When you stop and think about it, it’s amazing any movie ever actually gets made. Many films flounder through the maze of casting issues, constant rewrites, shooting problems, and budgetary constraints. A finished film, even an awful one, is something of a miracle. If you don’t believe me, check out Lost in La Mancha, which […]
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As a director Tony Scott is a bit hit (Domino, Spy Game) and miss (Deja Vu, Enemy of the State) for my tastes. His latest, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, is not the first movie to be adapted from the novel by Morton Freedgood, but does showcase Scott’s trademark style. I had planned […]
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For a movie about two guys who play professional soccer for a living, “Rudo y Cursi” has an alarming lack of actual soccer playing in it. It would be easy to label the Mexican import starring Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal as a sports film, but it wouldn’t really be true. Unfortunately, the kind […]
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Aside from the beautiful scenery, and a few nice moments from Richard Dreyfuss (who’s really slumming it here), there’s very little to separate My Life in Ruins from any number of braindead romatic comedies. Here’s one of those films where a character notices the love of her life under her nose, finds meaning in her […]
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It’s a bad pun to make, but “Land of the Lost” is just that. Caught in an unfunny netherworld between kid-oriented mainstream summer entertainment and a cheap-looking green-screened sort of surreality, “Land of the Lost” might have been a watchable—no—bearable movie had it just embraced one or the other fully. Instead, what we are left […]
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A Universal logo from the 80s is the first thing shown onscreen in Sam Raimi’s “Drag Me to Hell,” and immediately I’m taken back to a time when renting random VHS tapes at the video store led to my discovery of “Evil Dead 2.” The writer/director’s latest is certainly a return to the nimble horror […]
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Roger Ebert thinks 3D is overrated: “Every single frame of a 3D movie gives you something to look at that is not necessary,” he recently wrote. To a formulaic movie like DreamWorks’ “Monsters Vs. Aliens,” however, 3D was the only thing keeping me awake. And in Laika’s stop-motion treasure “Coraline,” the 3D was absolutely integrated […]
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The genre of the con-man movie is a tricky one for sure. One must assume, given the nature of the swindling main characters, that there will be con upon con, layers of which reveal themselves only as strategically as the screenplay allows. As a defense mechanism, the audience will try to stay one step ahead […]
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Contributor Alan Rapp is a regular movie reviewer over at Transbuddha.com. What are you doing reading a review for this movie? Come to think of it, what was I doing going to a screening of it? You know exactly what this movie is, and you knew before you ever started reading this review whether it’s […]
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First-time writer/director Cary Fukunaga’s “Sin Nombre” is a movie about devastating and emotionally draining moments. What makes it unique among films that cover similar subject matter is the restrained acting and richness of its visual sense. In that respect, it is a descendant of a less showy cinematic lineage. You would think that a movie […]
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Sometime in the 1970s, rock n’ roll became big business. (If I had to place it, I’d say around the time A&M Records pushed Frampton Comes Alive to quadrillion-platinum status.) But before the corporate world really knew how to create artificial buzz and market rock music, it was the territory of dreamers, stoners, hippies, and […]
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About halfway through “Angels & Demons,” I started thinking about when it would end. Admittedly, that may have had something to do with the fact that the season finale of “Lost” was waiting for me on my DVR at home, but nevertheless, that’s a bad sign for any suspense movie. “Angels & Demons” is director […]
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One of the issues you often run into with films made by first time directors is a film that never quite comes together. Lymelife, written and directed by Derick and Steven Martini, does quite a bit right but also falls into a few traps that more seasoned directors could have avoided. It’s not a bad […]
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Which “Wolverine” ending did you see? Weigh in here. Watch our on-camera movie review with clips here. The thing that made Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” and its first sequel so compelling was that the team of superheroes known as the X-Men were not superheroes at all, but mutants. Born with special powers, they were looked at […]
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After a screening at last weekend’s KC FilmFest at the AMC Mainstreet Theatre in Kansas City’s Power & Light district, the appropriately titled B-movie “Bonnie and Clyde vs. Dracula” will have a limited run this weekend only at the downtown Screenland Theater. On the surface, the title sets your expectations perfectly. Tiffany Shepis and Trent […]
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