Movie Reviews
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Caryn James1 commentlike0tweet0
Review, "Last Night": Keira Knightley In An Enjoyable Little Romance
From its long delay in getting here, you’d expect the 2009 Keira Knightley romantic drama, Last Night, to be a disaster, but not at all. It’s merely small and slight, the kind of blithe little relationship film that feels more European than American.
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Caryn James15 commentslike0tweet0
Review: Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon's Film Lumbers Like An Elephant
I’m sure the filmmakers didn’t mean to take the title so much to heart, but this would-be romantic drama is as lumbering as an elephant. Somehow Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon have lost their usual sparkle, and even a circus in the background can’t save us from the tedium that is Water for E...
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Caryn James1 commentlike0tweet0
The Bang Bang Club: Harrowing Drama About Photojournalists, Timelier Than Ever
With powerful immediacy, and an eerie resonance with today’s headlines, The Bang Bang Club takes us into the dangerous world of combat photography. Set in South Africa in 1994, the drama is based on the real lives of four men who photographed the violence just before that country’s first non-aparthe...
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Caryn James5 commentslike0tweet0
Defending "The Conspirator"
I found Robert Redford's The Conspirator to be haunting and effective – far from the history lesson disguised as a movie that I’d been reading about since it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year. As Mary Surratt, the woman accused of conspiring in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Robin ...
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Caryn James2 commentslike0tweet0
Review: Even James Franco and Natalie Portman Can't Save One-Joke "Your Highness"
There’s something wonderful and goofy about a film that has James Franco in a long wig and a codpiece sending up legendary heroes, as the Medieval Prince Fabious, and Natalie Portman as a slender, vengeful warrior with the toughness of an Amazon. But that wit doesn't go far in Your Highness, a spora...
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Caryn James5 commentslike0tweet0
Review, Hanna: A Fairy Tale Princess As Thrillling Action Heroine
I didn’t think Joe Wright had it in him. In Hanna he leaves behind the polite literary pieces he’s known for – he directed Atonement and the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice – and comes through with a thrilling action movie about a teenaged girl trained to kill. He hasn’t entirely lost his liter...
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
Movie Review: Bradley Cooper Cleans Up Well in Limitless
Looking at Bradley Cooper for a couple of hours is never a bad thing, so there’s that. Otherwise, Limitless starts off as an ambitious, gripping, quasi-sci-fi thriller and turns into an over-the-top mess.
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
Movie Review, Paul: Seth Rogen's Voice, E.T.-Shaped Skull
Paul, the CGI alien with Seth Rogen’s voice, is an irresistible creature. With an E.T.-shaped head and big blue eyes, he wears cargo shorts and flip-flops, smokes a cigarette, and best of all has Rogen’s deadpan delivery. When Paul appears to two British fan boys - so geeked out they’ve just left C...
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Caryn James1 commentlike0tweet0
Movie Review: Matthew McConaughey's Roguish "Lincoln Lawyer"
As a lawyer who’s a half-step away from being a scam artist, Matthew McConaughey’s character works every angle for his clients in The Lincoln Lawyer, just as McConaughey works every scene in this legal thriller. There’s nothing ambitious about it, but this sleek, commercial suspense movie is much mo...
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Caryn James7 commentslike0tweet0
Review, "Red Riding Hood": How to Make "Twilight" Look Good
“It appeals to the 14-year-old girl in me,” Gary Oldman told Conan O’Brien about the new Red Riding Hood from Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke. Oldman, who plays a mysterious, menacing wolf-hunter in the film, probably knows that 14-year-olds are the only possible audience for this clunky mess...
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