The new movie Crash opens and closes with the incident of the title, a relatively minor collision of the sort that occurs anywhere in the country on any day of the week, in this case on an unseasonably cold evening in Los Angeles in December. As the long flashback that constitutes the body of the […]
Movies
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But did Symbionia ever get liberated?
A portion of the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees “the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” but it really wasn’t until the war in Vietnam that the American people took full advantage of that clause. The rabid opposition to Western involvement in Southeast […]
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The end of the saga, finally
After dazzling a generation of audiences, creating perhaps the most famous motion picture franchise in the history of the medium, influencing a great many other filmmakers, adding numerous catch phrases and iconic figures to the culture, and of course after immeasurable quantities of hype and hope, George Lucas has finally concluded the Star Wars saga. […]
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A love of violence can only take you so far
This may come as a shock, but I don’t attend Jet Li’s English-language movies so I can learn more about the human experience. What I want to watch is Li gracefully coaxing blood out of people from places where they didn’t previously have holes. What I hope to hear is the revolting yet satisfying crunch […]
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Revisiting the ancient struggle of East and West
Most of the blockbuster historical epics that regularly disturb the peace in the local megaplex display little in the way of relevance to their actual time and place or any connection to the personal lives of the viewers. Aside from its location in a peculiar version of the city’s past, for example, Martin Scorsese’s long, […]
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Moving backwards and forwards and back again
The last half of the ’90s were the salad days of American independent cinema. That elusive union of art and commerce could arguably be timelined from 1994’s Pulp Fiction to 1999’s The Blair Witch Project. Writer-director Todd Solondz made a couple of envelope-pushing pictures during that period and staked his claim as the enfant terrible […]
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Hitching a ride through galactic grotesques
The cult following, especially among young people, of the Douglas Adams novels — and the radio and television series they spawned — will probably guarantee the profitability of the new feature-length film based on his signature book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Without that large and presumably eager audience, however, I doubt that the […]
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Your guide to a movie tailgating weekend
Do you enjoy movies but can’t bear the thought of dealing with the same one for two grueling hours? Sufferers from short attention spans: Put down that can of Mountain Dew and rejoice! It’s time once again for the Rochester International Film Festival, more commonly referred to as Movies on a Shoestring. 2005 marks the […]
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The political thriller reflects our troubled age
Displaying his familiar competence and intelligence, Sydney Pollack’s new movie, The Interpreter, also demonstrates an appropriate connection to contemporary history. Like his Three Days of the Condor of 1975, the picture addresses, through its slick, exciting surface action, a most plausible and disquieting international reality, touching on some of the peculiar tensions of our time. […]
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Survival of the fittest
“You’re not bad — you’re innocent. Innocent people are just… uh… dangerous.” These words are spoken about 16-year-old Rose Slavin (a lovely Camilla Belle), but they could also apply to her father Jack (mmmmm… Daniel Day-Lewis). The year is 1986 when The Ballad of Jack and Rose opens, and our title characters are the sole […]
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Real estate can be a nightmare
All those pious pundits who regularly lament the decline of faith should examine the history of the horror flick over the last few decades. Ever since the glory days of The Exorcist and The Omen, which inspired numerous sequels, remakes, and imitations, religion constitutes an important element in the form, suggesting the continuing attractions of […]
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What are a few bodies among friends?
Films, like any form of art, are created in order to evoke a cavalcade of emotions, but there are generally just three ways in which movies can affect me: entertain, annoy, devastate. And this week, I experienced all three reactions. Intensely. Filmmaker Stephen Chow is quite possibly the result of a drunken threesome involving Jackie […]
