The Avengers has come and gone, and now we get to see Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) dealing with the trauma he apparently experienced in New York. He has insomnia, and it strains both his work on the latest Iron Man suit as well as his relationship with Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow). His bodyguard Happy...
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  Most people think of action stars as some kind of larger-than-life testosterone-powered male: Bruce Willis, Jason Statham and Arnold Schwarzenegger all come immediately to mind. But I like it when movies break stereotypes and give us an action star in a much different package. Children can be used for something other than creeping...
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I’m not sure whether the appropriate genre for Pain & Gain is either comedy or thriller, but I am sure that it’s a story that the cosmos made specifically for Michael Bay. There’s bulked-up dudes, strippers, midgets, stereotypical gay guys, Miami, explosions, slow-motion, and cocaine and the ’90s. Mark Wahlberg is Daniel Lugo, a...
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With Trance, Danny Boyle brings the audience a dark and brooding psychological thriller in which nobody and nothing is as it seems. The less said about the intricate plot, the better. A few indulgent words can easily topple the fragile house of cards that serves as plot in the movie. Simon (James McAvoy) works...
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The opening, a long tracking shot that follows motor stuntman “Handsome” Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), as he makes his way through the carnival, lighting cigarettes, pushing through the crowd, enterting the appointed tent, fastening his helmet, and buzzing in the cage with two others, is one of the best — and will likely remain...
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It’s Jurassic Park. I still have my toy T-Rex from 1993 — and it still roars! I know pretty much all of Jeff Goldblum’s lines by heart and am working my way through memorizing Wayne Knight’s. I, like many others, am still pissed that Muldoon gets treated the way he does. Jurassic Park was...
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The first time I met Roger was in the Lake Screening Room. I had just moved to Chicago and done a few reviews at the AMC East and on Michigan and the old Kerasote. This was a guy I’d been reading all my life, writing down notes about which “Great Movies” to see, which...
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When I told my girlfriend I was off to review to the new Stephenie Meyer movie and that, having seen one of the Twilight movies, I had low expectations, she responded, “It could be worse. She could have teamed up with Nicholas Sparks.” “Good point!” I said, and then, a half hour into the...
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I had a soft spot for 2009′s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and I have a soft spot for this, even with its flaws. If you remember the end of the last film (and never mind if you didn’t), Zartan is impersonating the President of the United States in one step of Cobra...
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Die Hard on a White House. That’s basically it right there. You have your former law enforcer — here his name is Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) and he used to be Secret Service assigned to protect the President (Aaron Eckhart). During a snowstorm, Some Damn Thing hit the Presidential Limo’s windshield and fishtailed the...
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Silly, silly fun. There’s not much of a plot — The Croods are a family of cave-dwellers whose home is threatened by earthquakes; the dad Grug (Nicolas Cage) is over protective; the daughter Eep (Emma Stone) is curious; they meet up with a smarty-pants guy named Guy (Ryan Reynolds) who teaches them the secret...
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Despite having a poster that looks as dangerously banal as The Switch, Admission is so charming that it doesn’t need many jokes. The star, of course, is one of the most charming people working today, Tina Fey, who really should play Dorothy Parker some time. Here, however, she’s Portia Nathan, an admissions officer at...
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The film opens with Chris Nicola, a government employee with a passion for cave-diving. During one of his trips exploring the “gypsum giants” of the Ukraine, he discovers a handful of artifacts — a boot, a lantern — that have no business being there. Back in town, he asks the locals if they know...
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Lest we forget, Harmony Korine is the guy who got his start writing Larry Clark’s Kids, a film whose characters drank, did drugs, had sex, beat up strangers — all very adult things — and was slapped with an NC-17 rating and a heap of controversy because its characters were all, well, kids. Eighteen...
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Ginger and Rosa is populated with the kind of people you dream of being as a teenager but come to hate once you get a job. That the movie portrays them so accurately is a credit; that it romanticizes them cannot be helped. The director, Sally Potter, may be drawing on nostalgic memory, as...
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Stoker is a film at odds with itself. On paper, it’s a slick piece of neo-gothic thrills, parading its Jane-Eyre/Mysteries of Udolpho (and more) influences, with red rooms, sinister-seeming relatives, fogged-out basements, and driblets of blood. More plot-fully speaking, you have the mysterious death of a loved one, in this case the father Richard...
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On the one hand, there’s a revenge thriller with shootouts, car chases, detective work, and a dynamite climax. On the other, there’s a woefully underwritten love story that can’t think of anything else but to have the leads stare at each other. And not the meaningful kind of staring either — Farrell spends about...
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We decided to take a look at some moments from fashion TV to look forward to in 2013. They range from the iconic to the ironic. Check out our selections … Fashion designer Anna Sui doesn’t care much for the attitude she sees from design contestants on reality TV shows. “Its kind of skewing...
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