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![]() Dennis Lehane took a short-story set in his characteristic Boston and expanded it into a screenplay set in Brooklyn. This works, great writer that he is, even if the story’s legs don’t so much cohere as cohabitate. The Drop won’t cohabitate as among his best with Mystic River…
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Hardy & Schoenaerts play American.
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![]() Gone Girl stirs the pot, no doubt about that. Premiering amidst the NFL-stoked domestic violence uproar, this sordid thriller about a wife’s murder is akin to throwing gas on a fire. But never mind all that societal stuff, is it a good movie? Yes, a great one, albeit far from perfect. The es…
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Smile! Oops, maybe not.
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![]() Channing Tatum’s tortured performance as Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler Mark Schultz anchors Foxcatcher. Mark Ruffalo and Steve Carell orbit above him as Dave Schultz, his older brother and fellow Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler, and John du Pont, the crazy rich guy who murdered one of…
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Steve Carell masterfully plays this guy.
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![]() Saving Private Ryan has a new neighbor atop the pantheon of Great American War movies. Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper and Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper illuminates the reality of America’s 21st century war as never before, just as Steven Spielberg’s classic did about the Greatest Generation’s …
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10 Questions with the real Chief Kyle
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![]() So big it came down to YES or NO. A national referendum on authoritarian rule, YES or NO? NO won, a shock to Chile, many Latinos and the world. Turns out that pop was the way to nail the weasel. The weasel was General Augusto Pinochet, the strongman who had fixed the economy but crushed diss…
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Selling Liberation Like Toothpaste
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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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![]() Best. Star Trek. Ever.Some may grade it Perfect, understandably so. Me, I grade Star Trek Into Darkness a tick above its Great predecessor – Really Great and the best Star Trek ever. If J.J. Abrams sees fit to include the perfect Star Trek theme music before the closing credits of h…
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Spock in the volcano
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![]() Pity The Iceman – the movie, not the Mafia hitman. Great mob movies are broadly treasured, even more when they’re about real guys who committed real crimes. And yet this one has flown under the radar. Six-four, with big Polish hands, the Iceman could take anybody and often did, mostly unde…
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Serious Business
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![]() The title sucks, but the movie rocks. Rox tops sux. How does it rock? Let us count the ways.
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Issues? He's got a few.
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![]() Blood begets blood as a Bangkok blood feud drives waves of retribution in artistic director Nicholas Winding Refn’s crime thriller Only God Forgives. Think Drive crossed with Bronson, set in Asia. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, imagine Ryan Gosling in a savagely violent, brooding…
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Makes the Wicked Witch seem nurturing
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