In Theaters
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A Most Wanted Man (R)
The surveillance state has a human face. In A Most Wanted Man’s telling of it, it is the gruff, unshaven, alcohol-bloated, nicotine-addled visage of Gunther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a spy who looks like he has a way to travel before he can come in from the cold. As the lead field agent of a […]
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How to Train Your Dragon 2 (PG)
Pet dragons, taken as a whole, are worth any trouble they might cause. At least that’s what the Vikings of Berk have learned five years after the chief’s son, Hiccup, trained his first dragon. How to Train Your Dragon 2 endeavors to fly above its predecessor but, like many sequels, fails to capitalize on the […]
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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (PG-13)
Thomas Hobbes argued that the natural state of human affairs is one of universal conflict—all against all, neighbor against neighbor. That he failed to apply this dictum to hyper-sentient apes can be excused as the myopia of the seventeenth century. One escapes this warlike state of nature—perpetual war with one’s neighbors—says Hobbes, by banding together with […]
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America: Imagine the World Without Her (Not Rated)
The title of America: Imagine the World Without Her is a misnomer for which a marketing consultant should be sacked. Despite a few brief special effect images, I did not walk away from this docudrama with any sense of what the world would be without America. Aside from suggesting that had George Washington died in battle, Mt. […]
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Snowpiercer (R)
Joon-Ho Bong’s Snowpiercer starts with an intriguing premise: the world has frozen solid after a global warming experiment gone wrong, and all of humanity now inhabits a high-tech train that perpetually circles the earth. (Train wreck jokes would, perhaps, be too obvious.) Snowpiercer squanders this premise on a hackneyed tale of the struggle between the […]
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Transformers: Age Of Extinction (PG-13)
You can learn a lot about Michael Bay by the numbers. In the last twenty years, he has directed eleven films, and all but two were released in June or July. All his films but the first, Bad Boys, top the two hour mark, and more than half exceed two and a half hours. The […]
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Jersey Boys (R)
It is unfair to condemn a pop music biopic for its family resemblance to most any other entry in the genre, since the history of one pop act’s rise and fall is more or less the same as another. Clint Eastwood’s Jersey Boys is by turns a light-hearted, then solemn account of ‘60s hitmakers Franky Valli […]
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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (PG-13)
All superhero reboots have the same binary job description: act like their predecessors never existed, and then be consciously better than their predecessors. 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man accomplished both in spades. Andrew Garfield brought more charisma to the title role than the departing Tobey Maguire (who has about as much of that vital essence as […]
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The Quiet Ones (PG-13)
More than other genres, horror movies invite us to pay attention to filmmaking itself. We watch the edges of the frame, tense up along with the music, and hold our breath for the slightest footfall or door creak. As a quick exercise, spend some time watching trailers on the iTunes movie trailers page . You will […]
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Edge of Tomorrow (PG-13)
“I always say, ‘If I could start my marriage over, I would do this or that differently.’ But I’m flattering myself. My marriage starts over every day, and there are things I don’t do differently. Everything starts over every day.” I said something to this effect at confession several months ago. I often feel as […]
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Million Dollar Arm (PG)
Whenever a movie is sold as a “feel good” movie (inevitably the “feel good movie of the year”) I feel my heart grow cold despite the assured “heartwarming” results. It’s even worse when it’s based on a true story. Often this sort of fare is as savory as the organic pellets soaked overnight to be […]
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Godzilla (PG-13)
By this point, further cries and moanings over the seemingly endless procession of reboots and remakes of too many franchise pictures must themselves begin to have the air of reboots and remakes, but I beg your forbearance nonetheless as I add just a few more paragraphs of reproof. Godzilla, starring Ken Watanabe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and […]
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Joe (R)
Joe Bageant tried to summarize rural Southern life with his book title, Deer Hunting with Jesus. With his new movie Joe, David Gordon Green presents the South’s Goth image, one that might be described with a title such as Deer Hunting, but Jesus Couldn’t Make It This Weekend. All of the classical tropes of a […]
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God’s Not Dead (PG)
Novelist and career film reviewer, Graham Greene, insisted that any decent critic requires two things to get along in their work: “material for his analysis—for comparison and instruction—and a mind which, however sympathetic, is not prone to quick enthusiasms.“ Many a film, though, has resisted Greene’s ideal critic and opted instead for courting the already […]
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Draft Day (PG-13)
His career has had its ups and downs (i.e. Waterworld), but since 1988, with the release of Bull Durham, Kevin Costner has been the dean of the American sports movie. Whether he is building a baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield (Field of Dreams) or making the most remarkable hole-in-twelve at the US […]
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The Grand Budapest Hotel (R)
With special thanks to Jon Paul Pope, who talked this film over with me, helped draw out my own ideas, and whose own ideas are variously represented here. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is not wise to ask such questions. These may or […]
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier (PG-13)
Purity is a hard sell, particularly to Hollywood. Its very presence shines a light on lesser qualities, it is a rude virtue, the byword of arrogance, and, to take Hollywood’s view, guilty of the chief sin of being dull. Our cultural revolt against the Puritans as stodgy, strict, morose and over scrupulous is not due […]
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Mr. Peabody and Sherman (PG)
Walking into the multiplex, I looked forward to Rob Minkoff’s Mr. Peabody and Sherman with an anticipation I usually do not feel for animated cartoons. Mr. Peabody’s Improbable History, the source material for this new release, stands high among the best animated series of all time and has been unjustly neglected by those who profess […]
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300: Rise Of An Empire (R)
Some days call for dumb movies. Every now and then, on a late night or a quiet Saturday afternoon, there’s reason enough to watch something that will advance your psyche in no way. I admit it. I’d even go so far as to allow Zack Snyder’s 300 (the 2006 one) to be such. Maybe. It […]
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Noah (PG-13)
What follows is a conversation between Joshua Gibbs and myself on the work of Darren Aronofsky, culminating in a lengthy discussion of Noah, the director’s most recent work. Of course, this conversation is not exhaustive. Most of his films are here discussed in generalities, individual works are mentioned to highlight commonalities in his catalog. We […]