once had a friend who had the awful job of reading unsolicited scripts submitted to a major Hollywood studio. All the scripts he read were […]
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A Player that Struts and Frets: Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (R)
“Birdman is the thing with feathers,” to adapt a line from Emily Dickinson to describe Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). The Birdman perches in the soul of Riggan Thomson, played by the indomitable Michael Keaton, and functions as hope, the spirit rising above the quotidian. There is also a […]
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Chappie (R)
Whither Blomkamp? Chappie is the third feature-length film of South African director Neill Blomkamp, and, sadly, a disappointing attempt to reheat most of the ingredients of his acclaimed debut District 9. In that thoughtful and naturalistic variation on the familiar aliens-invading-earth premise, Blomkamp revealed a considerable gift for evoking pathos with the least likely characters: […]
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Kingsman: The Secret Service (R)
With a film as superficially slick and fun as Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, it’s mightily tempting to view the film on an accordingly superficial level, judging it based on its shallow pleasures and surface flash – and certainly, there are manifold pleasures to be enumerated here. One could list off the film’s many […]
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Kingsman: So Much Action, So Few Returns (R)
Colin Firth has a reputation for playing the underdog. He is an urbane actor and generally makes intelligent decisions in the roles that he plays. But, since his role as Mr. Darcy in the Pride and Prejudice miniseries 20 years ago, he has made a career of portraying a man in an uphill battle, sometimes […]
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Where the Violent Bear It Away: A Most Violent Year (R)
In a decadent society, decency is a sin, and it is one of the few that is unforgiveable. This is a lesson learned by Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), the borderline hero and heating oil entrepreneur at the center of J. C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year, although he insists on learning the hard way. Adversity is […]
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Blackhat (R)
Blackhat begins with a sinister shot from outer space of the whole world connected. Thin blue lines spiderweb across the globe as the camera zooms in on one particular power plant in one particular country. The camera continues to zoom through a computer screen in the power plant and zip past bands of cables – […]
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The Imitation Game (PG-13)
One of the forte subjects of the famous French philosopher Rene Girard is mimetic desire – that is, mankind as a species adept at imitation. In fact, imitation is our chief means to learning. But when imitating, humans also imitate other’s desires, which conclusively leads to desiring the same things. Girard refers to this negative rivalry […]
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Unbroken (PG-13)
I tend to be forgiving of film adaptations from a book because film is an entirely different medium. Movies rarely hit the emotional and philosophical depth of a well-written novel, but they can provide stunning visuals and an entertaining way to relive a good story. For me, the guidepost to a good adaptation is this: […]
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Grimm Tales: Into the Woods (PG)
The woods of classic fairytale lore are the locus of secrets, danger, and freedom. The wolf knows he is safe to stalk Little Red Riding Hood behind the trees; the witch trusts that no one will find Rapunzel’s tower in its depths. Fast forward several hundred years, and Disney cartoons have scraped much of the […]
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Go Down, Moses! Exodus: Gods And Kings (PG-13)
The oracles concerning the life of Moses are so perplexing and uncanny that even accomplished preachers bungle over them from time to time, and so someone at 20th Century Fox should have probably realized early on that handing them over to the director of G.I. Jane wasn’t the best move. Some might say Ridley Scott’s best work […]
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Big Hero 6 (PG)
A group of misfits band together to stop an evil, mysterious villain and become an unlikely team of superheroes. No, that wasn’t a one-sentence description for this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy; it’s a one-sentence description for this fall’s Big Hero 6. Big Hero 6 focuses on child prodigy Hiro (Ryan Potter), who is encouraged […]
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Whiplash (R)
“I’d rather die drunk and broken at 34 and have people at a dinner table talk about me than live to be rich and sober at 90 and nobody remember who I was,” says Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller), the protagonist of Damien Chazelle’s sophomore feature film Whiplash. Andrew wants to be a great drummer – like […]