Of the many pleasures writer/director Paul Weitz delivers in his terrific new movie, Grandma, starring a Lily Tomlin in a performance for the ages as a broke, lesbian poetess reconciling her past after her eighteen-year-old granddaughter shows up seeking help with an abortion, is…
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What does it mean to be truly tested? Perhaps what scares you may be the only way to find out, a familiar theme for filmmakers John Erick and Drew Dowdle, the successful brother act who have delivered an impressive slate of horror pictures including…
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The pleasure of meeting Greta Gerwig is all about energy. Her energy, that is. Just sitting casually across from you on a sofa, as she is today with me during a chat at Chicago’s Park Hyatt hotel, the screenwriter and actress radiates a sort…
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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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The lost art of screen presence has not been lost on France’s biggest star, Omar Sy, the charismatic movie star who won the Cesar for his moving work in 2011’s The Intouchables and returns this month as Samba, a down-on-his-luck, undocumented Senegalese immigrant living…
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The first thing you notice upon meeting Rebecca Ferguson, the Golden Globe-nominated actress currently starring with Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, is how exquisitely poised she is—perfect hair, eyes, skin, posture and near-melodious greeting. But as soon as I inform her that…
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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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Adam Scott, the affably winning charmer of the hit series Parks and Recreation, has spent over twenty years in the movie business etching sharp funnymen in pictures like Knocked Up and Step Brothers and compelling everymen in more serious outings like The Secret Life…
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