MovieSorter

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The Fighter
Really Great 88 Points 2010

New addition to the boxing movie canon? Absolutely, complete with elemental title, elemental story and devastating performances. A female power story as much as a male one, Melissa Leo, Christian Bale and Mark Walhberg’s maternal-fraternal triangle pegs the meter for codependency. When Amy Ada…

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WikChip Image All in the (dysfunctional) Family
Win Win
Really Great 88 Points 2011

Win Win has become such a cliche, yet is anything but in the entirely winning movie of that title. Cleverly mining today’s uneven economy, the uneasy equality of modern marriages, the unjust world of neglected kids, and not least, the under-appreciated sport of high school wrestling, Win Win

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WikChip Video Who says meaningful auteur cinema is ...
Our Idiot Brother
Very Good 88 Points 2011

Lots of pretty people delivering razor sharp comedy atop an idiotic premise makes for a very good movie. The central conceit of Our Idiot Brother – Paul Rudd’s absurdly guileless fool, a.k.a. the Idiot Brother – gets just this side of tedious however. Fortunately the whole thing is more than a…

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WikChip Image Elizabeth Banks: Uptown Gorgeous
2 Replies
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Feast of Love
Very Good 87 Points 2007

Fifteen years after Sleepless in Seattle, Feast of Love offers Pairing in Portland, a cinematic soap opera full of smiles, bits of sadness and wisdom, and attractive couples in love. While lite, it is entertaining.

Emotional Scores

  • You’ll laugh – 3.5 beams
  • You’ll cry – 3 beams
  • Yo…
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The Blind Side
Very Good 86 Points 2009

A three hanky weeper of the best kind – uplifting and funny. I was fortunate to watch it in the darkened cabin of an overnight flight to London, otherwise the tears streaming down my face would have been noticeable to others. But a good man-cry

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WikChip Image Momma's Boy: The real Michael Oher
The Place Beyon...
Great 86 Points 2013

Two great movies, one bad title, The Place Beyond the Pines could lose 20 ticks and still be twice typical Hollywood fare. Ryan Gosling & Bradley Cooper play two guys on opposite sides of the law, whose paths cross to lethal effect.

Both are conflicted and sympathetic. Neither is untarnishe…

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WikChip Image Eye Dropper TearTat -- nice touch
3 Replies
  • Wick – Regarding "BrianSez's Review":http://www.viewguide.c...
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Mud
Really Great 86 Points 2013

Joe Morgenstern declared Mud an instant classic in the Wall Street Journal. Not sure why, but hell yes.

You almost want to ding Mud for being such a classically terrific movie, but damn if it doesn’t play out as monumentally cinematic, yet nearly natural. It’s kind of a crime caper invol…

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WikChip Image Leading men, now & then: Matthew & Tye
2 Replies
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The Way, Way Back
Perfect 86 Points 2013

The Way, Way Back is the perfect summer movie from this Summer of `13. It opens and closes with a painfully awkward teen in the late, lamented way-way-back of a 1970 Buick Estate Station Wagon.

In between he spends a life-changing summer at the beach house of his mom’s asshole boyfriend, pl…

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WikChip Image Awkward boy meets way, way cool girl
2 Replies
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Blue Jasmine
Great 86 Points 2013

Cate Blanchett transfixes in Woody Allen’s superior dramedy Blue Jasmine. Playing the Jasmine of the title, Blanchett goes from Park Avenue socialite to broken vixen in a performance that masterfully oscillates between elegance and rawness. That last almost assures her an Academy Award nomina…

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WikChip Image The great Cate in Chanel & pearls w ...
4 Replies
  • Wick – Regarding "BrianSez's Review":http://www.viewguide.c...
  • Tripod – Regarding "Tripod's Review":http://www.viewguide.com...
  • Wick – Regarding "Tripod's Review":http://www.viewguide.com...
  • BrianSez – Regarding "Wick's Review":http://www.viewguide.com/m...
King of California
OK 84 Points 2007

Well intentioned flop: the comedy never inspires laughs and the drama never hits home. Nonetheless, the great concept – oddball father drags practical daughter on a real treasure hunt through modern day suburbia – and the likable performances by Evan Rachel Wood and Michael Douglas make this wat…

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