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![]() A big budget disaster when it came out at the end of the Sixties, Paint Your Wagon is a modestly entertaining extravaganza today. Faint praise? Indeed, for a musical comedy that is long on star power and short on memorable songs and effective humor. Oh yeah, it’s also long on time. I watc…
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Jean Seberg: lovely, not distinctive
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![]() Got African dictator coup? It used to be cliche, but its been a while – so I indulged myself in this action movie sleeper. In the end, I was entertained, but not overly impressed. Decent action, but not enough of it. Classic Christopher Walken drama – but slightly over done. A lot of time for c… |
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![]() Happy Endings drew me in while channel surfing, and then turned me into an emotional captive. “Not a very good movie” I’d think, but then another emotional car-wreck would happen and I’d get transfixed anew. Was there a happy ending in the end? Sadly not. Satisfying dramatic payoff? Nope, not t…
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Maggie sings a cheesy song, well
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![]() The House on Telegraph Hill is a triumph of art direction. That’s good. It’s also unintentionally campy. That’s bad. The result is a just OK movie, yet one that belongs in the San Francisco Cinema Hall of Fame. The views are marvelous. And the views are the thing with San Francisco real…
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Grt Views, Lrg House, fake Telegraph ...
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![]() Bumbled into this one and decided to watch it for a retrospective evaluation of young Sean Penn and Nick Cage, and to remind myself again why a nice brunette who finds her way to the dinner table once in a while is still the best thing to bumble into. The experience morphed into a look-back from…
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Visually scintillating, musically avant-garde, dramatically turgid: This biopic of two cultural giants goes down like Brussels sprouts instead of foie gras. IOW, it takes effort to work through the two hour running time, when it should feel like savoring a rich delicacy. Pity, since Coco & Igor…
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Great design barely trumps turgid drama.
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![]() The Lisbeth Salander trilogy ends with a thud in Hornet’s Nest. Not a bang or a blaze: those would require more than a stately pace and less dependence on revealed secrets. Slower than the second, which was less kinetic than the first, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest serves only to cl…
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Famous Goth Agent goes to Trial
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![]() Delectable dishes and a beloved cast can’t rescue Stanley Tucci’s passion project. It’s hardly a bad movie, just a bit slow and stilted. Some miscasting and more than a little waiting around are mostly to blame. That said, entrepreneurs of all stripes can benefit from seeing Big Night, a cas…
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Il Timpano: A dish to die for.
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![]() Brando’s feral sexuality reached its nihilistic extreme in Last Tango in Paris, a high-toned porno distinguished then for its daring explicitness and now as a period piece of iconic 70s indulgence. The minimalistic story about a grief stricken older man conducting an anonymous sexual maratho…
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Nihilistic Chic: Cover Boy Brando
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![]() Slasher movies have nothing on this swordplay spectacular. Heads and arms are so much meat for the blade, lopped off right and left, as a group of Roman soldiers battles back from behind enemy lines. So what’s to recommend it? A visually rich portrayal of the Roman army in early Britannia, t…
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Ninth Legion General Titus Flavius Vi...
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