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![]() Okja [Oak-ja] grabs your heart and doesn’t let go. It’s a perfect movie from shoulder to shank, as pure an experience of cinematic magic as the best of Spielberg. But Spielberg it ain’t. Bong it is — Bong Joon Ho. The brilliant Korean auteur made Okja in 2017, four years after "Snowpiercer…
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Watch this after the movie.
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![]() In Old California is a simpleminded recreation of Old Sacramento in 1848 and then 1849, made in 1942. A quasi-historical tale, it mostly exists to showcase John Wayne looking quite-the-dandy, from Boston even. The settings are the thing now: pre-49er San Francisco and then up the river to Old…
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John Wayne, the Boston Dandy
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![]() So big it came down to YES or NO. A national referendum on authoritarian rule, YES or NO? NO won, a shock to Chile, many Latinos and the world. Turns out that pop was the way to nail the weasel. The weasel was General Augusto Pinochet, the strongman who had fixed the economy but crushed diss…
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Selling Liberation Like Toothpaste
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![]() Trading Places hasn’t aged well. A morality tale full of shopworn caricatures more than a continuously effective comedy, it remains notable for its rich production values and big stars — Aykroyd, Curtis, etc. Eddie Murphy – in particular – rescues the movie in one of his early smash performa…
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Eddie Murphy rescues the movie.
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![]() The Big Short isn’t the Big Lie, but isn’t far from it either. The government hides just offscreen in Adam McKay’s seriocomic docudrama about the epic falsehoods that consumed the banking industry in 2008. Falsehoods one and two were Washington’s ability to safely stimulate homeownership amo…
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Margot Robbie in a bubblebath
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![]() Delectable dishes and a beloved cast can’t rescue Stanley Tucci’s passion project. It’s hardly a bad movie, just a bit slow and stilted. Some miscasting and more than a little waiting around are mostly to blame. That said, entrepreneurs of all stripes can benefit from seeing Big Night, a cas…
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Il Timpano: A dish to die for.
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![]() Surprisingly strong biopic of Steve Jobs & Bill Gates, circa late 90s, when Gates was the more prominent of the two. Now that the legend of Jobs has eclipsed that of Gates, the story has new resonance. The movie portrays each entrepreneur’s unsavory sides, especially that of Jobs, who is show…
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Looks like Jobs. Acts like Jobs. Isn'...
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![]() After long avoiding this movie, I was compelled to watch it by Massie’s simple declaration of its perfection. He’s right, this is a perfect movie, long yet packed with necessary detail, suspenseful even though the end is never in doubt, chock full of charismatic performances by three of our great… |
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![]() The slang for corporate recruiter once connoted a frisson of danger. Then “Headhunter” lost its edge. Headhunters returns it and then some. An insanely funny thriller, it rivals fellow Scandinavian noir classic Girl with the Dragon Tattoo…
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This doesn't end well.
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![]() Cedar Rapids keeps its ambitions in check and easily exceeds them. A gut-bustingly funny story about Ed Helms’ rural Cheesehead taking his first airplane trip to the Gotham of the title, it needn’t venture far from home to harvest a bumper crop of universally identifiable storylines. Did I …
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Funny to the last credit.
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