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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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![]() Hollywood’s greatest confection is and has always been Hollywood, a reality that the fabulous imagery of Sunset Blvd. celebrates better than any movie before or since. Oh yeah, it’s also a hell of a lot of fun, a black & white cauldron of irony, ambition and beauty, full of devilish turns and …
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A Hyperbolic Trailer That Doesn't Ove...
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![]() Comic genius, thy name is Seth MacFarlane, the writer, director and voice of Ted, a wildly ill-behaved “living” teddybear. The movie’s conceit is that a grown man’s arrested development gets enabled by this magical best buddy, who has taken on nothing but bad habits since leaving chronological…
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Ted cops a feel. Isn't he cute?
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![]() Thérèse is a great film by the great Claude Miller of the great French novel Thérèse Desqueyroux, 1927. Think of it as Madame Bovary in the pine forests of Southwest France. Only Thérèse barely has sex, let alone affairs. Talk about a banal life. Look at her stunning poster visag…
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Taking in their combined estate.
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![]() The American President succeeds grandly as a romantic comedy and ironically as a revealing peek into cushy Democratic pieties, of which Aaron Sorkin and Rob Reiner’s 1990s movie is a cinematic catechism. It focuses on a likeable man in the third year of his Presidency who is animated primari…
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Cushy Left Wing values turned up to 11.
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![]() Woe is me – what I felt watching The Company Men, perhaps because that’s how its characters felt. Notwithstanding its glorification of self-pity, the movie tells a surprisingly good story, touching on many familiar elements of our current woeful economy. People living beyond their means, in…
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Formerly fatuous: Costner & Affleck
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![]() Less an LOL comedy than one that keeps you in a semi-sustained semi-grin, The Family has lots to like if not enough to love. Luc Besson’s Mafia satire does score easily and often, with major stars delivering most of its best lines. They each shine brightly, though not in the order you might e…
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Dickhead boys get taught a lesson.
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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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![]() 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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![]() The Hundred-Foot Journey is a feel-good, foodie movie starring Helen Mirren set in provincial France. Mature date-night movie choices get no safer. Predictable as a brasserie menu, it’s equivalently satisfying.
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Well Put Together Woman
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