So Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew are back. Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and his crew are back. And some new faces, Hobbs’ partner Riley (Gina Carano) and villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) dd to the franchise’s ever-growing roster. I thought the vast number of characters would be too much of a distraction...
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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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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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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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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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