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![]() This dazzling German movie shows the sociological antecedents of Nazism in ways both fresh and timeless. A penetrating societal examination unprecedented in its knowingness, it would be a landmark no matter which nation it examined. That it elucidates the generation of Germans who grew up to fo…
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Hand Kissing: Minimal Family Affection
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![]() Hollywood must be licking its chops to remake this Swedish hit. Chockablock with career-making roles, combining fashionable anti-capitalist politics with feminist blood-lust, and striking a crisply efficient thriller tone, it suffers only from a poor title, not that that matters given how huge t…
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Good trailer, great movie.
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![]() More than your ordinary police procedural, this affecting Argentine import includes a decidedly grown-up office romance & insight into Perón’s Argentina. Veteran Law & Order director Juan José Campanella deserves his Best Foreign Language Oscar for an &1 if nothing else.1 His film’s two…
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Argentine Law & Order Writ Large
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![]() Rock I ran. Whoops, make that Rock Iran, as in the music of rebellion from the theocratically oppressed country threatening nuclear Armageddon. This revolutionary paradox makes Persian Cats the most important political movie of the year. A slice-of-life take on the underground rock music sce…
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Revolution Rock: Persian Cats trailer
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Noomi Rapace returns as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in this second movie of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy novels. A feminist Jason Bourne, her Lisbeth Salander operates with deadly derring do on-the-net, off-the-grid and in the grills of rapists. Wow. Even a red blooded dude like me…
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Fast moving, hard hitting, niftily pl...
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![]() The heart of a battle-tank turns into a heart of darkness for four soldiers – softies – thrust into the horror of war. The obvious comparison to Das Boot captures Lebanon’s ironclad claustrophobia and blinkered view. Yet, Apocalypse Now seems more fitting an antecedent given how these unw…
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Caught in the crosshairs: Major Hardb...
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![]() France et le Québec endured Jacques Mesrine’s spectacular 1960s and 70s criminal career, anointing him a media sensation in the process. The first half of this too-big-for-a-single-movie story gets told in Mesrine: Killer Instinct, the concluding chapters in Mesrine: Public Enemy #1:…
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Anti-hero: "Nobody kills me until I s...
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![]() The French sure know how to concoct clever romantic comedies. If only the execution were up to snuff, Heartbreaker would be a classic of the genre. Oh bien, it screams for an American remake anyway. Hollywood simply has to cast their version better for a monster hit. Heartbreaker mask…
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Romantic Comedy, French Flair
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![]() The Lisbeth Salander trilogy ends with a thud in Hornet’s Nest. Not a bang or a blaze: those would require more than a stately pace and less dependence on revealed secrets. Slower than the second, which was less kinetic than the first, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest serves only to cl…
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Famous Goth Agent goes to Trial
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![]() Point Blank – a thriller on rails – pauses briefly in 84 minutes of run time, but only briefly. Otherwise it propels forward, crazed yet plausible in the moment. The big picture is insane, of course. A male nurse and his gorgeous wife revel in the impending birth of their first child, no…
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The movie moves just as fast as the t...
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