The idea of Werner Herzog making a 3-D movie might seem strange, but the prolific German filmmaker’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams is anything but a gimmick. Given extremely limited access inside France’s Chauvet Cave, Herzog and his tiny crew document the site’s famous, 30,000 year old cave paintings. The 3-D effects bring an astonishing realism […]
Empire 8 Park Lane
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Sarah’s Key digs into Nazi history
Sarah’s Key presents Kristin Scott-Thomas as an American journalist whose research on a story about a mass arrest of Jews in Nazi-occupied Paris leads takes an unexpected detour into her husband’s family history. Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner toggles between her story and flashbacks depicting a young girl taken in the Vel d’Hiv Roundup who manages to […]
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Straw Dogs‘ thrills hit above average
Rod Lurie’s remake of the 1971 Sam Peckinpah thriller makes up for the opacity of its meaning with the assured execution of its tension-and-release formula. James Marsden and Kate Bosworth star as David and Amy, an effete LA screenwriter and his actor wife, who move out to her tiny Mississippi hometown. David’s threatened by the […]
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The Whistleblower outrages (as it should)
Larysa Kondracki’s picture has all the passion of a first-time feature filmmaker and screenwriter. Based on actual events, it tells the tale of Kathy Bolkovac, a Nebraska law enforcer working for an American military contractor in Bosnia who uncovers sex trafficking rings, implicating many of the men with whom she works. As Bolkovac, Rachel Weisz […]
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Warrior cuts emotional chord, cheese
Warrior feels like a glorified commercial for Tapout. But like all good commercials, Warrior strikes an emotional chord, even if elements verge on a Bloodsport level of cheesiness. Two estranged brothers (Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy) are brought back into the world of mixed martial arts when a multi-million dollars championship (surprisingly, hosted by Tapout) is […]
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The Trip worth taking
British comedic actor Steve Coogan is contracted to dine at fine restaurants in the north of England and write about his experiences. Coogan invites along an erstwhile colleague, Rob Brydon, with whom he shares a bit of a combative relationship. Off they go on this scenic tour, improvising slightly exaggerated versions of themselves, riffing off […]
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Contagion both creepy and remote
Steven Soderbergh’s thriller about a killer virus that spreads death, terror and chaos around the world is chilling in more ways than one. It elicits a spinal shiver, to be sure, to contemplate the fragility of both human bodies and societal structures, and Soderbergh’s economical, frill-free approach to the story makes the escalating panic feel […]
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Not much bite to Shark Night 3D
Released at the tail end of the summer, Shark Night 3D tries to capture the popularity of last year’s aquatic-horror comedy Piranha 3D, but fails due to cheap special effects and a lack of humour. The plot is simple enough: A group of university students go to an island cottage on a Louisiana lake, but […]
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Apollo 18 dull faux-doc
The faux-documentary horror film has become its own subgenre, and familiarity with this particular storytelling conceit is starting to breed fatigue, if not contempt. Apollo 18 brings the Blairanormal Clovertivity into space, using footage supposedly taken from NASA’s archives and depicting a secret 1974 lunar voyage gone wrong. Three astronauts (Lloyd Owen, Ryan Robbins and […]
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Our Idiot Brother is easygoing
This Paul Rudd vehicle is like a movie soufflé, light and sweet and easy to dig into despite its lack of nutritious substance. Rudd plays Ned, a shaggy stoner whose good heart and unfiltered honesty lands him first in jail as the movie begins. Once free again, these same qualities upset the personal and professional […]
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Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark lighter than it should be
Horror fans, beware: Troy Nixley’s re-invention of the 1973 TV movie won’t have you burrowing your face in the shoulder the person next to you. Little Sally (Bailee Madison), is sent to live with her dad (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend (Katie Holmes), architectural conservationists, in their current project, a spooky mansion in Rhode Island. […]
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Cliche-ridden Columbiana
Zoe Saldana stars as a revenge-minded assassin in Olivier Megaton’s action thriller, which takes a simple, A-grade premise and makes a hash of it with B-level execution. After a tense opening sequence in which a young, resourceful Colombian girl watches her parents get killed by a rival crime boss, we catch up with her in […]