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Movies
Love Can Be Messy
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
The Burning Plain is ambitious. Coming from the Guillermo Arriaga, writer of Babel, 21 Grams, and Amores Perros, that’s a given, though. However, this is Arriaga’s directorial debut, having broken the tie with collaborator/director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Ironically, it’s not the direction that hinders The Burning Plain but the writing. It’s merely a great idea that he wasn’t fully able to realize. More
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Movies
…And So Do Bad Movies
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
If you want a girl crying on your shoulder this weekend, take her to Love Happens. If you want to be entertained, stay clear. It’s the same romantic story that’s been rehashed since the creation of the medium, and to far better results. More
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Movies
Engrossing Environmentally Themed Documentary
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Few documentaries are as enlightening, educational and engrossing as No Impact Man, a “fly-on-the-wall” documentary nimbly directed by Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein. No Impact Man follows environmentalist, activist, author, teacher, and blogger Colin Beavan as he takes radical steps to minimize or eliminate his impact on the environment over the course of an entire year. He hopes to “reduce, reuse, and recycle” his way to eliminating (or radically decreasing) his carbon footprint. More
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Movies
All Body, No Brains
Rating: 1 out of 5 stars.
Since Juno introduced Diablo Cody to the world and garnered her an Oscar for best original screenplay, she wasn't completely welcomed with open arms. While the film started out as the underdog, it soon swept the nation and caused just as hefty a backlash. Whether or not one agrees with the praise bestowed on the film, at worst it was a charming, quirky indie comedy built upon a solid script. Naturally, the new "it" girl has a lot riding on her sophomore script and unfortunately for Cody, Jennifer's Body won't be the film that silences her detractors. More
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Movies
A Compelling and Frustrating Film
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
With the summer blockbuster season already a distant memory, the Academy Awards season unofficially kicks off with The Informant!, a comedy-drama directed by Steven Soderbergh (Che, Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13, Erin Brockovich) and starring Matt Damon as the “informant” of the title, Mark Whitacre, an executive-turned-whistleblower instrumental in bringing down Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), an agri-business corporation, for food additive price-fixing in the mid-90s. An occasionally compelling, sometimes frustrating film, The Informant! falls short of Oscar-worthiness. More
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Movies
Snow Job
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars.
Kate Beckinsale’s latest chiller, set around an Antarctica research station and inspired by a series of graphic novels by Greg Rucka, shows little regard for logic. More
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Movies
Leading the Charge Against Technology
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
There is no denying the technical wizardry of 9, Shane Acker’s feature-length reimagining of his own Oscar-nominated short from 2005. Backed by producers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted), the young director has assembled a superior voice cast, led by the wonderfully expressive Christopher Plummer, to breathe life into a familiar post-apocalyptic fable distinguished by its exquisite artistry. More
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Movies
Engrossing Political-Historical Drama
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Engrossing, fascinating, and compelling, The Baader Meinhof Complex offers a clear-eyed, unromantic look at the pitfalls of how rigid, dogmatic ideology becomes the justification for political violence and not just political action. More
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Movies
It Brings out the Laughs
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Mike Judge is one of those guys who everyone knows, but he’s still somewhat of a cult phenomenon. Perhaps best known for "Beavis and Butthead", grunge era’s greatest adolescent comedy duo, he’s also responsible for "King of the Hill" (which recently ended its thirteen-year run). While his TV record has been more consistent, his film career hasn’t quite taken off. Office Space only took off on DVD and Idiocracy was barely released. But with Extract it seems as if he may finally have a hit. More
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Movies
An Amiable Misfire
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
The strange, improbable story of Woodstock has been documented exhaustively in print and on the screen, making it somewhat curious that Ang Lee has chosen to make it the subject of his first bona fide comedy since 1994’s Eat Drink Man Woman. Yet that’s just what we get in Taking Woodstock, a lighthearted look back at three days of peace and music whose more magical qualities fail to materialize here. More
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