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![]() Take Scarface with a grain of Salt to grok Colombiana. If only this cocaine mafia thriller approached the quality of its inspirations. It’s not that it’s bad. It was perfectly fine airplane entertainment. It’s just that the story and stunts aren’t clever enough to pay off their outrageo…
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Hot chick dishes out ultra-violence.
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![]() Clever and cliched at the same time, Man on a Ledge generates sufficient thrills to pass the time but not enough to seek it out. Sam Worthington plays a framed cop who concocts an elaborate stunt to prove his innocence. Per the title, he threatens to jump from a hotel ledge in midtown Manha…
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Beauty and the Mook
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![]() Oliver Stone loves making drug-trade movies, war movies and especially drug war movies. So a California drug war makes an ideal subject for his obsessions. Savages – the title flaunts its nihilistic appeal – fills the bill. Speaking of flaunting, Stone’s movie sports rich ingredients but nev…
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Salma Hayek -- Cleopatra Kingpin
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![]() A smalltime con artist reconnects with his reluctant son as they scam their way cross-country in $5 a Day. The whole thing has an understated lunacy to it that evokes a bygone era. $5 a Day has three main assets: classic Christo…
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Ageless Stone: charisma & sex appeal
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![]() Atlas tried, again. If only Part II was double the fun or carried twice the load of Part I. Instead, the new casting ends net neutral while the story remains mired in the Fifties. Plus the sheer weight of putting on an economic thriller remains overwhelming. Still, all hail the attempt….
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Beghe's Hank Reardon - hell of a man
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![]() Jack Reacher feels less like a movie and more like a mongo TV pilot, one sporting superstar charisma, huge production values and enough sociopathic violence to sicken half the country. Why the sick level of violence? For Reacher to brutally exterminate the bad guys, the bad guys have to prov…
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She was 5 months pregnant. Just saying.
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![]() Ghost stories should all be as good as Mama, as should Jessica Chastain performances. While the teens in Mama’s PG-13 demographic may not care about Chastain, we adults dragged along for the ride do. Fortunately everyone will value seeing a first-rate ghost story – spooky, startling, affectin…
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Nothing vulnerable about this Chastain
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![]() Some great acting and more than a little visual excitement make Dead Man Down a richly entertaining action thriller. Overcooked dialog and an undernourished plot make it more than a little disappointing. The reunion of Noomi Rapace – the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – with her direc…
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Must-see: the great Dominic Cooper
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![]() Spectacular calamity followed by impressive vengeance makes Olympus Has Fallen an amply satisfying cinematic experience. So what if it’s jingoism. It’s extremely well executed jingoism, by jingo! Patriotic action-movie fans – like me – happen to like this sort of button-pushing entertainment…
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Stunts and FX make the movie.
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![]() The Lone Ranger is Tonto’s movie. Good thing, since Tonto is played by Johnny Depp. Everybody knows this, just as everybody knows Johnny Depp is mighty white. Ironically, only in P.C. Hollywood would it be politically acceptable for a white guy to play an iconic Indian character in a 21st ce…
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Depp's look from a White painter, per...
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