The first time I met Joseph Gordon-Levitt was for a picture called Manic, about a young man in crisis, over his head with anger issues. I still recall the marked intensity of the then nineteen-year-old, clad in skinny corduroys and a CBGB tee, and…
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of the most sensitive movies ever made about teenagers. At a time in American movies where teens are vapid aliens who speak/text in too-cool poseur dialogue de rigueur, Hollywood has reached its nadir in depicting the…
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Pitch Perfect almost is just that, a roaring comedy about dueling collegiate a capella teams featuring more laughs than just about any comedy this year, and that’s saying something in a year that’s brought us such offbeat gems as Safety Not Guaranteed and Ruby…
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There’s something immensely satisfying about Clint Eastwood’s current movie persona as the grizzled old man who has seen it all and has no patience for any of it. He did this curmudgeon in spite of himself routine in 2008’s Gran Torino to great effect,…
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You can’t dismiss a B-movie merely for its derivations from other movies—most are predicated upon familiar tropes that usually never fail to get the audience amped up, particularly in the case of horror movies, the genre of all genre movies. Cue the darkness, ominous…
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There’s no way to get through Craig Zobel’s superb Compliance without being agitated, impatient, upset even—it’s a difficult sit. It’s also the most discussion-worthy and provocative movie of 2012. There simply won’t be another movie that shakes us up like this, haunts us for…
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For a Good Time Call is alternately pushy and sweet, obnoxious and endearing, too broad yet at-times inspired, a Wild Sex Comedy featuring two perfectly nice young women who meet cute, despise each other and then become best-est friends. Oh, and they create a…
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Fine acting and an accomplished visual style give John Hillcoat’s Lawless, based on Matt Bondurant’s family memoir The Wettest County in the World, a much-needed boost to a fairly routine period picture about three Prohibition-era brothers running moonshine afoul of corrupt lawmen and heinous…
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