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12 Years a Slave
Perfect 83 Points 2013

Solomon Northup has just become an iconic American hero, some fifteen and a half decades after he lived. Americans from this day forth will know his name like they know Patrick Henry’s or Harriet Tubman’s.

That’s not all. The mov…

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WikChip Image Steve McQueen directs Chiwetel Ejiofor
The Last Samurai
Very Good 83 Points 2003

Well produced Tom Cruise historical epic, appealing to those of us who like such entertainments. As he so often does, Cruise plays a character at once naive and smug, who reveals an admirable steeliness by the third reel.

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Invictus
Very Good 83 Points 2009

This magnificent political biography also happens to be a very good movie. Not a great movie, but a great and important story, well told and even better acted by its two leads. Lessons in history and leadership should all be so charismatic.

The movie has rhythms and totems unfamiliar to Amer…

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WikChip Image American superstars as African heroes
American Hustle
Very Good 83 Points 2013

A big, bawdy brouhaha of a movie, David O. Russell’s followup to Silver Linings Playbook never fails to entertain, especially in recreating the Seventies. Yet it never coheres to a point. It’s all pointless seems to be its point. Silver Linings Playbook

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WikChip Video JLaw's nut nukes nuke, blames husband.
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Jack Ryan: Shad...
Very Good 83 Points 2014

The hero of many a Tom Clancy story gets rebooted in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, a more than competent action thriller. Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Keira Knightley and Kenneth Branagh are much more than competent as its starring quartet, allowing the movie to draw from a deep well of moviestar…

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WikChip Image Branagh the Dir employs a killer villain
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Butch Cassidy a...
Perfect 83 Points 1969

The Old West ended when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hightailed it to Bolivia. Old Westerns ended when Paul Newman and Robert Redford became Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, outlaw charmers the likes of which the Silver Screen had never seen before. Four Oscars plus three additional n…

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WikChip Video Bewitching Musical Interlude
The Railway Man
Great 83 Points 2013

Adult date night movies get no more surefire than The Railway Man. It starts with Nicole Kidman falling in love with Colin Firth on a train. He is – after all – the Railway Man. The pathos comes later, when we encounter the hell that Eric Lomax underwent as a POW, slave laborer for the infam…

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WikChip Video Nicole Kidman on meeting Patti Lomax
The Immigrant
Great 83 Points 2014

Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner form a tortured romantic triangle at the heart of The Immigrant, a touching period drama. Cotillard, the immigrant of the title, enters America with her sister through Ellis Island. Traumatized back in Poland, she gets beset with new problems…

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WikChip Image Why so sad? She has her reasons.
Foxcatcher
Really Great 83 Points 2014

Channing Tatum’s tortured performance as Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler Mark Schultz anchors Foxcatcher. Mark Ruffalo and Steve Carell orbit above him as Dave Schultz, his older brother and fellow Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler, and John du Pont, the crazy rich guy who murdered one of…

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WikChip Video Steve Carell masterfully plays this guy.
The Imitation Game
Very Good 83 Points 2014

A father of computer science and nerdy war hero makes a fine subject for a rather dreamy biopic. Oh yeah, Alan Turing was also a persecuted gay man, back when homosexuality was criminalized in Great Britain. The Imitation Game thus has several storylines running through it, perhaps explaining w…

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WikChip Image The real Alan Turing, with a rare smile