Tim Burton reanimates Frankenweenie, his 1984 live action short, stop-motion feature (Corpse Bride, The Nightmare Before Christmas), giving the story more characters and expanding its plot. When Victor’s dog Sparky meets his untimely demise, Victor (Charlie Tahan), inspired by his science teacher, uses lightening to resurrect his beloved pooch, à la Frankenstein. Burton creates an […]
Molly Segal
Posted inArts + Music
Argo
Fiction often pales in comparison to a true story. And take a true story (the six American diplomats trapped in Tehran in 1979 during the Iran War) and add a heavy dose of heroism, as Ben Affleck does in Argo, his third directorial venture, and you get quality Hollywood entertainment. Tony Mendez (Affleck) schemes to […]
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Eugene machine
If Eugene Mirman gets screwed on his Delta flight from New York next week, the airline will hear about it. In fact, he’s known for his letters. Once Mirman took out a full-page ad in the Greenpoint Gazette lamenting his woes with Time Warner Cable. In it, he wishes a series of plagues upon Time […]
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Barfi!
You might know “barfi” as an Indian dessert, but in Anurag Basu’s romantic comedy, Barfi!, it’s the name of one of the movie’s central characters (played by Ranbir Kapoor), a man with a speech-impediment who can’t pronounce his real name, Murphy. Instead of picking a directorial style, Basu includes Charlie Chaplin-style slapstick, choppy cuts and […]
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Teenage life is melodramatic enough, and for Stephen Chbosky, it’s even more traumatic in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (based on his novel of the same title), a coming-of-age story of a group of suburban high school students. Charlie (Logan Lerman), a freshman struggling with depression, befriends Sam (Emma Watson) and her stepbrother, Patrick […]
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Charles Bradley: Soul of America
If you aren’t already madly in love with Charles Bradley (the man and the music), you will be after you see this brief, but insightful, doc. (For Bradley fans, this will make him seem even more endearing, if that’s possible.) Director Poull Brien weaves Bradley’s story together very effectively, beginning with the lead-up to Bradley’s […]
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Resident Evil: Retribution
Another in a string of video game movies, the Resident Evil series continues, with Alice (Milla Jovovich), a rogue agent of the Umbrella Corporation, fighting zombies (or, more accurately, cloned humans infected with a bio-weapon virus that makes them flesh-eating monsters). Alice’s mission is to traverse a series of simulated cities, battling various monsters summoned […]
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Must-see movies
FEATURES The Angel’s Share Opening Gala, Thursday, Sept 13, 6:30pm at Oxford, 7pm at Park Lane 8 and 7 The AFF kicks off this year with the spirited whiskey-tasting feature The Angel’s Share. Palme d’Or winning director Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley) aptly directs this quiet, sinewy study of a thug and […]
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Farewell, My Queen
In the early days of the French Revolution, the court at Versailles is in denial, trying to maintain its extravagant normalcy, as the Parisian masses are circulating a list of heads-to-be-chopped—Benoît Jacquot’s Versailles is claustrophobic and insular, as tension builds and luxury loses its shine. We learn of these events through Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux), […]
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The Words
When a self-absorbed white dude, Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), has writers block, it’s hard to sympathize with him as he plagiarizes an old, stumbled-upon manuscript. Cooper cannot even pass himself off as a failed novelist. But, this movie has layers: this entire story is being told through the voice of another author, Clay Hammond (Dennis […]
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Lawless
If you don’t have an iron stomach, you should probably miss John Hillcoat’s Lawless, a prohibition-era story of three Bondurant brothers’ bootlegging ventures in Virginia. The Bondurants run the town until a deputy from Chicago (Guy Pearce) arrives, wanting a cut of the action, inciting bloodshed to get his way. Forrest (Tom Hardy), the “invincible” […]
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Sparkle
Motown melodies aren’t enough to save Salim Akil’s (Jumping the Broom) Sparkle and its meandering plot. In 1960s Detroit, three sisters form a clandestine musical trio, keeping it secret from their religious, single mother, Emma (the late Whitney Houston), who has her own tragic past in show business. Sparkle (American Idol’s Jordin Sparks) composes the […]
