Movie Reviews
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
Sundance-At-Home Film Review: Visceral Australian Drama “Mad Bastards”
Set in the isolated Kimberley region of Western Australian, director Brendan Fletcher’s gripping, unsentimental father-son film is even more intriguing when you know its background. Mad Bastards follows three generations: 13-year old Bullet, a budding arsonist; his grandfather, Tex, a police officer...
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
Sundance-At-Home Film Review: Gregg Araki's "Kaboom"
Here’s a line you’re not likely to hear in any other story of college love gone wrong. Smith, a bisexual freshman, tells his worried best friend Stella about her ex-girlfriend: “Dude, you have a fatal-attraction stalker with supernatural powers – you have every right to be freaked out.” Kaboom is th...
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
The Company Men: Best on Screen This Weekend
A year after it played at Sundance, The Company Men opens wider today, with Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper as executives whose lives spiral down when they're laid off. And despite any rumblings of an economic recovery, John Wells' tough, poignant film is as wrenching and realistic as...
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
Movie Review: It’s Seth Rogen’s Green Hornet
Even slimmed down, Seth Rogen brings the good-hearted shlubiness of his Knocked Up character to his superhero’s role in The Green Hornet. Michel Gondry may be its director – and he’s usually a film’s wizard -- but The Green Hornet is Seth Rogen’s show. As actor and writer he provides its most win...
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Caryn James1 commentlike0tweet0
Gwyneth Sings . . . on Jimmy Fallon
Gwyneth Paltrow has been singing all over the place lately, on Glee, on the Country Music Awards, all to promote her new film Country Strong (coming Friday, after a very limited December opening). January, of course, is generally losers’ month at the movies, and Country Strong belongs in that dumpin...
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Caryn James7 commentslike0tweet0
Movie Review, The Other Woman: Natalie Portman’s Latest, Straight Off the Shelf
Long before Black Swan, Natalie Portman was making some daring choices. Her bravado as the stripper in Closer and her delicately-directed short for New York, I Love You would be enough to signal an adventurous career. And in The Other Woman she creates sympathy for a truly idiosyncratic character. E...
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Caryn James1 commentlike0tweet0
Restored Version of The Leopard for New Year's: How Did It Survive the 1963 Trailer?
What better way to begin a new year than watching The Leopard, Luchino Visconti's ever-enthralling saga about a proud aristocratic family trying not to crumble when Garibaldi's army lands on its doorstep, marching toward a unified Italy and the 20th century? The epic is at once a magnificent escape ...
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
Christmas Oddity # 1: Creepy Santa in "Rare Exports"
Like many of you I’ll be taking a break over the holiday weekend, but I leave you with a few off-beat recommendations to come back to, no matter what your mood: pre-ghost Scrooge, post-ghost Scrooge, or ready to escape into another world. First: Creepy Santa. Cheers!
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Caryn James0 commentslike0tweet0
Sofia Coppola's Extraordinary "Somewhere"
Sofia Coppola’s lovely chamber piece Somewhere feels like – and I mean this is the best possible sense – a love letter to her Dad.
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Caryn James3 commentslike0tweet0
What the Coens Said About "True Grit"
By sheer luck – or bad planning turned good – the screening of True Grit I was invited to was followed by a Q&A with Joel and Ethan Coen and Hailee Steinfeld, the 14-year old whose screen presence rivals Jeff Bridges’ and Matt Damon’s. No photos were allowed at the screening (it was mostly for Produ...
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