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Charismatic, disorienting and brooding, Animal Kingdom presents the truthy tale of an infamous crime family, including their murder of two Melbourne cops. The brooding gets a bit much by the third reel, weighing down what would otherwise be a great true-crime movie. The charisma comes from …
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Infamous crime family, charismatic movie
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Think the title is long? Consider yourself warned: this boring movie never seems to end, meandering for nearly 2½ hours. Plus it commits the deadly sin of assuming that the viewer is familiar with the particulars of Jesse James’ early legend, without which the poorly told story has no narrative… |
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Life is cheap in Jakarta. Guys get killed. Girls get, well, you know, treated disrespectfully in The Raid 2. The fun – this being a hell of a fun movie – comes from seeing how the guys get knocked off, as it’s often spectacularly inventive and/or a complete gross-out, with a body count that …
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Iko Uwais teaches Fight Choreography
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De Niro, Keitel, Liotta, Berg and Stallone – with a helluva cast behind `em – turned Cop Land into a cauldron of cinematic testosterone. A strong sense of place and vivid filmmaking on both sides of the Hudson made it well worth a view. Genre requirements and trite political poison limited it…
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Stallone & Sciorra
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Dennis Lehane took a short-story set in his characteristic Boston and expanded it into a screenplay set in Brooklyn. This works, great writer that he is, even if the story’s legs don’t so much cohere as cohabitate. The Drop won’t cohabitate as among his best with Mystic River…
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Hardy & Schoenaerts play American.
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Most everyone gets murdered in this crackerjack Scandinavian noir, making In Order of Disappearance – a long yet telling title for the most assured film of the year – serious as a headshot, yet often funny as hell. The dominos start falling after an innocent guy gets mistakenly knocked-off b…
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A common man takes down the mob.
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Infernal Affairs screams Hong Kong 2002. Movie theaters advertise Will Smith & Tommy Lee Jones back in black and Harrison Ford as Capt. Alexei Vostrikov. Within that milieu, Alan Mak & Wai-keung Lau’s blockbuster unspools a cop story of such depth, perfection and tension that Martin Scorsese …
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Rock This
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Now this is a movie if ever there was one, a Saturday night movie for the ages. Enter The Dragon is grand entertainment and so much more. It elevated Bruce Lee to an iconic status reached by only the most rarified moviestars, in part because he mysteriously died right before its premiere. Happi…
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Bruce Lee vs Sammo Hung
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“Do you realize I haven’t kissed you in over an hour?” says Charlton Heston to Janet Leigh at the end of Touch of Evil’s famous opening scene, three and a half minutes of directorial perfection. One long tracking shot, it features close-ups leading to long shadows, followed by long shots of cho…
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Touch of Genius: the legendary opening
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Perhaps the best film of the year: captivating, surprising, taut, sexy, fresh (even though it covers well trod themes of many a mob movie before). Showcases the quiet charisma of Viggo Mortensen in perhaps his finest role yet.
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