Category: 3 Stars
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Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney are the second first couple in Tom Hooper’s John Adams
This blog celebrates Independence Day 2008 in a New York City Starbucks, tapping out a review of the HBO miniseries John Adams. Believe it or not, the timing is accidental, but July 4th has proven to be an auspicious date in American History. On-and-off-again friends and foes Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on…
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Low get political in David Kleijwegt’s You May Need a Murderer
It may seem overkill for the so-called slowcore band Low to be the subject of another documentary feature film only a mere four years after Low in Europe, but it must be because they’re just so interesting. Filmmaker David Kleijwegt’s You May Need a Murderer could just as well be titled Low in America, as…
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Hepburn and Tracy’s battle of the sexes in George Stevens’ Woman of the Year
George Stevens’ Woman of the Year is one of the most famous Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn double-acts, but there’s no question who was the real star. Discounting a brief glimpse of her character’s newspaper byline, there is much talk of star reporter Tess Harding (Hepburn) before her delayed reveal. In a scene that would…
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Indiana Jones returns to form in The Last Crusade
In order to catch up on the overwhelming backlog of movies I intend to cover here on this blog, this blogger is going to keep it brief with a few disconnected thoughts: Re-watching the original trilogy as an adult is an interesting experience; even the first time around as a kid I was right: Raiders…
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Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the second worst Indiana Jones movie
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is ultimately disappointing, especially if one reflects too much on its plot and basic plausibility, but it not totally without redeeming qualities. It is also far from the worst entry in the franchise (that would be Temple of Doom – blech! stay tuned for our forthcoming…
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Tim Roth undertakes an old man’s folly in Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth
Youth Without Youth received a shockingly poor reception for the first film in years from a major filmmaker, garnering a middling 43 on Metacritic and a painful 29 from RottenTomatoes. In January 2008, this blogger found himself in a room with a bunch of journalists from genre publications like Fangoria and ComingSoon.net (Weird, right? It…
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Who abandoned whom in Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages?
The Savages is the story of a fractured family, separated not least by geography, that reunites on the occasion of an aged parent’s health. Both siblings haven’t seen their father in years, so what was probably a slow decline seems to them a sudden plunge into senility. Both have their own problems, and neither is…
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Sebastian Schrade’s tour documentary Low in Europe
I came late to appreciating Low, but they have since become one of my favorite bands. I was vaguely aware that trainspotting music critics had christened a genre to categorize bands like Low: slowcore, the distinguishing characteristics of which being playing very quietly and slowly. An overgeneralization, it turns out, but it never hurts to…
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Robert Downey Jr.’s got a bum ticker in Jon Favreau’s Iron Man
Jon Favreau’s Iron Man finds just the right tone for a superhero movie, pitched somewhere in the sweet spot between Spider-Man’s emotional melodrama and Batman’s grim vengeance. This blogger, a former lover of comic books (that stopped keeping up with them partly out of frugality, and partly lack of brain bandwidth), sees two high water…
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Guess what’s coming to dinner in Lars and the Real Girl
Lars and the Real Girl is warm, funny, and moving, but felt a little “screenplay” to me. Aside from the indie film cliche of The Small Town (which affords an isolated community of eccentrics and an economically small cast), it seems to be a precisely workshopped exploration of a simple compelling premise: a man falls…