The exhilaration of Straight Outta Compton, one of the year’s best movies, is that of a good story, well-told with vivid performances and a stirring, contemporary sociopolitical context. Charting the rise, fall and rise of seminal hip hop forerunners N.W.A., director F. Gary Gray…
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If any remaining proof of Hollywood’s creative bankruptcy should be required, the more-is-less Terminator: Genisys should put the issue to bed once and for all. An all-out assault on both the senses and storytelling, this overblown mess of a movie appropriates entire chunks of…
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A good-natured sex farce about the insecure male ego and flirting with marital experimentation, The Overnight is a cheerfully raunchy ode to ennui and swinging that is revolutionary in its own small ways. Light as a feather but no less enjoyable—actually quite enjoyable—this broad…
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The latest entry in the haunted family saga of otherworldly entities and vengeful spirits, Insidious: Chapter 3 is notable for one reason, and a good one—veteran character actress Lin Shaye as reticent medium Elise Rainier. If awards were given for performances in genre films—and…
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The most imaginative and directorially accomplished movie of the year, Mad Max: Fury Road is a hell of a vision from director George Miller, 70 and at the peak of his powers, upending the action genre by delivering an antithetical, feminist war cry that…
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Oliver Assays’ Clouds of Sils Maria is an opaque conceptual trip, a thematically dense exercise in self and industry reflections, a nod to both Fassbinder and Bergman and a showcase for its actresses, namely Juliette Binoche as an internationally renown actress undergoing an identity…
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The creepy teen cyber thriller Unfriended is patently ludicrous and low-concept—six teens connected via video chat are stalked and dispatched by an Internet troll that turns out to be the vengeful ghost of their bullied best friend, who killed herself over their online taunting.…
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