It’s been 14 years since 1999’s The Best Man, but Christmas sequel The Best Man Holiday proves worth the wait. Original writer and director Malcolm D. Lee reunites his cast, featuring Taye Diggs, Nia Long, Morris Chestnut, Harold Perrineau, Sanaa Lathan and Terrence Howard, for a glitzy holiday weekend of secrets, surprises and sex. An […]
Film + TV
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Diana
Whether Diana was an angelic humanitarian, or an aristocratic celebutante, her memory deserves better than scattershot biopic, Diana. Focusing on the last two years of the Princess of Wales’ life, director Oliver Hirshbiegel looks at a Diana (Naomi Watts, caricaturing) preparing to divorce Prince Charles and emerge as a global figure in land mine eradication. […]
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About Time
Temporal paradoxes are the least of the problems in sci-fi rom-com-dram About Time. Upon reaching 21, ginger Tim (Domhnal Gleeson, son of Brendan) is informed by his father that he can travel back in time. It’s a trait shared by all men in the family, who over the centuries have used the ability to live […]
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12 Years a Slave
The unending, inhuman brutality of America’s past is materialized in the colossal 12 Years a Slave. Adapted from his 1853 autobiography, the film follows free man Solomon Northup as he’s kidnapped from his New York home and sold into slavery for more than a decade. Working on Louisiana plantations, Northup becomes chattel to rich masters […]
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I Give It A Year
It’s a bad time for mainstream romantic comedies. People are so sick of the stale formula, even Hollywood isn’t making them much anymore. The twist in this tale? It starts where most of them end, at the wedding. Upwardly mobile Brits Nat (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Rafe Spall) have only been dating for a few […]
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Byzanium
Jordan directed the lycanthropic fable The Company of Wolves and the Anne Rice adaptation Interview With A Vampire, so this film of the Moira Buffini play is right in his sweet spot. It’s a heavily plotted yarn about an undead mother and daughter (Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan) who subsist on the avails of prostitution […]
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Thor: The Dark World
Thor’s arms remain swollen in inescapable sequel Thor: The Dark World. When scientist Natalie Portman is possessed by evil cosmic blood, hunky Thor sweeps her away to Planet Viking just in time for a madcap invasion by tacky Dark Elves. Tom Hiddleston remains everything as tricky-dick Loki, imprisoned for his Marvel’s The Avengers‘ antics and […]
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Ender’s Game
Space high school sucks for teenage fascists in the gripping sci-fi flick, Ender’s Game. Based on the popular novel by famous homophobic bigot Orson Scott Card, this lofty adaptation follows young Andrew “Ender” Wiggin (Asa Butterfield, holding it down) as he’s trained in an orbiting military academy to lead the next war against hostile “Formic” […]
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Free Birds
Fine. Owen Wilson turkey is smarter than other turkeys because his voiceover says so. He gets pardoned by the President and somehow lives at Camp David ordering pizza. After being kidnapped by Woody Harrelson’s turkey freedom fighter (terrorist?), the two break into a top secret military bunker and steal a time machine. Now 400 years […]
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Last Vegas
Sexy heartthrobs Michael Douglas, Kevin Kline, Robert De Niro and Morgan Freeman join together for AARP’s The Hangover in old people comedy Last Vegas. Joining together in Sin City for Douglas’ bachelor party, the four childhood chums bicker, don’t understand youth today and forget their pills. Lazily, Freeman wins $100,000 at blackjack, resulting in a […]
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Room 237
If someone asked you about Stanley Kubrick’s movie The Shining, you might say it’s a horror film set in a creepy hotel. That’s fine, but what the movie’s really about is the genocide of Native Americans. No, wait, it’s about the Holocaust! No, it’s actually a shrouded confession from Kubrick about faking the moon landings! […]
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The Counselor
Everyone’s talking at him, but Michael Fassbender don’t hear a word they’re saying as the tragic title character in The Counselor. The first original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor‘s chief joke is the great lengths everyone goes to warn Fassbender’s unnamed lawyer not to get involved in drug trafficking (then, to accept his fate […]
