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![]() The Conversation was one of Francis Ford Coppola’s celebrated early Seventies movies, nominated for Best Picture and winner of the Palme d’Or. Deeply accomplished, occasionally fascinating, a time capsule of San Francisco from 1973, it nonetheless disappoints all these decades later. The min…
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Coppola talks 'The Conversation' in 1974
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![]() Mel Brooks parodied Alfred Hitchcock movies in High Anxiety with middling results, though perhaps the movie simply hasn’t aged well over time. It remains modestly funny all these decades later, with the added value of now being a time capsule from the late 70s, back when Hyatt Regency atriums w…
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Those who are tardy do not get fruit ...
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![]() Eat That Question is well titled. Frank Zappa in His Own Words is FZ waxing loquacious, repeatedly. Zappa, the pugnacious, contradictory and iconoclastic rockstar, indeed the consummate rockstar, trades heavily on his privilege and arrogance, by turns funny, shocking and ridiculous, a Trump t…
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Václav Havel was a big Zappa fan.
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![]() Hands of Stone is a ham-fisted biopic of boxing great Roberto Durán. Raging Bull it’s not, notwithstanding Robert De Niro in a major role. That said, it does provide clear insight into Durán’s impoverished childhood, rise to prominence and fall from grace after his “No Mas” capitulation to Suga…
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Ana de Armas has star quality.
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![]() Essential viewing for fans of Exile on Main St. – the essential Stones’ album that set the tone for Seventies rock culture, grew the legend of the greatest rock & roll band in the world and now ranks as one of the greatest in rock history. The Stones had too much fun making it, as this 60 minu…
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Inside view of rock royalty working m...
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![]() Flash of Genius is an involving and interesting, albeit frustrating, biopic of a guy who succeeds at invention, fails at business and craters at life. It’s well recommended for those interested in cars and/or entrepreneurs, and for fans of Greg Kinnear. Being a successful inventor wasn’t en…
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Kearns through a windshield doggedly
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![]() We Americans are blessedly unfamiliar with the “most violent prisoner in Britain,” a nut called Charles Bronson. I’d of happily gone on that way had Tom Hardy not become an actor whose riveting performances demand that his every great role be viewed. And his feral performance as Charles Bronson…
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One more bystander hurt by Bronson
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![]() Bob Marley’s legend emerges enhanced and deepened from this extensive documentary of his life and career. Notwithstanding classic rockstar foibles, he’s revealed to be a figure of complexity, courage and depth. Plus his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame talent shines brightly through. Jamming. Marl…
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Bob unguarded. No Woman, No Cry.
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![]() Perfect credits lead to a fitfully entertaining movie about some monumentally smug people in Heartburn. Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson – in his prime – lead the credits. The great Mike Nichols directs, fifteen years after directing Nicholson in the scandalous Carnal Knowledge…
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Jack in his prime
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![]() Perhaps a movie past its time – when the Dallas Cowboys were TV America’s Team – but a rousing and funny movie nonetheless. Notable for a classic Nick Nolte man’s man performance, football action that for the first time seemed real, and a whiff of the larger changes going in 1970’s society outsi… |