New on DVD / Bluray
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Blue Jasmine (PG-13)
There’s something rote about Woody Allen films. In his sixth decade of filmmaking, both writing and directing, he has crafted and refined his own genre: neurosis plus jazz, adultery and A-listers; sometimes there’s murder, often there’s humor, but it is always with a deep sense of mortality. “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my […]
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Philomena (PG-13)
Stephen Frears is no Oliver Stone or Aaron Sorkin. His latest film, Philomena, like The Queen before it, is blissfully absent of soap box preaching. Given the material Frears is working with, that’s a extraordinary feat, exuding a generosity worthy of the film’s main character, Philomena Lee. Based loosely on the book The Lost Child […]
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Last Vegas (PG-13)
In Last Vegas, journeyman director Jon Turteltaub has demonstrated once again his ineffable knack for tapping into the middlebrow sensibility. Here, as in his unadventurous adventure films with Nicolas Cage, his safe combination of A list actors with B list material lulls the audience into the blissfully false impression that the picture they are watching […]
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The Counselor (R)
Ridley Scott doesn’t do feel-good movies. Ridley Scott does movies scored with the sounds of desperate women warbling in Middle Eastern tones. Even when Ridley Scott decides to make a feel-good movie, he still uses Russell Crowe, as if to say, “Not so fast.” Early on in his career, Scott tapped into something profoundly mythic […]
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Gravity (PG-13)
The life of St Christopher unfolds “a hell of a story” for the reader of the 13th century hagiography anthology, the Golden Legend. Also maintained as a significant feast day in the Eastern Orthodox Church calendar, the story of St Christopher was especially near to the hearts of those on pilgrimage to venerate relics or […]