It’s terror at 1.34 million feet in the deeply astonishing Gravity. At the tail-end of a routine spacewalk, astronauts Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are beset upon by shards of satellite shrapnel that separate them from NASA and make any chance of survival a virtual impossibility. Clooney’s mainly along for his charm, but it’s Bullock […]
Film + TV
Posted inArts + Music
Parkland
The boring devil is in the details for the historical drama Parkland. John F. Kennedy is a young, charismatic American president on a routine trip to Texas in 1963. The fate of that journey (spoilers: it doesn’t go well) are told through the ancillary characters least important to history in this Peter Landesman film. James […]
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Copperhead
New Brunswick stands in for 19th century New York in the roughly carved Civil War drama, Copperhead. Billy Campbell stars as Abner Beech, an anti-war Democrat facing persecution in a tight-knit Republican town. It’s a timely story idea, actually, to present a film about a man who’s anti-slavery but deeply troubled by the gross liberties […]
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Metallica: Through the Never
A lot of sweaty men yell and scream in pleasure during the “IMAX 3D experience” Metallica: Through the Never. Dozens of cameras capture the elaborate, fantastical goings on during a Metallica concert, as the band rattles through their hits in front of thousands of jubilant thirty-somethings. Interspersed throughout is a narrative about a young roadie’s […]
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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
Picking up directly from the end of the first film, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (Nuageux avec une chance de boulettes de viande deux) continues its predecessor’s frenetic pace, while creating some disturbing questions around the ethics of eating. Bill Hader returns to voice a young inventor who must go back to his […]
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Rush
Fans of Formula One history might already know all about James Hunt and Niki Lauda’s 1976 season, but the expertly-woven Rush thankfully takes a suspenseful time getting there. Thor‘s Thor, Chris Hemsworth charismatically stars as Hunt, a reckless bad boy of the racing world who’s lives just as fast as he drives. Lauda (played with […]
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Don Jon
Joseph Gordon-Levitt puts his notable energy into three roles (writer, director, star) as the titular Don Jon, about a Jersey boy who’s letting porn getting in the way of finding his Snooki (Scarlett Johansson). The movie’s hyper-kinetic, quick-cut visual style (with lots of real porn spliced in) paired with JGL’s put-on Jersey honk and Xavier […]
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Enough Said
Nicole Holofcener, America’s most unjustly unheralded writer-director, turns in her fifth terrific comedic drama centring on relationships, romance and emotional evolution—that’s right, Enough Said is another one of her women’s pictures. Regular muse Catherine Keener takes a supporting role to allow Julia Louis-Dreyfus her first starring film role ever—think about that—as a masseur fumbling into […]
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Shadow Dancer
Colette (Andrea Riseborough) was born into a family tied to the IRA. It’s 1993 and she’s caught carrying a bomb onto the London Underground. Mac (Clive Owen), the British intelligence’s man in Northern Ireland, gives Colette one chance to avoid life in prison away from her young son: report to the Brits on what her […]
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Battle of the Year
Some guy overheard some kids saying breakdancing wasn’t cool anymore and now we all have to suffer. In this near-incompetent, half-assed “fictionalization” of Planet B-Boy (a “dope” documentary that’s “like our Bible” from which many clips are shown), Lost’s Josh Holloway does a Drunk History version of Coach Eric Taylor (catchphrase: “You are champions. Be […]
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The Art of the Steal
Who knew we were missing Kurt Russell until he showed up in this completely fine Canadian heist movie? A stunt motorcyclist slash art thief working under the awesome name Crunch Calhoun (the guy Ryan Gosling would’ve grown up to be if he hadn’t been murdered in The Place Beyond the Pines), Russell carries a weirdo […]
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The Spectacular Now
The Spectacular Now A beautiful rarity of a coming-of-age story, from that title to note-perfect casting, The Spectacular Now is one of the year’s finest discoveries. Starring Miles Teller (Rabbit Hole) as Sutter, Lloyd Dobler with a drinking problem, and Shailene Woodley (The Descendants) as bookish Aimee, the film follows their last few months of […]
