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The Big Short isn’t the Big Lie, but isn’t far from it either. The government hides just offscreen in Adam McKay’s seriocomic docudrama about the epic falsehoods that consumed the banking industry in 2008. Falsehoods one and two were Washington’s ability to safely stimulate homeownership amo…
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Margot Robbie in a bubblebath
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Middle-America clashes with Silicon Valley as much as a dad clashes with a future son-in-law in Why Him? This makes for a funny movie, with lots of LOLs and a side-splitting scene or two. Yet, it would have been funnier with a stronger cast, starting with a better comedic lead than James Franco…
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James Franco owes Keegan-Michael Key
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Looking for a real vampire movie? Baroque, bloody, bawdy, not to mention strict with the rules, Interview with the Vampire fits the bill. Indeed, Anne Rice’s celebrated novel led to a quintessential vampire movie: star powered, obsessively detailed and expansively imagined. Even mature movie…
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Feast Your Fangs, er... Eyes on This
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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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Like fine wine, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has gotten better with age. It was too cheesy when it came out, even for Star Trek, the ultimate in SciFi fondue. That was then, this is now. It’s set in the 23rd Century and now, when Now was 1986. I remember that ’86 Now just as I remember n…
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Sitting in a pickup on Marina Green: ...
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Big time action-comedies kind of got started with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in 48 Hrs. Big stars, big action, big laughs – big time. Walter Hill was an action guy, a Western action guy. Directing megahunk Nolte, with a never funnier Murphy, set in San Francisco, his big hit paved the way f…
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"New Sheriff in Town" Reggie Hammond
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In Old California is a simpleminded recreation of Old Sacramento in 1848 and then 1849, made in 1942. A quasi-historical tale, it mostly exists to showcase John Wayne looking quite-the-dandy, from Boston even. The settings are the thing now: pre-49er San Francisco and then up the river to Old…
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John Wayne, the Boston Dandy
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The Conversation was one of Francis Ford Coppola’s celebrated early Seventies movies, nominated for Best Picture and winner of the Palme d’Or. Deeply accomplished, occasionally fascinating, a time capsule of San Francisco from 1973, it nonetheless disappoints all these decades later. The min…
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Coppola talks 'The Conversation' in 1974
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Turn it up! I’d done just that right before an opening title card instructed “This film should be played loud!” You don’t say. Clapton, Van Morrison, Dylan, Muddy Waters, Neil Young, the Band: Of course turn it up. The Last Waltz has been lauded as a landmark concert film since it appeared i…
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There is a song of dream comfort.
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Frank Sinatra won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical as the womanizing nightclub singer in Pal Joey. Sandwiched between the glamorous Rita Hayworth and the luscious Kim Novak, he’s at his lounge-lizard best in this mid-century paean to pre-liberation sexual politics. It’s a wh…
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The Lady is a Tramp - Sinatra simmers
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