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![]() Great – if sadly flawed – exploration of the early California oil industry, dramatized through the exploits of an entrepreneurial ogre. A Chinatown for Oil, the movie serves as fascinating Golden State period piece and socialist screed, decrying the imagined crimes of tycoons as it celebrates … |
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![]() State-of-the-art big screen adventure, not perfect or even great, but culturally significant and plenty of fun. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull starts off beautifully, naturalistically, drawing you in for the surrealism to come, then sustaining this state of grace until ro… |
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![]() America. My theory is that Forrest Gump serves as personification of the early baby boomers, i.e. of the America of that era. Naive, idealistic, rambunctious, Forrest’s life functions as allegory for the cultural journey of the generation that came of age during the 60s. Whether you buy that…
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Lovely Hanks
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![]() More SNL than it should be, Anchorman nonetheless lives up to its legend as a modern comedy classic. Snarky humor aside, it’s almost as fun watching it now to pick out the bit players who have gone on to comedy stardom – Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Seth Rogen and Vince Vaughn among them. “Ja…
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A Top 10 Anchorman lines
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![]() Valkyrie is an ultimate Nazi movie hamstrung by a lack of Germans: As victors, the Americans and British get to write the history of WWII, but they should at least have used Teutonic actors for this German Army story. Instead Allies play Krauts in Bryan Singer’s movie, complete with more Briti…
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The real Stauffenberg snaps to for Hi...
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![]() Seventy percent LOL, a sly script and exuberant sex & drugs & rock & roll make Pirate Radio a highly entertaining movie. (To be fair, sex & drugs aren’t shown, just celebrated.) Redoubtable comedic auteur Richard Curtis bases his movie on real events, bringing it to life with a terrific ensem…
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"Let's pull the plug on the love gren...
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Pollock – Portrait of the Artist as a Neurotic Genius Jack the Dripper reanimates in Ed Harris’s masterful movie about Modern Art anti-hero Jackson Pollock. A drinker as well as a dripper, Pollock defined `40s and `50s artistic chic. “Too neurotic” in his own words to fight in WWII (…
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Dripper Drinker: "Don't use the accid...
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![]() Goodbye Children – the final words of a heroic priest as he’s led away by a Jew-hunting Gestapo agent – forms a fitting title for this beautifully realized recounting of writer-director Louis Malle’s childhood experience during the Nazi occupation of France. Au Revoir les Enfants – _Goodbye …
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"Goodbye Father" "Goodbye Children"
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![]() The first great movie of 2013 is Gangster Squad. Oh great, what we’ve got here is a movie featuring a bunch of Hollywood Liberals gunning down loads of people with weapons they’d like to ban in real life, all in the name of entertainment. Only in America. OTOH, what’s great is a richly p…
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Bogie & Bacall? Gosling & Stone
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![]() The brilliant Darren Aronofsky got his start with Pi, a low budget thriller about a math genius who holds the key to success for two secretive groups. The movie starts off wonderfully disturbing, later depicting a severe psychotic incident that’s not so wonderful, that’s very disturbing actual…
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Samia Shoaib should be a star.
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