Film Reviews
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The Great Gatsby
Baz Lurhmann's version of The Great Gatsby is a tale told idiotically, full of noise and furor, signifying next to nothing.
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Iron Man 3
You know the story of the emperor?s new suit?
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Mud
"Mud," the third feature by Jeff Nichols, is a model of what an independent feature can be, starting with the homely grabber of a title.
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Oblivion
"Oblivion" is the new sci-fi adventure starring Tom Cruise.
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Disconnect
A new film from Henry-Alex Rubin, the co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary, "Murderball."
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Trance
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Olympus Has Fallen
"Olympus Has Fallen" starts with a bold idea, then throws massive firepower into the execution?
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Upside Down
Rather than star-crossed, the lovers in "Upside Down" are planet crossed; they come from adjacent planets with opposite gravities.
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Oz the Great and Powerful
With "Oz the Great and Powerful," Disney has produced two spectacles for the price of one...
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Stoker
Heroine India Stoker isn't sweet in this psychological thriller directed by Park Chan-Wook.
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Like Someone in Love
A young woman and two men make up the unlikely ? and dangerously unstable ? triangle of "Like Someone in Love," which turns on mistaken identities.
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No
"No" is an exceptionally smart political drama with a satiric edge about the 1988 referendum that drove the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet out of office.
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Parker; John Dies at the End
Anarchy defies scrutiny...
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The Last Stand
First he was the Terminator, then the Governator. Now Arnold Schwarzenegger has cast himself as the Rejuvenator, breathing huffs and puffs of new life into his screen career. Much of "The Last Stand" is a wheezy setup for an enjoyably preposterous showdown in a sleepy Arizona border town called Sommerton Junction.
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Gangster Squad
When the classic Warner Bros. logo comes on the screen at the start of "Gangster Squad," it's in a tint that is somewhere between color and black and white. It holds out a two-fold promise: Los Angeles in 1949 brought back to life in the lavish style that only a Hollywood studio can provide, and a movie from the studio that made many of the greatest gangster films in Hollywood. The first part of the promise pays off.
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Django Unchained
The safest thing you could say about "Django Unchained" is that it finds Quentin Tarantino hurtling over the top yet again...
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Amour
"Amour" has won all sorts of prizes all over the world, and no wonder...
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The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Joe Morgenstern spends two hours and 46 minutes in Middle Earth...
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Hyde Park on Hudson
Joe Morgenstern reviews Hyde Park on Hudson.
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Killing Them Softly
As a gangster thriller, "Killing Then Softly" is long on violence and short on thrills, but it does present a mystery...
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Life of Pi
The desperate hero in "Life of Pie" says that hunger can change everything you thought you knew about yourself...
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Silver Linings Playbook
Joe Morgenstern on David O. Russell's romantic comedy of prickly passions and rampant dysfunction...
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Skyfall; Lincoln
Joe Morgenstern reviews Sam Mendes' latest Bond action thriller and Steven Spielberg's portrayal of our 16th president within the politics of his day.
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Cloud Atlas
Six interwoven, interlocking story lines, in six separate time frames...
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The Sessions
Polio survivor/director Ben Lewin's film on a man in an iron lung who wants to lose his virginity...
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Argo
It's often said of incredible but true stories that you can't make such stuff up...
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Dredd 3D
Joe Morgenstern reviews "the iPhone of recent action thrillers."
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The Master
Is 'The Master' a story about Scientology? Well, sure it is. Still that's a limiting way of looking at this film...
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Beasts of the Southern Wild
There isn't a trace of calculation in Benh Zeitlin's debut feature, only hopes and artistic ambitions that have come to fruition in the year's finest film so far.
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Brave
Joe Morgenstern on Pixar's first feature with a female protagonist, a good first and long overdue, but?
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Prometheus
Joe Morgenstern reviews Ridley Scott's tale of interstellar search, with its cosmic questions about the meaning of life.
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Snow White and the Huntsman
Joe Morgenstern reviews the ambitious production by first-time feature filmmaker Rupert Sanders, "a whiz at visual storytelling."
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The Intouchables; Men in Black 3; Moonrise Kingdom
Joe Morgenstern offers thoughts on three very different new movies being released this Memorial Day weekend.
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The Dictator; Battleship
Joe Morgenstern considers Sacha Baron Cohen?s gleefully scabrous portrait of a fictional North African tyrant, and a board game gone megabudget-ballistic.
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I Wish
The big weekend movie at the multiplexes may be Tim Burton's worn-out "Dark Shadows," but the big movie for Joe Morgenstern is a little Japanese comedy about kids.
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The Avengers
What if Marvel gave a party and everybody came? Joe Morgenstern on Joss Whedon?s "fitfully enjoyable convocation of Marvel's comic book superheroes..."
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Headhunters; The Five-Year Engagement
Joe Morgenstern on the "smart, funny, scary, surprising" new Norwegian thriller, and the "mirthless romcon" from the Judd Apatow laugh factory...
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Marley
Kevin Macdonald's "Marley" documents the emergence and evolution of the late reggae icon.
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Titanic
You may remember the moment in Titanic when Molly Brown sees the suddenly tuxedoed Jack Dawson and says, "You shine up like a new penny." Well, Titanic in its new 3-D version shines up like gold bullion.
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Bully; The Island President
It's a good week for documentaries. "Bully" and "The Island President" are both worth checking out.
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The Hunger Games
Joe Morgenstern reviews "The Hunger Games," a movie about kids being manipulated ? literally unto death. It's a film that manipulates it audience as well?
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Friends with Kids; John Carter
Joe Morgenstern on Jennifer Westfeldt's follow-up to Kissing Jessica Stein and Disney's latest would-be epic...
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Wanderlust; The Forgiveness of Blood
Joe Morgenstern considers David Wain's comedy of hippie chaos that makes nudity a selling point, and Joshua Marston's film on blood feuds and land disputes in Albania.
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Contraband
Joe Morgenstern reviews Contraband, a breakneck English-language remake of the Icelandic thriller, Reykjavkik-Rotterdam.
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The Best Films of 2011
Could a mere ten movies represent a whole movie year? Joe Morgenstern gives it a try...
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The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo
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Mission Impossible: Guest Protocol
Joe Morgenstern on the latest installment of Mission Impossible with its "impossibly magical gadgets and gizmos" and a schizoid attitude toward technology that...
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Young Adult
Joe Morgenstern on Young Adult, starring Charlize Theron, the latest from the filmmaker and writer who brought Juno to the screen.
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Shame
Steve McQueen's Shame is about a man trying to lose himself in soulless sex. The remarkable thing about it is that it keeps us connected to the hero?
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Hugo; The Artist
Joe Morgenstern on Martin Scorsese?s first 3-D fantasy, Hugo, and the black and white, mostly silent French production, The Artist?
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The Descendants
Director Alexander Payne (Sideways) takes on family and family history against the backdrop of our 50th state.
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J. Edgar
In principle, biography should do what J. Edgar tries to do -- reveal an inner life, whether or not the subject is outwardly appealing...
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Like Crazy
The music of Paul Simon's Graceland flows through 'Like Crazy' and comments on it. This wise and beautiful little tale is about two lovers falling from a state of grace...
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Margin Call
If your spine is given to shivers, watch out for the moment in Margin Call when a young risk analyst spots a piece of data on his computer screen, takes a moment to reflect...
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The Ides of March
Most of the campaign workers in The Ides of March worry about the polls; it's a political thriller, and polling is what people in contemporary politics do. I worried about...
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50/50
When the frightened young hero of 50/50 reveals that he?s got a 50/50 chance of surviving his newly diagnosed spinal cancer, his buddy responds with...
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Moneyball
The context of Moneyball is runaway commerce. The subtext is statistics? Never, until now, have statistics added up to such electrifying entertainment?
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Drive; Happy, Happy
The hero of Drive is known only as The Driver in the stylized, often beautiful and graphically violent action drama? Happy, Happy is Norway's entry in this year's Oscars...
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Rise of the Planet of the Apes
A primate shelter becomes the scene of an epic jailbreak. Swarming chimps turn San Francisco into a surreal circus...
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Another Earth
Mike Cahill's debut feature exerts a gravitational pull out of proportion to its size through powerful performances, a lyrical spirit and a depth of conviction that sweeps?
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
So many good films come to bad ends, but not the tales of Harry Potter...
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Project Nim
This is one of those weeks when going to the movies makes you wonder about the movie industry's future... But let me tell you about Project Nim, an enthralling and appalling documentary that opens next week in LA...
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Cars 2
For more than 15 years, Pixar has made great movies in the joyous spirit of Buzz Lightyear's motto: "To infinity and beyond..."
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Father's Day BBQ; Mongolian Food; Challenging McDonald's
Father's Day grilling ideas, how a group of nuns are challenging McDonald's, and a taste of Mongolian food.
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Buck
It's worth remembering that the term "feelgood" grew out of the drug culture... But a really good film like Buck does much more than serve as a drug substitute.
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Super 8
As anyone who's seen the Super 8 trailer knows, the teenage auteurs are shooting a night scene alongside a train track when a freight train comes roaring through, derails...
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X-Men: First Class
Like all the other X-Men movies before it, X-Men: First Class preaches the gospel of mutant pride. But this movie turns out to b a mutant in its own right -- a zestful and radical departure from the dreary spawn of a sputtering franchise...
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The Tree of Life
Many of the images in The Tree of Life are remarkable for their grandeur... Others for their grandiosity... Some of the most memorable, though, are the most fleeting...
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Midnight in Paris
In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen's beguiling and then bedazzling new comedy, nostalgia isn't at all what it used to be -- it's smarter, sweeter, fizzier and lots funnier...
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Bridesmaids
If Bridesmaids is only a chick flick, then call me a chick...
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Fast Five
Fast Five...with bellowing muscle cars, screeching exotics and an armor-plated monster that makes the Hummer look demure.
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Incendies
Let me tell you about the film that should have won the best foreign-language Oscar this year but didn't...
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Rio; Atlas Shrugged, Part 1; The Conspirator
Today, Joe considers the rich 3-D hues of Rio, a business exec struggling to keep her business alive, and the first woman executed by the US government.
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Jane Eyre
The first question to be asked about Cary Fukunaga's new version of Jane Eyre is why we should bother to see it when there are 18 feature film versions of the Charlotte Bronte novel before it, and nine TV versions, some of them rally good...
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Rango
Rango is an animated tale of a chameleon with an identity crisis, and the big news is it was shot in 2-D. This is a process that lets you watch pictures on a screen without having to wear special glasses...
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Of Gods and Men
Of Gods and Men, in French and Arabic, is one of the most beautiful movies I know, even though its subject matter and otherworldly pace set it apart from mainstream entertainment. The story was inspired by real events, eight Christian monks menaced by Islamic terrorists in 1990's Algeria. The narrative takes its rhythm from the brothers' unhurried lives...
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Unknown
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Cedar Rapids; Gnomeo and Juliet
The main thing about Cedar Rapids is that it makes you laugh -- often and out loud. At the same time, this tale of a dweeb's belated entry into the real world can make you uneasy, because it keeps wandering from gleeful comedy to glib condescension and then back again... Garden gnomes may not bring Graham Greene instantly to mind, but Greene's distinction between his more serious works and the ones he called "entertainments" may be useful all the same. Gnomeo Juliet doesn't pretend to any...
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No Strings Attached
The prospects for No Strings Attached seemed pretty grim: a romantic comedy, from a Hollywood studio, with a premise that smacked of Last Tango in Paris -- that's the scandalous classic in which Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider have a sexual liaison with no strings -- or names -- attached. Yet the outcome is pretty delightful...
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The Green Hornet
The Green Hornet may not be the end of movies as we know them, though the people who made this atrocity were certainly in there trying. The question -- which amounts to an industrial mystery -- is trying to do what?
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Blue Valentine
Blue Valentine is the auspicious directorial debut of Derek Cianfrance, and it can be crushing in its portrayal of how two people who truly do love each other come to lacerate and eventually devastate each other. The heartbreaking brilliance of this film lies in its contradictions...
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True Grit
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TRON: Legacy
Breathes there is a movie with soul so dead as TRON: Legacy? Well, Speed Racer lumbers to mind...
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The Fighter
Fans of boxing movies follow the rankings just as closey as boxing fans do. Whenever a new one comes along, they want to know where it ranks in the pantheon that includes classics like Raging Bull and Rocky. In the case of The Fighter, a terrific movie directed by David O. Russell, I'd suggset a different pantheon, one that's reserved for the sort of families dramatized by Eugene O'Neill...
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Black Swan
Fine actors can reveal complex feelings in a flash, and one of those flashes comes early in Black Swan.
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The King's Speech; Tiny Furniture
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Unstoppable
Who knew that Unstoppable would be sensational? Talk about well-kept -- and welcome -- surprises. Tony Scott's latest thriller turns out to be pure cinema in the classic sense of the term. It's a motion picture about motion, an action symphony that gives new meaning to the notion of a one-track mind...
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127 Hours
The pleasure principle prevails in 127 Hours, even though Danny Boyle's new film depicts horrific pain. As yo probably know by now, the title refers to the time it took a real-life mountain climber named Aron Ralston to extricate himself from a slot canyon he'd tumbled into during a solitary hike in Utah seven years ago...
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest; Monsters
Before I went off to see The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, I came down with a case of advance nostalgia -- no more Stieg Larsson in my movie going life, at least not in Swedish... In this age of indecent production costs, Monsters is a little horror film you want to root for. Gareth Edwards made it on a frayed shoestring -- maybe for $15,000, maybe for $100,000...
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My Dog Tulip; Carlos
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RED; Hereafter
Only in Hollywood is someone seriously old at 55, but this is the underlying notion of RED, and it works like a well-worm charm... Matt Damon is a spiritualist in spite of himself in Hereafter. He's one of three people in the film who have haunting connections with the afterlife...
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Nowhere Boy; Secretariat
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The Social Network
The Social Network is all about Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who's played by Jesse Eisenberg.... It's dazzling as contemporary cultural history, and devastating as biography -- an unfriending of epic proportions...
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Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps; Waiting for Superman
Michael Douglas' Gordon Gekko leaves prison at the beginning of Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps -- he served eight years for crimes committed in the course of the previous film... The real movie news this week is Waiting for Superman. The movie puts five tender young faces on a national scandal that's all too often described with depressing statistics -- the state of public education in the United States...
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Easy A; The Town
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Telluride Film Festival
Every year I go to the Telluride Film Festival with the same fervent hope -- to put the summer's junk behind me and recharge my enthusiasm for the fall and winter. This year I got supercharged. It was a wonderful program, with all sorts of treats that will be showing up in the weeks and months to come...
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The Tillman Story; Soul Kitchen
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Mao's Last Dancer
Sometimes the best way to see a movie is knowing nothing about the plot. At other times, a sense of what's to come increases the pleasure of watching the story unfold. Mao's Last Dancer is one of those other times...
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Cairo Time; The Other Guys
For quite a lot of time, the new film Cairo Time seems to be just a pretext for the camera to follow Patricia Clarkson around the Egyptian cpital and its spectacular surroundings... Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg are hapless cops and mismatched buddies in The Other Guys, a summer movie that honors summer-movie conventions with a vengence...
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The Kids Are All Right
The Kids Are All Right is a thrillingly funny and casually profound film that Lisa Cholodenko directed from a script she wrote with Stuart Blumberg. Near the beginning, a teenage brother and sister talk about whether to make a fateful phone call. They're the suburban California children of lesbian mothers, and the brother has decided to seek out the sperm donor who was instrumental in bringing them into the world...
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The Twilight Saga: Eclipse; The Last Airbender
You'd never guess what the best part of the new Twilight saga turns out to be. It isn't blood-sucking monsters doing their thing, though there's some of that to feed the franchise...Never mind that the little kid flapping his arms to whip up the waves looks like a pouty-faced version of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice, or that The Last Airbender looks no worse if you take off your 3-D glasses...
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Knight and Day; Restrepo
Knight Day is a movie of thunderous comings and goings. The pretext for it all is a little battery that the hero has to keep out of the hands of the bad guys. We're told that the battery is "the first perpetual energy source since the sun..." Restrepo is a superb documentary by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Jugner. It's about American soldiers in one of Afghanistan's most dangerous areas, the Korengal Valley. The action is worlds away from the centers of power where generals and their...
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Toy Story 3
Joe Morgenstern reviews Toy Story 3.
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Winter's Bone
Instead of belaboring this week's pseudo-spectacular offerings from the studios -- a mediocre remake of The Karate Kid and a benumbing big-screen version of the A Team -- let me tell you about a movie that's really worth watching. It's called Winter's Bone...a classic, and spectacular for its humanity, austere beauty and heart-stopping urgency...
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Splice; Ondine
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Splice and Ondine.
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Sex and the City 2; Father of My Children
In previous installments of Sex and the City the ancient mystery of what women want was basically solved -- they want love, sex and designer clothes, not necessarily in that order. Now Sex and the City 2 reveals what Islamic women want...I don't want to tell you too much about Father of My Children, which is playing at the Landmark -- you really should discover this French-language drama for yourself. It isn't saying too much, though, to cal lit beautiful, profound and phenomenally full of...
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Shrek Forever After
At one point in "Shrek Forever After" the hero sees his face on a poster nailed to a tree and says, "Sure is great to be wanted again." Wanted, yes, but needed? Not on the strength of this fourth and presumably last installment. Now it jogs and lurches but mostly meanders though a story that tests the limits of true love (Shrek's, and ours.)
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Robin Hood
Of all the Robin Hoods that have come and gone, at least one of them wondrously zestful -- that's Errol Flynn's -- and one of them was woefully zonked -- that's Kevin Costner's. Up to now, the only absurd one has been Mel Brooks's send-up, "Robin Hood: Men in Tights." Yet Ridley Scott's new version achieves an absurdity all its own. It's an ersatz epic about men in fights -- grim fights, grinding battles, clanking combats that are repetitive and, in a movie that runs 140 minutes, almost...
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Iron Man 2
Tony Stark creates a new element in "Iron Man 2," though it's no big deal. Robert Downey Jr.'s zillionaire genius, who was revealed to be Iron Man at the end of the previous film, simply builds himself an in-home particle accelerator, fires it up and then bango, he's got a...new element. This sequel, unfortunately, settles for a new alloy of old elements - less iron, lots more lead and tin.
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Date Night; After Life
During the superbly absurd adventures of a suburban couple in Date Night, a pair of thugs contemplates the husband and wife with slow-burning bafflement. One thug says to the other, "These two are not at all what they seem." And that is true...Then there's the case of After Life, a pretty dreadful and particularly squirmful horror flick. Women often wear their hearts on their sleeve, and even hatless men can go hat in hand. But one of the many repellent first in this film is a woman with her...
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Clash of the Titans
A few more 3-D spectacles like Clash of the Titans and audiences will be clamoring for 2-D...
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Hubble 3D; Eclipse
The Hubble Space Telescope, one of the crowning glories of our scientific age and it's the subject of the latest IMAX documentary, Hubble 3D. The movie's playing downtown at the California Science Museum. Shortly after the Hubble was launched in 1993 it was diagnosed with, and subsequently cured of, an extremely inconvenient case of astigmatism...Everyone is haunted by something in Conor McPherson's The Eclipse. This leisurely and quite lovely drama honors the conventions of Gothic ghost...
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Greenberg
One of the most touching lines in Noah Baumbach's remarkable new movie Greenberg is an announcement by the wistful young heroine, Florence Marr: "I've gotta stop doing things just because they fell good..."
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Green Zone
During the exciting but eventually wayward course of Green Zone, Jason Bourne discovers the truth about weapons of mass destruction, then teaches a sloppy reporter from the Wall Street Journal how to be a good journalist...
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Alice in Wonderland
The Cheshire Cat brags about his evaporating skills in Tim Burton's 3-D Alice in Wonderland, and the movie has its own way of evaporating before your polarized eyes. Every scene brings something new and remarkable to look at, yet every scene sweeps away specific recollections of the previous one...
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Extraordinary Measures; Creation
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Extraordinary Measures and Creation.
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The Last Station
The Last Station is Michael Hoffman's evocation of the last years of writer Leo Tolstoy. It's a "seduction that draws us into a vanished world where Count Leo Tolstoy and his wife of 48 years, countess Sofya come to life in a match pair of magnificent performances by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren."
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Youth in Revolt; Daybreakers
Youth in Revolt is an endearing coming-of-age comedy that stars Michael Cera. In one way, only, but in a significant way, Cera reminds me of Billie Holiday, who achieved subtle marvels within a severely limited vocal range... The German filmmaker brothers Michael Spierig and Peter Spierig have come up with a new twist on vampires in an English-language movie called Daybreakers. The year is 2019, and vampires have taken over the world...
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Avatar
James Camerion's Avatar takes place on a planet called Pandora, where American corporations and their military mercenaries have set up bases to mine a surpassingly precious mineral called unobtanium. The vein of awe mined by the movie is nothing short of unbelievium...
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Invictus; The Lovely Bones
Until now, America's curiosity about rugby has been on a par with its knowledge, but this could change with the advent of Invictus... Clint Eastwood's new movie is an inspirational game played by Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, and Matt Damon as the captain of a South African rugby team...Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones was adapted from Alice Sebold's widely admired novel. The movie, like the book, is party set in an Inbetween that occupies an ethereal space between heaven and earth; it's...
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Up in the Air
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Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans; Red Cliff
This year's prize for clumsiest title goes to Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. I wanted to get that out of the way so I could talk about a defining moment in the movie, set in post-Katrina New Orleans -- it's when Nicholas Cage's rogue cop pulls up to a seedy building to make an arrest...Red Cliff, set in China in the twilight of the Han Dynasty, lends new meaning to the notion of Baby on Board when a fearless swordsman plunges into battle with an infant strapped on his back...
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2012; Pirate Radio
2012 is Roland Emmerich's latest assault on planet Earth and its moviegoers, and it isn't the end of the world: it only feels that way...Pirate Radio follows the form -- when it chooses to follow any form -- of a cat-and-mouse game between the British government, circa 1966, and a crew of deejays beaming round-the-clock rock and roll from a decrepit tanker anchored in the North Sea just outside Britain's territorial waters...
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A Christmas Carol; Precious
To put it bluntly, and Scroogely, Disney's 3-D animated version of A Christmas Carol is a calamity... In a shockingly beautiful new film called Precious, one of the most telling moments comes toward the end, and it's hardly more than a throwaway -- the heroine glances at a mirror and sees herself...
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This Is It; Cirque du Soleil
After all the media madness about Michael Jackson over all the years and decades, it comes as bittersweet news that he lives vividly in This Is It... I've checked out two Cirques recently, a movie called Cirque du Freaks and the Cirque du Soleil, which is back in town and playing under a big blue-and-yellow tent next to the Santa Monica Pier...
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Amelia
I've seen the movie Amelia, and I can tell you that Amelia Earhart is still missing...
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Where the Wild Things Are
The movie version of Where the Wild Things Are honors the book in every imaginable way...and in ways no one could have imagined until Spike Jonze and his crew came long...
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An Education
This week brings a thrilling new film called An Education. It's a tale of an English schoolgirl's hard-won wisdom, and it's thrilling for all sorts of reasons...
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The Invention of Lying; Zombieland
Nobody doesn't like Ricky Gervais, and his new comedy soars for a while on the wings of a clever premise: it's set in a world where everyone tells the truth. In the spirit of that world, I cannot tell a lie: The Invention of Lying... Zombieland teems with wild-eyed chewers and spewers. They're only lurid wallpaper, though, in an improbably delicious comedy about a quartet of human survivors crossing an America that's been taken over by ravenous hordes...
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Capitalism: A Love Story; Coco Before Chanel
Michael Moore starts Capitalism: A Love Story with a sequence of secuirty-camera videos showing holdups in progress, and ends it by showing himself, like some vigilante version of the environmental artist Christo, stringing great lengths of yellow crime-scene tape around banks and brokerage houses in Lower Manhattan... Clothes may make the man, but the woman makes the clothes in Coco before Chanel, Anne Fontaine's smart and sumptuous French-language account of the legendary designer during...
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Bright Star
Bright Star is Jane Campion's dramatization of the love affair between the young Romantic poet John Keats and his younger neighbor, Fanny Brawne. The production is modest in physical scale, mostly reserved in tone and touchingly simple in design (aside from Fanny's dazzling wardrobe, which is justified by her gifts as a seamstress.) But the effect is exhilarating and deeply pleasurable...
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Telluride Film Festival Picks
Love at first sight can be as dangerous as it is exciting, and the sme goes for love at first screening. I fell hard and heedlessly for a film called An Education, which happened to be the first of 14 films I managed to see in the course of three movie-besotted days at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day weekend... (Joe also reviews A Prophet, The Last Station, Bright Star and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.)
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Funny People; Flame and Citron
The people in Judd Apatow's Funny People are painfully unfunny, and remarkable off-putting...In Flame Citron, two melancholy Danes share center stage in the movie, but neither one of them is Hamlet...
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(500) Days of Summer; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood...
In the preface of (500) Days of Summer, a narrator says, "You should know right up front this is not a love story..." I wrote a mixed revue in the Wall Street Journal for the new Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince...
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Bruno; Soul Power
Well, here's the bad news: Brno is no Borat. Here's the worse news: Brno crosses the line, like a besotted sprinter, from hilariously awful to genuinely awful... Period pieces can be marvelous or musty, depending on the period, as well as the piece. Soul Power is marvelous, and no wonder -- among the performers in this concert film are James Brown, B.B King, Bill Withers, Miriam Makeba and Celia Cruz, all at the peak of their powers...
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Public Enemies
Michael Mann's Public Enemies never lacks for interest, or interesting info. Back in the 1930's, for instance, the FBI was simply called the Bureau of Investigation before being formally federalized...
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The Hurt Locker; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
The Hurt Locker starts with a quote from the journalist Chris Hedges -- "War is a drug" then makes that case with masterful clarity and phenomenal forceIn Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, a National Security Adviser confronts the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime he's a good robot, trying to help us foolish humans defend ourselves against an army of bad Decepticons and says, angrily, "Who are you to pass judgment on us?"
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Whatever Works; The Proposal
Boris Yellnikoff is the prolix geezer played by Larry David in Woody Allen's Whatever Works. He was once a world-class physicist teaching string theory at Columbia, but the only string he strums now is misanthropy... At one point in The Proposal Sandra Bullock shakes the handlebars of her runaway bicycle and says frantically, "Why are you not stopping? Stop! Stop!" At more than one point in this wheeze of a romantic comedy I wanted to shake her and say...
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Imagine That; The Taking of Pelham 123
Raise those lowered expectations a bit before you see Eddie Murphy in Imagine That... The Taking of Pelham 123 is Tony Scott's fevered remake of the 1974 thriller about a hijacked subway train...
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Land of the Lost; 24 City
General Motors may be in a class by itself when it comes to bankruptcy, but so is Land of the Lost. This dramatically, thematically and artistically bankrupt fantasy cost something in the neighborhood of $100 million to make and isn't worth the celluloid it's printed on... Studs Terkel, the late chronicler of American workers and their work, would have loved 24 City. I certainly did, and I hadn't expected to be stirred by an account of Chinese workers and their labors over the course of...
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Drag Me to Hell; Departures
The good news -- and there's no bad news -- is that Sam Raimi's horror flick Drag Me to Hell is smart, funny and cringe-worthy for all the right reasons, and up to speed on the mortgage crisis too... Most of the events in Departures flow from a comical misunderstanding. After a Tokyo orchestra is disbanded, a discouraged young cellist, Daigo, looks for a new line or work...
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Terminator Salvation; Night at the Museum: Battle of the...
In Terminator Salvation, primal screams come with the bleak territory. Any character of consequence gets to unleash one, and there's plenty to scream about... Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is critic-proof; nothing I might say would have the slightest effect on its commercial fate...
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Angels and Demons; Management
Angels and Demons draws a sharp historical distinction between the Illuminati (the bad guys) and the Catholic Church's Preferiti (the good guys), but the movie may leave you feeling like a member of the Stupefiti... Management, a debut feature by Stephen Belber is a sentimental and modestly enjoyable fantasy of mutual need...
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Star Trek; Galaxy Quest
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Star Trek. He also mentions Qalaxy Quest, which is just being released on DVD.
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X-Men Origins: Wolverine; Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
It's been a while since I've seen anything as unpleasant as X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but one sequence sticks out...Does anyone love to watch Matthew McConnaughey act?... If his self-pleasure seems unearned, it's at least appropriate to the character he plays in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a bizarre conflation of chick flick and A Christmas Carol...
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The Soloist
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Every Little Step; State of Play
How long has it been since a mo vie left you literally speechless? For me it's been a week. When the lights came up after a screening of Every Little Step, a friend and I turned to each other but we could only gulp and emit small gasps...Sources are as crucial to filmmakers as they are to investigative journalists. In the glossy, ambitious thriller State of Play, Russel Crowe is a powerful presence as Cal McAffrey, a veteran reporter for a newspaper that resembles the Washington Post...
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Valentino: The Last Emperor; Adventureland
Early in the course of Valentino: The Last Emperor, an interviewer asks the legendary fashion designer whether he ever wanted to be a fireman or a train driver. No, no, Valentino says with amusement, he always dreamed about movie stars, the silver screen, about everything beautiful in the world. Greg Mottola (Superbad) is back, as both writer and director, with Adventureland, an ambitious film that sets the goofiness of extended adolescence against the sadness of being adrift in an adult...
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Monsters vs Aliens; Shall We Kiss?
One of the retro monsters in DreamWorks Animation's Monsters vs Aliens is a scientist with the head of a cockroach. He points to another monster, a blobby blue cyclops called B.O.B., and says haughtily, "As you can see, he has no brain..."Shall We Kiss? gives us storytelling as art. Emmanuel Mouret's romantic drama, in French with English subtitles, is expert, intricate, ineffably droll, surprisingly provocative and completely enchanting...
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Duplicity; Sin Nombre
To give Duplicity its due, Tony Gilroy's romantic caper goes against the Hollywood grain by smartening itself up instead of dumbing itself downBy Hollywood standards Sin Nombre is a very small movie, shot in Spanish on a tight budget in Mexico, but it's a very big deal
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Sunshine Cleaning
At the end of Sunshine Cleaning, a foxy grandpa shrugs off the extravagance of an advertising claim he has made by saying, "It's a business lie. It's no the same as a life lie..."
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Watchmen; Everlasting Moments
Watchmen presents two great challenges -- getting your mind around it, and getting your head out from under it. The first comes as no surprise, given the source material... A camera story owner in Everlasting Moments tells a winsome customer, "Not everyone is endowed with the gift of seeing." He's flirting with her, of course...
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Crossing Over; An American Affair
Crossing Over has its heart in umpteen places and its head stuffed with dramatic claptrap... I'm reviewing An American Affair only because it's opening, and America must be forewarned...
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Eleven Minutes; Must Read after My Death
A documentary called Eleven Minutes follows the fashion designer Jay McCarroll as he prepares his first show and pulls it offHorror and social value contend for equal honors in Must Read after My Death, a frightening and eerily edifying documentary that Morgan Dews created from a family trove of photos, Dictaphone letters, audiotapes, voluminous transcripts and home movies
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Frost/Nixon
Frost/Nixon is a spellbinding film version of Peter Morgan's play, about the 1977 televised confrontation between the English talk-show host, David Frost, and the former president who had resigned in disgrace three years before
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Australia; Milk
Australian aboriginals believe that everyday reality co-exists with an infinite state of being called "the dream time." Baz Luhrann does his own version of that duality in AustraliaGus Van Sant's Milk stars Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the late, gay activist and San Francisco Supervisor
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Twilight; Let the Right One In
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Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire is the world's first globalized masterpiece. This fervent romantic fable is set in contemporary Mombai, the former Bombay, but it draws freely and sometimes rapturously from Charles Dickens, Alexander Dumas, Hollywood, Bollywood, the giddiness of Americanized TV, the cross-cultural craziness of out-sorced call centers and the zoominess of Google Earth
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Role Models; Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
If Role Models is any barometer, the weekend weathers going to be hot and humid. This is a quintessential summer comedy dropped into early NovemberMadagascar: Escape 2 Africa continues the sage of the animals who escaped from the Central Park Zoo and landed in the island nation of Madagascar. This time they try to return to New York aboard a rickety airplane piloted by penguins...
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Splinter; Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Jor Morgenstern, film critic of the Wall Street Journal, reviews Splinter and Zack and Miri Make a Porno .
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The Changeling
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W.
W. is Oliver Stone's exuberant account of the life and times of George W. Bush. Stone goes for the juggler vein -- he juggles genial mockery and moist empathy without venturing any judgments on his hero's presidency...
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Happy-Go-Lucky
Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky is a wonderful new movie with an astonishing performance by Sally Hawkins...
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Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
Devotees of old movies will detect an echo of the casually sophisticated Thin Man films in the title of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. And this Nick, played by Michael Cera, is the soul of un-sophistication...
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Ghost Town; Lakeview Terrace
If you've watched the trailer for Ghost Town, or simply noticed the movie's clever tag line -- "He sees dead people, and they annoy him" -- you already know too much to be surprised by the premise... Lakeview Terrace is the bottom of the week's barrel...
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Burn after Reading; Towelhead
Burn after Reading could just as well have been called Forget after Seeing... Towelhead, directed by Alan Ball from his adaptation of the novel by Alicia Erian, is a bleak coming-of-age comedy set in suburban Texas during the first Gulf War.
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Telluride; Slumdog Millionaire; I Loved You So long
Joe Morgenstern, film critic of the Wall Street Journal, has just returned from this year's Telluride Film Festival with reviews of two winners, Slumdog Millionaire and I Loved You So Long...
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Frozen River; The Mummy
Joe Morgenstern, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic of the Wall Street Journal, reviews Frozen River and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
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The Dark Knight
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews The Dark Knight.
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Hellboy II; Meet Dave
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Meet Dave.
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WALL-E
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews WALL-E.
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Kit Kittredge; Get Smart; The Love Guru
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, Get Smart and The Love Guru.
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The Incredible Hulk; The Happening
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews The Incredible Hulk and The Happening.
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You Don't Mess with the Zohan; Mongol; Kung Fu Panda
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Mongol, and Kung Fu Panda.
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Once
It takes all of ten seconds for John Carney’s new movie “Once” to announce itself as something special. A handsome young street musician in Dublin raises his voice in song, then raises it higher with heart-stopping fervor. When a mysteriously endearing young woman stops to interrogate him about his music – she turns out to be a musician too -- the movie reveals itself as something magical.
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Premonition; The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Anyone who’s seen the awful trailer for “Premonition” is bound to have premonitions about the movie. After seeing the movie, I have postmonitions about Sandra Bullock (how could she have done it?) and her hapless filmmakers (how could they have done it so badly?), plus one admonition: See this feeble fiasco only if you’re in the mood for “Groundhog Day” without the laughs.
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Telluride Film Festival
This week, Joe Morgenstern reviews this year's annual Telluride Film Festival.
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The Black Dahlia; The U.S. vs. John Lennon
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Sex and the City
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Sex and the City.
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
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Reprise; The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Reprise and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
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Talladega Nights
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Speed Racer
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Iron Man
Joe Morgenstern, film critic for the Wall Street Journal, reviews Iron Man.
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