Review
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Review: Catherine Breillat's 'Sleeping Beauty' Tackles Fairy Tales Through The Prism Of Sex & Class
A little girl who dreams of being a boy. A boy who wishes to be seduced by an Ice Queen. High fantasy and tangled sexuality dovetail in “The Sleeping Beauty,” a fantastical retelling of the popular folklore involving the little girl brought to an eternal slumber. Like the original Brothers Grimm fai...
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Review: 'Project Nim' Is A Tragic Look At The Life Of The Ape That Was Raised As A Human
It’s not often that a documentary can be called highly anticipated but “Project Nim,” the latest from the Oscar winning “Man On Wire” team (director James Marsh and producer Simon Chinn), certainly qualifies. The doc was a smash when it played at Sundance earlier this year and it sees the filmmakers returning to the 1970s to take on an entirely different incredible but true story. The film tells the tale of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a landmark experiment to see if an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. This study was the brainchild of Dr. Herbert Terrace, a Columbia U...
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L.A. Film Festival Review: 'Salaam Dunk' A Colorful Portrait Of Modern Life In Iraq
Of the majority of images and video to be coming from Iraq right now, “Salaam Dunk” stands aside from the pack. Colorful, hopeful and charming, ‘Dunk’ follows a women's basketball team at the American University of Iraq -- Sulaimani. We see their wins, their losses, what brought them to this team an...
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L.A. Film Fest Review: 'Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark' Can't Conjure Up The Scares
In the 1970s, there was a number of made-for-television horror movies and among the best remembered were "Salem's Lot," "Burnt Offerings" and "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark." Of the last film, modern horror master Guillermo Del Toro has referred to it as "the scariest movie (he's) ever seen." If one were to watch it today, they'd scoff at that sentiment as the pacing is weird and the monsters are silly. But anyone could look back at the stuff that gave them the chills as kids with new, more cynical eyes, however, what Del Toro is trying to do as producer and co-writer of this new remake is to get all of us to feel what we felt as kids again. Wh...
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Review: 'Larry Crowne' Finds Tom Hanks & Julia Roberts In A Miscalculated, Muddled Rom-Com
People get excited about a new Tom Hanks movie simply because people fucking love Tom Hanks. He's both an affable everyman and a huge movie star, and in the performances he leaves on screen, whether it’s a slow-witted American who happens into great moments of history, a gay man living with AIDS, or...
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Review: 'Transformers: Dark Of The Moon' Rewards With 40 Min. Of Great Action After An Asinine Story
Before everyone accuses us of drinking the Haterade, allow this writer to make a couple of facts known. I thought the first "Transformers" was a decent enough (though brainless) bit of summer popcorn entertainment, while I nearly walked out of "Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen." The problems with the second entry in the franchise have been well documented as even Michael Bay himself admitted it was awful and promised this time, things will be better. With much being made about the work that has gone into the special effects, with Bay writing a letter to the pimply teenagers who will be playing this for the majority of America to make sure ...
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Review: 'Hot Coffee' An Eye-Opening, Must-See Doc About A Legal Case You Thought You Knew
In 1994, a decision in a seemingly innocuous legal case made waves around the country, becoming fodder for "Seinfeld," late night stand-up routines and editorials around the country, and you probably remember it. A woman in New Mexico was awarded a judgment of $2.86 million dollars after suing McDonald's because her coffee was too hot. "Isn't coffee supposed to be hot?" seemed to serve as a punchline to numerous jokes, while most just read the headlines in newspapers and assumed it was yet more evidence of a legal system gone out of control. But did you know that the plaintiff, Stella Liebeck, was 79 years old? Did you know that the burns wer...
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L.A. Film Fest Reviews: Songs by Animal Collective & Bon Iver Can't Save 'The Dynamiter'
Plus Iranian Indie 'Please Do Not Disturb'"The Dynamiter" opens in the fields of the South with two young brothers (one fourteen, one eight) throwing sharpened sticks they've made at a pile of hay. We keep seeing wannabe Malick-like cuts and shots as the older brother is telling a joke, the sky is a...
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L.A. Film Fest Reviews: Herzog-ian 'Family Instinct' & The Quiet Tragedy Of 'The Salesman'
"Family Instinct" Director Andris Gauja seems to be taking a page out of Werner Herzog's "ecstatic truth" playbook with "Family Instinct," a film about Zanda, a Latvian woman waiting for her husband and father of her children to come home from prison. But he's only in prison because she told the pol...
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Review: 'A Better Life' Is Uneven, But A Well-Intentioned & Modest Human Story
Sincerely rendered, modest and at times, a little too simplistic, Chris Weitz's "A Better Life," is neverthless a labor of love and a quiet, well-intentioned examination of family, father-son relationships and immigration issues in the U.S. Chalk it up to guilt. No, not white guilt, franchise guilt. After delivering two back-to-back rather bankrupt genre tentpoles (the polar bear coke commercial, anti-religion campaign "The Golden Compass" and the vacuous "Twilight: New Moon") director Weitz pulls a full 180 with his small-scale humanist drama, and he's a better man (and filmmaker) for it. If only every empty and tentpole obsessed director fe...
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