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Movies from Tom Clancy novels reliably deliver realistic military trappings and brisk plotting, with Clear and Present Danger a classic of the breed. Dating from the era when cocaine kingpins effectively controlled Columbia, it still seems relevant now that endemic narco-crime has moved north …
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USS Kitty Hawk: realistic military tr...
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The only smile triggered by Jason Bourne comes after the very long end credits, where the fine print under a “Green is Universal” logo brags about how this steroidal killfest used Sustainable Filming Practices. So let’s get this straight. After the private jets used by Matt Damon and his large …
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Mighty Matt rocks his upside-down grin.
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The War Against Islamist Terror gets short shrift in the nearly risible American Assassin, which starts well, powerfully well, but then goes mostly downhill. Quality aside: Sequel or No Sequel? That is the question. This origin story sets a low bar, yet made money, so why not a sequel. It’ll al…
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Lame conversation misses the point
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Sicario 2 couldn’t be more timely, even if its extreme surrealism is an only-in-the-movies depiction of what’s happening today on the TexMex border. That unfenced divide, with traffickers running rampant, makes an ideal milieu for a heavily militarized action thriller. And *Sicario: Day of the … |
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Formulaic sequels like The Equalizer 3 don’t get any respect. However, they make for immensely satisfying cinematic experiences when executed to perfection. E3 pretty much executes to perfection. Indeed, it fires on damn near all cylinders: a perfect film led by a nonpareil moviestar, work… |
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The banality of evil gets a powerful debunking in Operation Finale, an awkwardly if accurately titled docudrama about the Mossad’s 1960 capture of Final Solution logistics chief Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Little Adolf was famously said to embody “the banality of evil” as he dissembled during …
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The (real) Man Who Got Eichmann
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The Stasi employed 100,000 East Germans, who maintained a network of 200,000 informants, in a country of 16 million people. So roughly 1% of the population controlled the other 99%. Ring any bells America? 1 The Lives of Others, a Stasi romantic drama, was the first perfect movie about t…
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"Do you think we imprison people on a...
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Terrifically well acted by a bevy of single-name movie stars (Damon, Jolie, De Niro, Hurt, Baldwin, Pesci), and more than competently directed by De Niro himself, this is a high quality – albeit long and fictionalized – exploration of how the CIA found itself at odds with the values of the Americ…
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Single-Name Stars Acting Well
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Is there a better Bond movie? From the B&W opening’s clever incorporation of Bond shooting at the camera, to ‘Bond, James Bond’ not coming till the final line, Casino Royale visits the de rigueur touchstones in fresh, inventive ways. Daniel Craig barely cracks a smile or a smirk, yet is funny… |
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Moviestar movies get no better than this one. Super hot, totally cold and dead-bang funny, this huge hit could have been overwhelmed by the fusion of its soon-to-be-coupled stars. Instead Brangelina’s debut perfectly serves the power-couple satire, even more so in hindsight given how their real…
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Moviestar Chemistry Incarnate
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