The invention of 24-hour news brings Ron Burgundy and the gang to New York City in Anchorman 2, maybe you’ve heard of it? When GNN hire him on, Burgundy brings along Brick (Steve Carell), Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) and Champ (David Koechner AKA Todd Packer); unfortunately their team is given the 2am-5am slot. In one […]
Film + TV
Posted inArts + Music
Out of the Furnace
Christian Bale stars as one of the few guys in Braddock, PA in the thoroughly unpleasant Out of the Furnace, Scott Cooper’s follow-up to his lauded Crazy Heart. But while the town is decidedly blue-collar—cue the Eddie Vedder drone—the tone is a bit more Deliverance, what with a sweaty Woody Harrelson forcing hot dogs down […]
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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The epic children’s story continues, at great length, in bridging sequel The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Martin Freeman returns briefly as the titular hobbit, Bilbo, still wandering towards a dragon-filled mountain with his indistinguishable dwarf companions. Wizard Ian McKellen frigs off to investigate a more interesting plot, leaving the proto-fellowship to deal with elves, […]
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Blue is the Warmest Colour
Sort of a French Brown Bunny, director Abdellatif Kechiche tests the audience’s love of banality with the lesbian love story Blue is the Warmest Colour. Teenage Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) is a high schooler with a hot boyfriend she doesn’t like to have sex with, and she figures out why when she crosses paths with art […]
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Frozen
Though the marketing would have you believe this is a love story between a snowman, a reindeer and the carrot that brought them together, Frozen is actually a kickass girl power tale about the greatest love of all (yourself, duh). When princess Elsa (Idina Menzel) accidentally hurts her sister Anna (Kristen Bell) with her unexplained […]
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Oldboy
Is everything okay, Spike Lee? It’s concerning that you’ve shuffled forth such miserable efforts in the American-remake of Oldboy. Virtually identical in story, US Oldboy finds a brutish lout (Josh Brolin) held captive in a sinister hotel room for 20 years before mysteriously being set free. Except this time Spike Lee is directing, so Katrina […]
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Philomena
This isn’t the easiest film to sell. A British drama based on a non-fiction book, Philomena follows elderly Philomena Lee’s moving search for the son taken from her 50 years ago. You can go look up her results online and spoil the whole spiritual pilgrimage, if you’d like. But then you’ll miss Judi Dench’s face; […]
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The Book Thief
In novel-turned-award season movie, The Book Thief, a Communist orphan, young Liesel (Sophie Nélisse) is sent to live with foster parents in Commonplace, Germantown. There she gets to experience all sorts of war-torn film clichés, from watching loved ones join Hitler’s army, to stealing contraband books, all the way to nursing the handsome Jewish refugee […]
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Delivery Man
Creating an almost identical remake of his 2011 film, Starbuck, Canadian writer/director Ken Scott should have used the chance to refresh the material in Delivery Man. Vince Vaughan, playing a slightly more pathetic Vince Vaughan than he’s been playing the last decade, stars as a broke meat truck driver who inadvertently fathered 533 children 20 […]
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Dallas Buyers Club
A skeletal Matthew McConaughey is a fitting lead in the gaunt Dallas Buyers Club. Based, in part, on a real story, McConaughey plays homophobic, alcoholic, sexpot cowboy Ron Woodroof—a sinewy sonuvabitch who becomes diagnosed with AIDS in 1985 and is given 30 days to live. Unimpressed, Woodroof finds a semblance of health in Mexican drugs […]
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Out there Outlier
Chris Sullivan and his colleagues took 15 years to finish his animated epic Consuming Spirits. Of the painstakingly deliberate process required to make it, he says, “It’s actually a little more pleasant than it looks, but not as pleasant as many things.” His ambivalent assessment applies to the film as well, a queasy and dense […]
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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Having won her society’s grandest contest, Jennifer Lawrence finds herself weary from constant celebrity scrutiny and false platitudes meant to waylay fears about the land’s brutal living conditions. But enough about the Oscars (wocka wocka), Lawrence returns as Katniss Everdeen in eventual sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Suffering from PTSD, Katniss isn’t too thrilled […]
