Ruby Sparks

Fantasy and reality collide in Ruby Sparks, a fractured love story about a wunderkind young novelist suffering from writer’s block who manifests his perfect muse from the keys of a battered old typewriter.  What he does with her once she arrives is what makes…

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Trishna

Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna, a retelling of Thomas Hardy’s classic 1871 novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles set in modern-day India, is a sumptuous picture featuring a solid performance from the very beautiful Freida Pinto as the tragic heroine struggling with issues of love and class. …

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The Dark Knight Rises

I’m not sure it’s possible for any movie to live up to the deafening din of hype and expectation faced by Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, on the heels of its 2008 predecessor’s $1 billion haul at the box office and legion of…

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Take This Waltz

Michelle Williams has such a delicate, cherubic emotionality, fully writ on her peaches and cream cheeks, always dancing on the edge of great vulnerability—she really has emerged as perhaps one of the very best of her young generation.  Her tour-de-force as Marilyn Monroe in…

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Beasts of the Southern Wild

Is it enough to just say that Beasts of the Southern Wild, this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner that also captured the Caméra d’Or at Cannes, is the best American film of 2012?  Part coming-of-age story, part anthropological examination, part story of community…

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Savages

Oliver Stone’s Savages is being hailed as a return to form for the maverick filmmaker, and in telling the lurid tale of two Southern California pot dealers ensnared in a vicious Mexican cartel, he pulls out all the stops—beheadings, torture, steamy sex, dirty double-crosses,…

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The Amazing Spider-Man

The cynic in me says that The Amazing Spider-Man, the reboot of the Marvel movie franchise that comes just seven years on the heels of the last film in the series, 2005’s Spider-Man 3, is merely a studio marketing move to cash in on…

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