On May 26, 1977—a long time ago in a rural Michigan town pretty far away—I vividly recall seeing something called Star Wars on the first Saturday matinee of its opening weekend. As my mother and I arrived on that early summer afternoon, we were…
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Continuing his departure from conventional storytelling, Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder is a frustratingly abstract experience that’s either an accomplished piece of narrative minimalism or empty and underwritten. As much as I admire maverick Malick, one of the few American visionary directors left and…
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Disconnect is an unexpected and valuable achievement, a movie plugged into the zeitgeist of how we live and where we are right now, at this particular cultural moment. I can’t remember a recent picture about American life this insightful and gripping, or one that…
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The Place Beyond the Pines, filmmaker Derek Cianfrance’s follow-up to 2010’s Blue Valentine, is about the sins of fathers being visited on sons, fate and a particular kind of grittiness in the working class milieu of Schenectady, New York, depicted here as a dead…
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Much has been said about the supposed quality of the new Evil Dead picture, a remake of Sam Raimi’s crafty, 1981 low-budget chiller and drive-in mainstay, about twenty-somethings whose weekend cabin retreat results in demonic mayhem. Directed by first-time Uruguayan filmmaker Fede Martinez from…
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It’s not every day you find yourself chatting with the legendary Mitzi Gaynor, an entertainer bar none who, at 81, still has an ageless combination of wit, style, humor and, well, sizzle, that she had 55 years ago as kind-hearted romantic Ensign Nellie Forbush,…
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The not so fine line between satirizing and wallowing in excessive tits, ass and gunplay informs the wannabe provocation Spring Breakers, about four teenaged bimbos conquering South Florida in a hail of hedonism, or something like that. Written and directed by Harmony Korine (Gummo,…
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