Filmmaker Nicole Holofcener’s debut feature, Walking and Talking, is a near-perfect movie, one of the most accurate observations of female friendship ever committed to film. Friends with Money, Holofcener’s latest, continues to showcase her gift for portraying real women in realistic situations, from the mundane to the thrilling to the mortifying. And it certainly doesn’t […]
Movies
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Come to where the satire is
Among certain inalienable rights we Americans enjoy are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the freedom to harm yourself and those around you with cigarette smoke. And while there are many working overtime to strip you of that last privilege, you can rest easy knowing that there are others hell-bent on ensuring that you […]
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Violence, blood, and humor
One of the most unusual action thrillers to appear in recent months, or even years, Lucky Number Slevin maintains a constant flow of action in the slam-bang, shoot-’em-up, stack-’em-up mode, while depending for much of its appeal upon a puzzling tangle of plot and motivation. Although packed with violence of all kinds, the picture also […]
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Your trench or mine?
World War I was considered “The Great War,” with a cost of more than 14 million military and civilian lives, but it remains one of the more puzzling modern-day conflicts, lacking the obvious good vs. evil distinction attendant to its horrifying sequel. It’s this ambiguousness that no doubt led to the Christmas Truce of 1914, […]
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The second time around
For fans of Sharon Stone, the 14-year hiatus between Basic Instinct — where the actress wowed audiences with one of the most famous shots in recent film history — and the imaginatively titled Basic Instinct 2 must seem an eternity. Whether the wait for the long-promised sequel was worthwhile remains to be seen, but the […]
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Notes of triumph
During the Academy Awards telecasts, the moments that have traditionally lent themselves to viewers rustling up some snacks occur when the Oscars for short film are awarded. It’s been difficult for John Q. Moviegoer to care about something he will probably never see, but in recent years the shorts have been packaged up for mass […]
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Notes from a filmme fatale
As the ceiling wept into the bucket beside her bed, a million thoughts duked it out in her mind. She lazily poked at a succession of letters that might allow her to continue renting her porous palace but she daydreamed of an unlikely world in which her loved ones thrived and her enemies understood exactly […]
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Some subversive truths for our dark time
The latest movie to send the conservative crybabies sobbing into their bound copies of the Patriot Act originates in, of all places, a comic book, or as they like to call them in the higher literary circles, a graphic novel. For a political allegory to grow out of so apparently plebeian a form suggests not […]
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Just ask Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben
It looks like something you’d see on PBS, with self-important talking heads, dramatic voiceovers, and vintage photos lovingly caressed by the camera, but writer-director Kevin Willmott’sCSA: The Confederate States of America is an audacious mockumentary that induces both laughs and squirms as it explores the last 150 years in a country where the South emerged […]
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Walking knee-deep in decadence
Continuing to mine the past for subjects to dress up in frills, lace, and periwigs, the motion picture industry, perhaps inevitably, has now dug up the 17th century poet, playwright, and pornographer, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. (How’s that for the daily press’s beloved local connection?) Though probably not exactly a familiar name these days, […]
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A dream of some substance
At its very least, director Michel Gondry’s follow-up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind answers the head-scratcher, “What sort of person walks away from $50 million?” Apparently that individual would be brimming with humanity and humility, as terrified by the burden of power and celebrity as he is intrigued by its perks. In short, […]
