Category: drama
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The East [2013] ★★½
If you enjoy low-key movies, you’ll probably enjoy “The East”, the latest movie from writer Brit Marling and director Zal Batmanglij. Marling also plays the main character, Sarah Moss, an ex-F.B.I. operative who finds herself recruited by Patricia Clarkson to join her top-secret private intelligence firm. Her mission? Go undercover to join an eco-terrorist group called The East,…
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Captain Phillips [2013]
“Captain Phillips” stars Tom Hanks, whose name cannot be uttered without thinking of the Academy Awards. Fair enough. He’s one of the best actors of his generation. Now he’s teaming up with director Paul Greengrass (“The Bourne Trilogy”, “United 93”) to tell a story that made global headlines in 2009. Hanks plays Richard Phillips, captain…
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The Best Offer [2013] ★★★
Art, Mystery, obsession , betrayal. That’s “The Best Offer”, a Hitchcockian film that gets in your head and stays there. Geoffrey Rush, erasing all memories of “The Pirates of the Caribbean” series, delivers yet another memorable performance as Virgil Oldman, an art auctioneer who is well-known in the art world, so much in fact that his…
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Adore [2013] ★½
Embarrassingly bad drama set in Western Australia, where two best friends (Naomi Watts and Robin Wright) hook up with each other’s sons (say what?). Wright’s boy, Ian (Xavier Samuel), gets Watts in the sack first. Then Watts, angry as hell, thinks it’s only right to have sex with Wright’s son. Sounds sexy? Not really. With that cast,…
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Disconnect [2013] ★★★
Here’s a cautionary tale that starts in your face, and keeps coming at you right through the closing credits. That’s no easy achievement, especially when it’s a movie that deals with the dangers of social media (you heard me). In the style of “Magnolia”, “Crash” and “Babel”, first time feature director Henry Alex Rubin and his writer…
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Habbet Loulou [2013] ★★
What were they thinking? I kept asking myself that question as I plodded through the watchable but pointless first hour of this new Lebanese comedy/drama. Why bother naming your movie “Habbet Loulou” if the movie itself isn’t worthy of its title? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that writer director Layal M.Rajha simply wanted to transplant…
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Rush [2013] ★★★½
Nothing heats up the fall season like a Formula One movie directed by non other than Ron Howard (“Frost/Nixon”, “A Beautiful Mind”, “Apollo 13”) . “Rush”, starring Chris Hemsworth (aka Thor) and Daniel Bruhl (in a performance of a lifetime) is a knockout. At first, you’d think a car racing movie about two rivals wouldn’t…
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Runner Runner [2013] ★½
It takes a certain misdirection to make the talent of a good cast (Ben Affleck, Justin Timberlake and Gemma Arterton) disappear right before your eyes. “Runner Runner”, clumsily directed by Brad Furman (“The Lincoln Lawyer“) from a lousy script by Brian Koppelman and David Levien does exactly that. So what’s it about? That’s hard to…
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Prisoners [2013] ★★★½
Other films this year will have to try hard to match the explosive power and masterful direction of Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners”. His film sneaks up, messes with you head and leaves you breathless. Allow it. Yet on the surface, the plot sounds like an ordinary police procedural: Keller Dover’s (Hugh Jackman) six-year-old daughter, Anna, is missing,…
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The Hunt [2013] ★★★½
A powerful and thought provoking drama is rare during summer season. That’s what makes “The Hunt” so special, and I hope moviegoers will find their way to see it. It’s one of the year’s best films. Danish writer-director Thomas Vinterberg aims to shock his audience by telling the story of a divorced schoolteacher (Mads Mikkelsen, Le…
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Before Midnight [2013] ★★★½
We first met Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) in Vienna in “Before Sunrise”. To some, the movie was talky. To others (me included), it was unique and as far away as possible from the Hollywood formula. “Before Sunset” picked up 9 years later in Paris, where the two met again briefly before Jesse had…
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Spring Breakers [2013] ★★
How you feel about “Spring Breakers” will have a lot to do with your age and gender. If I were a hormonally charged 16-year-old boy, I might think it was a wish-fulfillment movie featuring lots of good-looking naked girls. Director Harmony Korine managed to convince a couple of Disney stars (ha!) to wear bikinis for 90 minutes…
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Arthur Newman [2012] ★★½
Colin Firth and Emily Blunt play Americans in this weird little movie from director Dante Ariola. “Arthur Newman” tells the story of one Wallace Avery (Firth as good as always), a man tired of his own existence who plans to fake his own death in order to change his identity. His new name (yep you guessed…
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Emperor [2012] ★★½
Interesting slice of World War II history has Tommy Lee Jones and Matthew Fox (“Lost”, “Vantage Point”) assigned to help rebuild Japan after the war and bring Emperor Hirohito (Takata rô Kataoka) to trial for war crimes. It’s a minor picture for sure, with a great performance by Jones, who is definitely the best thing in…
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The Great Gatsby [2013] ★★★
Months before its release, everyone was already talking about Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby”. So expectations were high, perhaps a bit too high. Early reviews however have been inordinately pissy and there’s no doubt that the movie is too long at 142 minutes, too reliant on its own visual experience in the first half hour…
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The Place Beyond The Pines [2013] ★★★½
Director Derek Cianfrance pours everything he knows about directing in “The Place beyond the Pines”. His movie messes with your head and then floors you. It’s that honest, that powerful. Describing the plot without giving too much away would be impossible. But you should know straight away that it’s a long, emotional ride. The movie is…
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Wadjda [2012] ★★★½
Can I tell you how thrilled I am that I got to see this movie? Part of the response comes from the excitement of discovery: a writer-director from Saudi Arabia,Haifaa Al Mansour, making her feature debut, and creating a movie that is both entertaining and thought provoking. The hype-meisters of moviedom have made it difficult to use words…
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Safe Haven [2013] ★★
People crave romantic movies, be they dramatic or funny (the box-office numbers prove it) and novelist Nicholas Sparks has provided the raw material for a number of such films including “Dear John”, “The Lucky One”, and most successfully, “The Notebook”. I think it’s fair to say that moviegoers know what to expect when they see one of these…
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The Master [2012] ★★★½
“The Master” makes it six-for-six for writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson, who follows “Hard Eight”, “Boogie Nights”, “Magnolia”, “Punch Drunk Love” and “There Will Be Blood” with his most ardent and ambitious movie yet. Anderson keeps a tight lid on his work so that audiences can approach his character-based dramas with a sense of discovery. Fair…
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The Paperboy [2012] ★½
Matthew McConaughey rises once again above the material as Miami Times reporter Ward Jansen who returns home to investigate the case of Hillary Van Wetter (a creepy John Cusack ), a prisoner about to be executed for killing a cop. Charlotte Bless (Kidman), a weird blonde with a hots for men on death row thinks Hillary is…
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