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In the Heart of...
Great 83 Points 2015

Ron Howard takes on Moby Dick, starring Chris Hemsworth, in the poorly titled but highly accomplished In the Heart of the Sea. It plays like a 19th century Jaws, albeit with a giant Sperm Whale seeking vengeance on puny humans instead of a Great White Shark. It also challenges 21st century sens…

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WikChip Video Whales were considered sea monsters
Concussion
Great 83 Points 2015

Mike Webster was a hero of mine, at a time when heroes were very, very influential in a young man’s life. Iron Mike Webster snapped the ball to Terry Bradshaw in four Super Bowls, all of which the Steelers won – my Steelers. He famously wore short-sleeves and no arm-pads to not get grabbed by def…

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WikChip Video ABC News covers Concussion
The Big Short
Great 66 Points 2015

The Big Short isn’t the Big Lie, but isn’t far from it either. The government hides just offscreen in Adam McKay’s seriocomic docudrama about the epic falsehoods that consumed the banking industry in 2008.

Falsehoods one and two were Washington’s ability to safely stimulate homeownership amo…

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WikChip Video Margot Robbie in a bubblebath
What Happened, ...
Great 66 Points 2015

Nina Simone’s name and presence had occasionally penetrated my consciousness and always piqued my interest. Happily, this well done documentary finally brought her consequential music and politics alive.

Dubbed the High Priestess of Soul, she was a unique and uniquely transfixing artist, fusin…

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WikChip Video Liz Garbus on her Nina Simone doc
Miles Ahead
Very Good 66 Points 2015

A moviestar who directs himself playing an iconic figure in a dramatic biopic has a fool for a leading-man. Don Cheadle provides proof of this as Miles Davis in Miles Ahead, following in the footsteps of Kevin Spacey, who stubbed his toe directing himself as Bobby Darin in the similarly flawe…

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WikChip Video Kind of Blue is Kind of Perfect
The Lady in the...
Pretty Bad 66 Points 2015

Even the great Maggie Smith can’t save The Lady in the Van. Let’s repeat: Dame Maggie can’t save it! Perhaps that’s because she plays an angry old woman who’s beyond saving, sad as that common sight is.

Disclosure: I saw The Lady in the Van on the little tilt-down screens of a 737. It kind…

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WikChip Image Dame Maggie gets wasted.
The Man Who Kne...
Really Great 66 Points 2015

Harry Potter echoes throughout The Man Who Knew Infinity, the biopic of Srinivasa Ramanujan, a math wizard from humble circumstances who rose to prominence at an opulent and august English institution. Set in the ornate halls of 1910s-era Trinity College, it profiles an amazingly able – and rea…

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WikChip Video Who was Ramanujan? Math Wizard
Abandoned
Very Good 17 Points 2015

Engaging and true against-all-odds tale about 4 men who survived on the capsized trimaran Rose-Noelle for 119 days in 1989. As it was at the time, it was hard to believe, but truth is stranger than fiction; or so they say. Dynamite job by the cast conveying what it must have been like to float a…

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Drunk Stoned Br...
Great 66 Points 2015

National Lampoon – the maidenhead of post-modern comedy – was the ultimate risqué magazine for “well-to-do nobodies” in the Seventies. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon lists in its title four conditions associated with the Lampoon, another being being ROFL. This gr…

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WikChip Video Doug Kenney, comedy genius
Joy
Great 83 Points 2015

Joy became more about Jennifer Lawrence than about Joy Mangano, the subject of this imaginative biopic. Even more, it became about JLaw reuniting with Bradley Cooper & Robert De Niro in a David O. Russell movie. Coming just three years after their Silver Linings Playbook

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WikChip Video The real Joy talks about the movie Joy.