You have to hand it to Ruby Sparks’ directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, partners in life raising a family, working fourteen-hour days together on set and then going home to dinner and teenagers before going right back to work together—apparently their secret formula…
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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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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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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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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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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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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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When meeting actor Joe Manganiello, any reaction less than, say, awe would probably be insufficient. Unlike most celebrities, who in person do not often resemble their 40-foot visages, the 6’5” rugged former athlete and Carnegie Mellon-schooled drama grad is the personification of a god,…
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Channing Tatum delivers a sensitive performance in Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh’s smart new picture about a star male stripper in Tampa who has the money, the women and the glory – but really just wants to settle down with a nice girl and start…
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