James Wan’s splendidly creepy, first-class haunted house picture The Conjuring is a welcome throwback to a genre all but forgotten by Hollywood’s labored, modern CGI thrillers. Featuring expert craftsmanship that makes superlative use of light, darkness, sound and production design, The Conjuring is a high-order…
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Please join us for a very special post-film discussion with Merry Clayton, star of the new documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, and one of the most famous back-up singers of all time. In addition to her chilling vocals on the Rolling Stones legendary 1969…
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There’s nothing new in World War Z, the reportedly troubled movie adaptation of Max Brooks’ zombie apocalypse novel, transformed here into a rousing action picture that plays like a mash up of 28 Days Later and Contagion. Yet capably directed by Marc Forster and…
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Richard Donner can relax. Charmless, soulless and assaultive, the misfire Man of Steel treads familiar ground—the origin of Superman and his battle with General Zod—replacing both the spirit and mythology of the icon with an angsty identity crisis and a lot of loud explosions…
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In two films together, writer-actress Brit Marling and writer-director Zal Batmanglij have explored issues of identity, and both spiritual and cultural alienation. Distinct and intelligent, both 2011’s Sound of My Voice, about a mysterious Los Angeles cult leader (the transfixing Marling) and their new…
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The East, a thought-provoking thriller about a secret agent that infiltrates an “eco-terrorist” faction targeting billion-dollar corporations culpable in some very dirty deeds, is a hell of a provocative picture, a spy movie that forces us to reexamine our notions of terrorism. Co-written by…
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Dave Franco looks and sounds a bit like a certain older brother we all know and love. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the charming younger Franco—currently carving out an impressive movie career in big screen comedies like 21 Jump Street,…
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Now You See Me is a movie with very little story or character, but a hell of a lot of plot and pizzazz. And that’s mostly okay in this piffle of a caper film, the kind of high-concept contemporary movie-movie that operates in a…
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It’s a very rare movie that presents a character you want, above all costs, to be happy. And What Maisie Knew, the moving new adaptation of Henry James’ 1897 novel of a young girl in peril, is such a film. In the center of a…
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Note: This review contains plot spoilers. A mostly disappointing sequel to the gleaming 2009 series reboot, Star Trek Into Darkness is a movie that gives us a recycled villain, by-the-numbers directing and nothing new from the J.J. Abrams canon. It’s serviceable and enlivened by…
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