Movie Reviews
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier Play Cat and Mouse in "Love Crime"
Love Crime feels like the kind of film Claude Chabrol could (and sometimes did) make in his sleep: a sly divertissement about power and manipulation that inevitably leads to crime.
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
The Help: Better Than The Novel, But Does That Make It Good?
There are some high-end commercial novels with inflated literary reputations that actually become better on screen. Karen Joy Fowler’s strained chick-lit novel The Jane Austen Book Club was improved in Robin Swicord’s lived-in film. Now The Help has become an even more effective, big warm bath of a...
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Can Rachel Weisz Save "The Whistleblower"?
As we know from her role as the anti-big-pharma activist in The Constant Gardener, Rachel Weisz can perform a rare feat: playing socially-conscious heroines who are fierce and passionate without being self-righteous. In The Whistleblower she is so perfectly cast as a woman who stumbles across high-l...
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Magical Fiction Meets Real-Life Science in “State of Wonder” and “Jewels of the Jungle”
Ann Patchett’s glorious and highly praised new novel, State of Wonder, takes us on a dramatic journey into the Amazon along with her heroine, a laboratory researcher named Marina Singh. Marina is searching for a brilliant scientist, Dr. Annika Swenson, who has vanished into the depths of the jungle,...
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Caryn James1 commentlike0tweet0
Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell and Emma Stone Have Some "Crazy Stupid Love"
Some titles, like “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” or “Crazy Stupid Love,” make you say: Well, yeah, tell me something I didn’t know. So here is something unexpected: despite its generic premise, Crazy Stupid Love is warm and hilarious, a kaleidoscope of romantic misadventures with – of all people – R...
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Review, "Captain America": A Hero Bland as Milk
The least you can expect from a superhero is that he’ll be colorful and more dynamic than real life – it’s pretty much the job requirement – but if there is a more homogenized, blander hero than the new Captain America, I haven’t encountered him.
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Caryn James3 commentslike0tweet0
Review: “Harry Potter” and J.K. Rowling’s Cinematic Genius
“Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic,” Dumbledore tells Harry in the magnificent final installment of the Harry Potter series, but that sentiment doesn’t denigrate screen magic at all. J.K. Rowling’s writing has a visual, cinematic style to match her compelling narrative gifts, and th...
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Caryn James1 commentlike0tweet0
Horrible Bosses: Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis in the Real Hangover Sequel
Horrible Bosses is the funniest comedy since The Hangover – the real Hangover, not this year’s lame sequel. In fact, it is everything you might have wanted a Hangover sequel to be. The outlandish premise is carried by an ideal cast, with Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day as friends plott...
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Catherine Breillat's Enrapturing "Sleeping Beauty" Opens
With echoes of Alice in Wonderland, Catherine Breillat’s lyrical and thoughtful The Sleeping Beauty is a fantasy-driven journey through a girl’s awakening to sex and love; you don’t have to be a princess to relate. Now this beautiful, enrapturing film is finally arriving in theaters after having bee...
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Caryn James1 commentlike0tweet0
Rapt: French Thriller About Womanizing Mogul Echoes Strauss-Kahn
With unplanned but impeccable timing, this fascinating French thriller about a womanizing business mogul comes just in time to catch the latest Dominique Strauss-Kahn developments. The story is based on the 1978 case of Baron Edouard-Jean Empain (really unknown here), which fortunately has been upd...
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