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Review: LES MISERABLES Delivers Most of the Emotion and Some of the Spectacle
When it became his privilege to direct the movie version of the Les Misérables stage musical that has enthralled the world for more than a quarter-century, Tom Hooper made one crucial, momentous...
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Review: GANGSTER SQUAD Is a Cartoon That Thinks It's Real
If Gangster Squad had been released last September, as originally scheduled, it would have been forgotten by now. There's a good chance it would have been forgotten by October. Instead, after some...
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Sundance 2013 Review: AUSTENLAND Is Clumsy, Unfunny
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single lady who obsesses over the works of Jane Austen -- particularly Pride and Prejudice, and specifically the 1995 miniseries version with Colin Firth...
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Sundance 2013 Review: UPSTREAM COLOR May Be More Interesting to Discuss Than...
Ever since Primer won Sundance's grand jury prize in 2004, indie-watchers have been wondering what its writer-director, Shane Carruth, would do next. Primer was his first movie, you see, and he made...
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Sundance 2013 Review: PRINCE AVALANCHE Delivers a Hint of the Old David...
Many reviews of Your Highness and The Sitter, two of the more pitiful comedies of 2011, featured concerned inquiries as to what (and in some cases what THE HELL) had happened to those films' director,...
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Review: IDENTITY THIEF Steals from Better Films, Comes Up Short
You have to admit, it takes some guts to rip off a hundred other movies and then call the result Identity Thief. That sort of brazenness would be admired by the scoundrel at the center of this...
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Review: SIDE EFFECTS May Include Whiplash From Jarring Change In Tone
The important thing to know about Side Effects -- which Steven Soderbergh says will be his last theatrical film for a while, maybe forever -- is that whatever you're thinking it's going to be, it...
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Review: BEAUTIFUL CREATURES Is Perkier, More Fun Than Most Teen Romances
There's a lengthy, dragging middle section of the supernatural teen romance Beautiful Creatures that threatens to sink the whole enterprise. Tellingly, it's when the nuts and bolts of the plot kick...
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Review: SAFE HAVEN Adds Another Bland Mess to the Nicholas Sparks Rap Sheet
Oh, sure, it's popular to make fun of Nicholas Sparks movies. It's very "cool" and "trendy" to pile on the insults every time a new one is released, three or four times a year. But do you want to...
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Review: Say Yes to NO
I assume you're well-versed in Chilean politics of the 1980s. I mean, who isn't, right? But even if you're not -- even if you're, say, an American who barely recalls the name Pinochet and is already...
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SXSW 2013 Review: GO FOR SISTERS Is an Easy-Going Character Drama from John...
Few filmmakers are more legitimately "independent" than John Sayles, who has now written and directed 18 features since 1979 (Return of the Secaucus Seven) without studio backing. His latest, the...
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SXSW 2013 Review: HOURS Makes the Mistake of Putting All Its Dramatic Weight...
All human beings have a talent for one thing or another, and Paul Walker is a human being, so Paul Walker undoubtedly is good at something. But whatever it is, it's not acting. Acting is not the thing...
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SXSW 2013 Review: HAUNTER Delivers an Enjoyably Tame Ghost Story
Time is a fluid thing in the atmospheric Haunter, but it's set mainly in 1985. It's the day before Lisa's 16th birthday. It has been for a while. Lisa (Abigail Breslin) and her wholesomely plain...
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SXSW Review: DRINKING BUDDIES Brings Joe Swanberg to the Big Time
Joe Swanberg's career as a filmmaker has gone through several phases, all without his name being known to more than a tiny fraction of the movie-going public. The inadvertent and unwilling godfather...
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Review: 42 Offers a Nice, Pleasant Version of Jackie Robinson's Story
The closest 42 comes to revealing anything about the actual personality or character of Jackie Robinson -- the first black player in Major League Baseball -- is when he privately expresses frustration...
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Review: SCARY MOVIE 5 Contains No Laughs But Much Poop
I'd be tempted to say that nothing in Scary Movie 5 is funny, but the outtakes that play over the closing credits show multiple cast members struggling to keep from laughing, so obviously I'm...
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Review: AT ANY PRICE Explores The Changing World Of Modern Farmers
"It's gonna be a great harvest," says a farmer's wife near the end of At Any Price. She's referring to the corn crop, but what this resonant, well-acted drama has made clear by this point is that "you...
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Review: PAIN & GAIN Mocks Meatheads, Is Meatheaded
Pain & Gain is a brash, puerile action-comedy of errors about a trio of muscle-obsessed idiots who set out to extort money from a sleazy Miami businessman by kidnapping and torturing him. Michael...
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Review: THE GREAT GATSBY Is a Class Assignment You'll Want to Skip
Baz Luhrmann's half-frenetic, half-subdued version of The Great Gatsby is almost 100 percent faithful to the novel in terms of plot, and almost zero percent faithful in terms of theme, character, and...
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Review: THE HANGOVER PART III Is Barely a Comedy
Remember how The Hangover Part II was a lukewarm rehash of The Hangover, almost beat-for-beat the same story, with little originality? Todd Phillips evidently heard our complaints and has addressed...
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