“You’re my people,” Mark Wahlberg tells Denzel Washington over and over in the completely nonsensical surprise hit 2 Guns, AKA Tango & Cash Go to the Desert and Also Bill Paxton is There. So the boys are thieves of sorts avenging the death of an associate, and then they end up with $40 million of […]
Film + TV
Posted inArts + Music
The Way Way Back
The coming-of-age story is one of the best movie genres. The Way Way Back has a terrific cast—Toni Collette, Allison Janney, Steve Carell, Maya Rudolph, Sam Rockwell—and Oscar-winning writer-directors—Nat Faxon and Jim Rash—and a teenaged lead with just the right amount of slouchy, toe-scuff insecurity—Liam James, whatup Jack Linden!—but for whatever reason just never gels. […]
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The Wolverine
The word “mutant” is only mentioned a couple times, and The Wolverine is all the better for it. Hugh Jackman’s Logan is now a grizzled mountain-man, trying to forget about killing Famke Janssen. All that wild brooding is interrupted, though, when a wealthy businessman invites Wolverine back to Japan to offer a gift of de-immortalizing […]
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The To Do List
“Thanks for the lube, Mom,” is only one of a couple dozen fantastic one-liners filling up The To Do List. Virgin valedictorian Brandy (Aubrey Plaza) wants to lose her virginity before college. In typical overachieving fashion, she decides to master a lengthy list of sexual acts before going all the way with hunky Rusty Waters […]
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Upside Down
One of the strangest and most visually impressive fantasy films of recent years, Upside Down is a Canadian/French co-pro about two planets existing side by side, each with its own gravitational pull. One planet exploits the other’s resources. Eden (Kirsten Dunst) from the well-off world fell in love with Adam (Jim Sturgess) from the impoverished […]
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Orange is The New Black
Netflix’s foray into series production has made for mixed results, from awful (Hemlock Grove) to merely polarizing (Arrested Development). But the streaming service has its first true, undisputable creative triumph in Orange is the New Black, based on Piper Kerman’s yuppie-in-jail memoir and guided to the screen by Jenji Kohan (Weeds). “Taylor Swift-ass motherfucker” Taylor […]
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R.I.P.D.
Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges aren’t exactly the purgatory version of Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, stars of the other cop buddy movie set in Boston this summer, but they’ve got a similar wiener vs. renegade vibe. Reynolds is a cop murdered by his partner (Kevin Bacon, firmly stuck on Smarm) who upon ascending is […]
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The Conjuring
A creepy doll is auxiliary to the plot, but man, is it ever a freaky part of The Conjuring. The non-doll story is thus: A couple and their five daughters move into an old, lakeside home they bought on the cheap. Guess what? Haunted. In desperate horror, they turn to acclaimed “demonologists” and paranormal investigators, […]
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Red 2
The original Red banked off audience demand for John Malkovich: Action Star to become a modest hit. Unsurprisingly, Red 2 largely sticks to that winning formula. Now retired (again) CIA agent Bruce Willis rockets back into action when he and BFF Malkovich are framed for international nuclear terrorism. The two, with girlfriend Mary-Louise Parker, go […]
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Pacific Rim
Monsters versus giant robots seems like can’t miss Oscar-bait, but a scattered plot and world-weary soul drags Pacific Rim down. For years now, massive “Kaijus” have been rising from a dimensional rift in the ocean floor and attacking cities. Humanity fights back the only way it can—forging big-dick robots that rocket punch things to death. […]
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Frances Ha
Indie power couple Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach wrote Frances Ha together. She stars, he directs. It’s basically a long-form Girls episode (and Adam Driver is even there), wherein lost dancer Frances bumps around New York apartments, an ill-advised weekend to Paris and a complicated relationship with her best friend (Mickey Sumner). Shot in black […]
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Triple play
If you’ve always wanted to start a band but you don’t know how to play an instrument, or, if you have an unused vacuum collecting dust in your closet (is that irony?), then take a page from the book of Benoît Charest. Charest is the composer behind the music of Les Triplettes de Belleville, an […]
