July 2013

‘A Hijacking’ is a fictional film that hits both with blunt force and a surprising amount of complexity, built around two sides of a terrifying conflict—the hijacking of a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean by Somali pirates.

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‘The Conjuring’ very much feels like a 1970s horror film, before slashers were haunting teenage dreams and well before found footage became the way to make a story feel real.

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Alvarez adopts the film language of Raimi’s films, adds more to the bag of tricks, and keeps the sardonic attitude without necessarily being slapstick.

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Turbo is a cute, fun, and mostly entertaining 96-minute story about chasing impossible dreams and the complicated relationships between brothers that’s likely to please — but not wow — the whole family.

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Before you think that this all this fawning over Rick Springfield is too weird, consider this: We all have a nostalgic obsession to one thing or another. For an entire generation of “nerds” (who seem to have inherited the summer movie season in all its $200-million+ budget glory), Star Wars has been a defining cultural entity. So before you go off all high and mighty about the weirdos that follow the Yellow Rick Road, think about the bit of pop culture that helped define you.

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The Kansas City Art Institute and Alamo Drafthouse have joined forces to bring you Film School, a weekly student curated film series. This week – If…. (1968) – Saturday, July 20th at 2:00 p.m.

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For those who are hardcore about their kaiju consumption Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim is not perfect, but for those who are looking for a fun and thoughtful summer movie with more character than most, Pacific Rim should do the trick in a big way.

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Israeli director Rama Burshtein’s debut is filled with plenty of quality performances and solid writing that almost over come the films distracting stylistic devices.

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If big-budget summer movies are supposed to be entertaining, escapist fun, then Pacific Rim is a perfect example of that. I’ll be damned if del Toro’s silly, exuberant, dramatic Kaiju flick didn’t give me that “rah-rah” feeling, amplified of course by the sight of giant monsters and robots bludgeoning each other while towering over our puny cities and coasts.

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Post image for Top 10 Kaiju Movies

Top 10 Kaiju Movies

by Trey Hock on July 9, 2013

in Top 10s

For those looking to prepare for Pacific Rim and dive into kaiju more deeply, here is Trey’s Top 10 Kaiju Movies.

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The Kansas City Art Institute and Alamo Drafthouse have joined forces to bring you Film School, a weekly student curated film series. This week – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) – Saturday, July 13th at 2:40 p.m.

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In all, The Lone Ranger is a mixed bag, but it really just needs an edit and a decisive tone. Had it been 30 or 45 minutes shorter and more focused, it would have been a different film entirely.

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Will our three reviewers ever get to the actual movie or will there love of Michael Bay movies prove a permanent detour? Find out now!

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There is an extra prick of instinctive excitement in watching Safety Last! today because we know quite well that computer-generated effects didn’t exist in 1923. Besides the creative and thrilling staging of his building climb with an actual cityscape in the background (not a matte or a composite shot), the rest of Safety Last! is filmed with a real cinematic eye and the newly restored 2K digital film transfer looks fantastic.

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