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![]() White House Down is bombing at the box office, surprising both Hollywood and Channing Tatum fans.1 Stiff opening competition from The Heat is part of the reason, but this heavily hyped movie’s commercial coup de grâce is almost certainly its coup…
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Good running-mates. Bad platform.
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![]() A merely OK movie can still be enjoyable if it’s got something outstanding about it. Primo buddies do the trick in 2 Guns. The rest of the cast and film? Less than stellar and just OK. Plus the title doesn’t help. 2 Guns is too blunt – so 2 speak. I wanted to bump up my final summa…
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Perfect buddies do their thing in 2 G...
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![]() When it comes to grading Smokin’ Aces, I’m splitting the difference between Spaceghost’s Really Great and BrianSez’s Barely OK. My Good reflects the movie’s stellar cast and glimmering Vegas visuals. That said, it ain’t good in any moral sense. In fact it’s a sociopathic cesspool that not on…
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FBI partners Ryan Reynolds & Ray Liotta
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![]() Clint Eastwood does U.S. history – again, here essaying one of the 20th Century’s most consequential Americans. There were times during J. Edgar when it seemed to warrant a 4 Star Great, but couldn’t maintain it, falling back in the end to a respectable 3 Star Good. Thus, history buffs and fa…
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Handsome Couple, and Mother
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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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![]() The Sentinel came out in ‘06, halfway through Kiefer Sutherland’s bravura run as Jack Bauer on TV’s 24, the quintessential post-9/11 secret agent series. From there it’s a short hop to Secret Service mucky-muck in the Presidential Protective Division. Michael Douglas is also well-cast as his …
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There's only one moviestar in this shot.
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![]() Prime Clint, the reluctant avenging hero, forced here to battle a faulty heart and a cleverly playful serial killer. This understated classic proves that even Eastwood’s minor movies tend to be tautly paced, cleverly constructed and richly satisfying. The clever construction comes from the co…
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Wanda De Jesus: Clint loves strong wo...
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![]() Depp does Dillinger — directed by Mann, in Public Enemies. This was the most promising premiere of the summer, a perfect convergence of preeminent star in a role he was born to play – one of the most significant crime figures in American history – being directed by the maestro of high-style cr…
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Middle American Insouciance
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The Town – a beefy treat for fans of crime drama from Ben Affleck, now a writer-director-star triple threat. Staying close to his boyhood home, Affleck romanticizes bank robbers from the Irish-American projects adjacent to prosperous Boston. When one of them falls for the manager of a bank th…
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Ultimate Boston Movie: Robbing Fenway...
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