In the previous millennium, when I was an idealistic young thing attending Barnard College, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University, there was a lot of talk about who before us had walked the hallowed halls: anthropologist Margaret Mead, writers Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zora Neale Thurston, Francine du Plessix Gray, Patricia Highsmith and...
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What ultimately surprised me about this comedy is how sweet it is underneath the prickly premise. Based on a more scathing French film called The Dinner Game (1998), this Dinner has been toned down a bit for American audiences but it still has a bit of bite. Paul Rudd plays Tim, a mild mannered...
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“The Kids Are All Right” opens with shots of 18-year-old Joni (a wonderful Mia Wasikowska) playing Scrabble with friends and 15-year-old Laser (Josh Hutcherson) sniffing a crushed Sudafed with his skateboarding buddy Clay, all to Vampire Weekend’s “Cousins.” Joni and Laser are gorgeous, smart and nice. Despite the minor drug use and usual teenager...
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Huston doesn’t give much time to Key Largo in his autobiography, save for sharing his dissatisfaction with Warner Brothers in the late 1940s and some epic stories of his gambling debts. Offhandedly he mentions that it was nominated for Best Picture and Claire Trevor won the award for Best Supporting Actress. What small part...
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Let’s take care of this right away. If you cannot move beyond a really ridiculous plot in a movie, don’t bother going to see Salt. If you are the type of person to give such things a pass, you might have a pretty good time at Salt. It’s common knowledge that the lead role...
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Almost six decades of children have grown up with Ramona Quimby, the precocious heroine of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona book series. Ramona and Beezus was published in 1955, but Cleary didn’t flesh out the series until well into the 1970′s. This new film adaptation is based on Ramona Forever, which was published in 1984. Ramona...
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I finally got to view the documentary Best Worst Movie. Most film types had an opportunity to see it at various festivals last year, and now the movie is showing in limited engagements across the nation. If it comes to your town, see it, immediately. Best Worst Movie is funny, poignant, awkward, endearing, and...
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After The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre is probably Huston’s most famous film—the two may vie for the title of best known. It’s a great movie in the sense that The Godfather and Casablanca are great movies: memorable characters, rich in themes, steep in action, imminently watchable. The kind of “old” movie...
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Cyrus is the kind of independent movie that makes me love independent movies, so it might seem paradoxical that I don’t want to write this review. I just want to tell you to go directly to your nearest theater and see it, without knowing anything about it beforehand. But I do have to write...
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I guess statistically speaking, it was bound to happen. If you see enough movies, eventually you are going to witness a great movie that just doesn’t do it for you. Such was the case with Inception. I was poised to love the movie and declare it a cinematic masterpiece, if not one of my...
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