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![]() Two great movies, one bad title, The Place Beyond the Pines could lose 20 ticks and still be twice typical Hollywood fare. Ryan Gosling & Bradley Cooper play two guys on opposite sides of the law, whose paths cross to lethal effect. Both are conflicted and sympathetic. Neither is untarnishe…
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Eye Dropper TearTat -- nice touch
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![]() First of all it’s a Kurt Russell movie, always a good thing. Secondly, it’s tremendously assured, crisply created by a master movie craftsman. Last but not least, it portrays a classic grim-trigger game, where a dozen marooned guys have to kill one comrade after another upon determining that th…
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"Man is the warmest place to hide."
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![]() Dallas Buyers Club is another triumph for Matthew McConaughey. It’s also a vivid evocation of the gritty side of Dallas circa 1985, along with the chaos that accompanied the early years of the AIDS epidemic. However, like its lead character, the movie is self-satisfied to a fault, self-rightou…
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She's very popular in SF, NY and LA.
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![]() New addition to the boxing movie canon? Absolutely, complete with elemental title, elemental story and devastating performances. A female power story as much as a male one, Melissa Leo, Christian Bale and Mark Walhberg’s maternal-fraternal triangle pegs the meter for codependency. When Amy Ada…
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All in the (dysfunctional) Family
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![]() Guardians of the Galaxy is an overstuffed taco of a superhero movie, chockfull of countless characters, considerable whimsy and confounding story lines. The crazy-ass result approaches blockbuster perfection. Star Trek for a New Generation? Absolutely, complete with a basso-profundo destroy…
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Who are the Guardians of the Galaxy?
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![]() A lavish Hitchcock treat, full of glamour, suspense and wit. The establishing scene is a virtuoso display of filmmaking all by itself, while Grace Kelly graces – there is no other word for it – the silver screen like a goddess amongst mortals.
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![]() Popcorn movies should all be this strong. Channeling Indiana Jones’ 1940s movie tropes, Marvel’s First Avenger proves engaging from the outset, exciting from the middle and exhilarating to the end. Notwithstanding a pair of underwhelming leads, the overall strong cast, irony-free patriotism …
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Devastating parody of Nazi racial ins...
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![]() Who knew? The Brits no doubt, but we Yanks were unaware of the stammering tribulations that the current Queen Elizabeth’s father endured, let alone that England’s fortitude in World War II required him to overcome them. Most impressively, who would have guessed that this true story would make s…
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Brilliant and brilliantly entertaining.
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![]() A story of brothers ripped apart by revolution should be better than the formulaic The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Cloaked in the emerald charm of Ireland, yet curiously unengaging, it’s more socialist screed about the Irish republican revolution than ripping good yarn. The Irish revolutio…
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Brothers, close as can be, ripped apart
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![]() An immensely well done piece of agitprop, built around Sean Penn’s Best Actor performance and featuring Gus Van Sant’s most fully realized directing effort, this admirable biopic presents a world apart, yet right next door to the one in which most of us live and were raised. Straights needn’t …
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Sean Penn displays a lightness of being.
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