MovieSorter

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Me and Orson We...
Barely OK 66 Points 2008

Me and Orson Welles is a disappointing, amateurish effort from the heretofore redoubtable Richard Linklater. Sadly the writing and acting weigh down whatever directing talents Linklater brought to the production. Ironically, for a movie that celebrates acting, the acting is just OK.

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WikChip Image Welles as Brutus in the Mercury's 'Ca...
Gone Girl
Great 66 Points 2014

Gone Girl stirs the pot, no doubt about that. Premiering amidst the NFL-stoked domestic violence uproar, this sordid thriller about a wife’s murder is akin to throwing gas on a fire. But never mind all that societal stuff, is it a good movie? Yes, a great one, albeit far from perfect.

The es…

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WikChip Image Smile! Oops, maybe not.
Elegy
Great 66 Points 2008

Ben Kingsley gets in much deeper than planned after seducing a much younger Penélope Cruz in Elegy. Isabel Coixet’s movie comes by its sexual fixations via pedigree: Phillip Roth’s novel The Dying Animal. Think of it as Portnoy’s Complaint, the When I’m 64 rendition – "Will you still nee…

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WikChip Video Ben Kingsley seduces Penélope Cruz
Johnny Dangerously
OK 66 Points 1984

Michael Keaton and a WTF cast couldn’t rescue Amy Heckerling’s mob parody Johnny Dangerously. About that cast, guys like Dick Butkus, Alan Hale Jr. and Ray Walston pop up in like three scenes each. What The Fuck?

Unfortunately the bad screenplay falls flat, with nary a joke that works.
*…

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WikChip Image They were cast for height.
Mistress America
Very Good 66 Points 2015

Mistress America mines the wandering desires of two young women in a fitful search for laughs and insight. It often succeeds, though not without wallowing in more than a little preciousness.

Greta Gerwig fans won’t mind, nor Noah Baumbach fans. Those partners in art and life cowrote it. Thu…

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WikChip Image Oddball group in an oddball movie
Minions
Pretty Bad 66 Points 2015

Minions aren’t just evil, they’re bad, or at least their movie is bad. It’s a children’s movie and I’m an adult, sure. But other kiddie pix work for parents as well as kids, and not just those from Pixar.

Part of the problem is that the villain is more ridiculous than scary and isn’t funny a…

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Desk Set
Great 66 Points 1957

Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn weren’t hardly done being the greatest couple in Hollywood history when they made Desk Set in 1957. Ten years later, they’d star as parents whose daughter brings home the very black Sydney Poitier as her fiancé in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner

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WikChip Video The Greatest Demo of All Time
The Big Short
Great 66 Points 2015

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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WikChip Video Margot Robbie in a bubblebath
How to Be Single
OK 66 Points 2016

Young women are the target demographic of How to Be Single. I’m neither, so found this melodramatic romcom more tedious than funny. But frequent female laughs indicate it works with its intended audience.

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Hello, My Name ...
Great 66 Points 2015

Baby Boomer date movies get no better than Hello, My Name Is Doris, about Sally Field’s senior-citizen foray into today’s millennial culture. Looking for love with a guy young enough to be her grandson, she charms and tickles in equal measure, reminding us that we like her, we really like her, …

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WikChip Video Now this is funny.