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![]() Best. Mission: Impossible. Ever. Please Mr. Cruise, can we have another? Rogue Nation succeeds spectacularly well from the opening credits till the closing line, the very iconification of extremely entertaining action-movie hyper-reality. This fifth M:I movie is the first to envelope …
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Great Casting: CIA Chief Alec Baldwin
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![]() Monkey Kingdom is a joy of a documentary, easily beloved by young and old alike. More fun than a barrel of monkeys … er, sort of a barrel of monkeys come to life, it profiles lovable little Sri Lankan primates. These little macacas swing from each others’ tails, for goodness sakes. Yet the…
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This video sweetly captures the movie
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![]() 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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Who was Ramanujan? Math Wizard
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![]() Mongolian men have hunted with eagles for a millennium, an amazing partnership of human and raptor. Now the eagle hunters have welcomed a female, and a mere girl of 13 at that. This crisp documentary about that eagle huntress awes and uplifts in equal measure, the latter from its cheerful female …
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Drones were key to making the film.
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![]() Kingsman II is a fully-realized exercise in high style, low blows, expensive tricks and lots of big laughs. You could call it a brilliant blockbuster, in the British sense of brilliant: bright, bold, brisk, buttoned down.
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Country Roads is a great song.
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![]() The Salesman validates my love of movies by bringing to the screen a slice-of-life at once prosaic and yet theatrical, and insanely thrilling. It’s also familiar to a Western audience, though set in Iran. Yeah, it’s an Iranian movie, making it utterly fascinating to Westerners like me who are i…
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Asghar Farhadi describes his film
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![]() This great martial arts movie follows the beats and tropes of fictional king fu movies while burnishing the legend of Ip Man, a real life Grandmaster of Wing Chun kung fu and Bruce Lee’s teacher. The scene of an unarmed Master Ip facing down an armed Police Captain is a classic of the form. *I…
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Ip Man amid the Japanese occupation
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![]() The Chinese vs. the Japanese in the 16th century makes for a great martial-arts war movie, full of Shaolin vs. samurai, kung fu vs. karate. This Chinese production tells the tale from the Chinese POV, with Japanese pirates raiding peaceful Han Chinese villages and engaging in war crimes as part o…
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Serious Business
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![]() Finally, a USA friendly Iraq War movie, the novelty of which shows how far Hollywood has drifted from objective reality and obvious movie subjects. Wonder of wonders, a show of fellow Americans resolutely and professionally pursuing their liberation mission offers a tremendous adrenaline rush, a…
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SFC James: More gung ho than sane.
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![]() Now that my kids are grown, I don’t see many Disney movies, never mind re-makes of classics. In this case, I’m glad I decided to heed my whimsical choice. The Jungle Book was really well done, and John Favreau’s use of famous actors’ voices was spectacular. My favorite? Christopher Walkin as Kin… |