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![]() Lesser Tim Burton and greater Michael Keaton add up to a fitfully funny fantasy. Keaton nails the title role, a ghost-for-hire paid to chase off pesky humans. If only he were onscreen for more of the movie. Burton achieved greater comic-horror results with Edward Scissorhands…
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Somebody get this man a microphone.
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![]() Anyone who’s dealt with an elderly parent will be charmed by Robot & Frank, a gentle and deft SciFi comedy. Perhaps the best Alzheimer’s movie yet, though the A Word is never mentioned, it carries an emotional kick that leavens it in the end, elevating it to more than just a lark. The gre…
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Teaching a robot to pick a lock
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![]() Dial M for Murder is lesser Hitchcock, yet worth watching for its classic tropes, timeless title and for Grace Kelly. But, the convoluted and constrained plot is insufficiently removed from its stage play roots.
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Hitch loved blond: Grace Kelly's Gold...
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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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![]() King of the Hill is a real life Little Rascals, what with pipsqueak brothers living alone during the Great Depression. Amazingly, it’s the truthy autobiography of A.E. Hotchner, Paul Newman’s pal and business partner. Even if fictional, it would still charm and enlighten, as it’s a perfect fi…
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Charming and Enlightening
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![]() A finely observed familial drama about siblings dealing with the death of their mother and the disposition of their museum-like childhood home, Summer Hours disdains standard movie drama. It’s edgeless, a film for two mature cohor…
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Mother and Daughter of Privilege
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![]() Senior citizen cinema is experiencing somewhat of a boomlet now. Quartet typifies the trend, spinning a gently comedic story about old flames who reunite in a retirement home for musicians and opera singers. It’s a pleasant enough movie, albeit too formulaic to be really interesting.
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Now that's a retirement home.
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![]() The House on Telegraph Hill is a triumph of art direction. That’s good. It’s also unintentionally campy. That’s bad. The result is a just OK movie, yet one that belongs in the San Francisco Cinema Hall of Fame. The views are marvelous. And the views are the thing with San Francisco real…
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Grt Views, Lrg House, fake Telegraph ...
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![]() Hail The Conquering Hero is a welcome stop on the Tour de Sturges, even if not one of the best. The Greatest Generation dealt with challenge differently than we 2nd Millenniums do, to put it mildly. Preston Sturges made Hail The Conquering Hero during World War II, right after the Marines…
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Demarest turns Bracken into a hero
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![]() Women rule The Help. They rule the Junior League, they rule their roosts and they rule each other. Some are white and privileged, most of whom behave in ugly ways. Others are black and disenfranchised. Their world seems far away, yet existed a mere 50 years ago in the Jim Crow South. Vie…
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Someone get this woman an Oscar!
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