MovieSorter

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Blindspotting
OK 66 Points 2018

Oaktown gets its closeup in Oakland-native Daveed Diggs’s Blindspotting. Diggs cowrote the movie with costar Rafael Casal, a Berkeley native. So they know the Town, including its many contradictions. Unfortunately, their film stumbles often, coming across as a clumsy imitation of Atlanta, Don…

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Megan Leavey
Very Good 83 Points 2017

This is a damn good Iraq War movie, apolitical and told through the eyes of Marines who walked through the sands of hell. Plus, it’s a great Marine Corps movie overall. So why did it flame out at the theaters?

Start with the bad title. Megan Leavey is easy to say once you hear it, but is kin…

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WikChip Video The real Megan & Rex at Yankee Stadium
Father Figures
Good 66 Points 2017

Father Figures gets in touch with the inner child lurking just below the surface of several grown men, making it an emblematic comedy of our infantilized time. Fortunately, it’s a pretty funny one, worth a play.

There’s one terrific scene, when an unusually confident Ed Helms picks up an unu…

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WikChip Video Bradshaw & Simmons: Father Figures
The Greatest Sh...
OK 66 Points 2017

The Greatest Showman is …who again… Hugh Jackman or P.T. Barnum? This is Barnum’s biopic but Jackman’s show, designed to feature who? Jackman, singing and strutting as only Hugh Jackman can do.

The Greatest Showman’s greatest problem is that Jackman likes to be liked. Unfortunately, lik…

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WikChip Video "Everything you'll ever want?" Uh, no.
Daddy's Home 2
Great 83 Points 2017

The professional critics are wrong. Daddy’s Home 2 is a very funny and wickedly entertaining movie. Sure, it’s also shallow and morally repugnant, a perfectly polished expression of Hollywood Family Values. Beware and enjoy. Funny is funny, and this daddy-fest is a consistent LOL-fest. My packe…

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WikChip Video Modern dads put their foot down over ...
Get Out
Really Great 83 Points 2017

Get Out melds edgy African-American humor with classic horror movie tropes, the admixture delivered with near Hitchcockian mastery. That’s how Jordan Peele’s brilliant movie brings the Black Lives Matter sensibility to horrific life. The conceit is not that whites don’t care if blacks live or d…

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WikChip Video The multifaceted Mr. Peele
Spider-Man: Hom...
Really Great 83 Points 2017

Spider-Man hasn’t lacked great reboots, but this third is the greatest yet. It’s the most High School by far, if not the first set in that adolescent crucible. Mostly, Spider-Man: Homecoming benefits by being the first Spider-Man movie to be produced by Marvel, odd though that may seem.

Marv…

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WikChip Video Better Backstage Banter
Good Time
Great 66 Points 2017

Good Time is a helluva good time movie, if your taste in movie entertainment includes sickly funny slices of life from the underbelly of society. Mine does, for better or worse, so this demented masterpiece struck me and most of my entire theater as OMG and increasingly LOL pretty much all the …

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WikChip Video No more making fun of Robert Pattison
Battle of the S...
Really Great 66 Points 2017

Battle of the Sexes is a terrific movie about a sociological sensation that was as fun as it was important, and it was very, very important. Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King was that big. The movie illuminates not just the sexual politics at play, but also early seventies mass media and a much …

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WikChip Video Fun & Insightful
Marshall
Great 66 Points 2017

The American hero who almost single-handedly defeated institutional racism personified his unique first name. Lots of Marshalls, just one Thurgood, which is why Marshall is a poor title for this stirring biopic. OTOH, Thurgood sounds like a thoroughly good historical drama about Thurgood Mars…

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WikChip Video Thurgood Marshall, American action hero