Most directors faced with a brief hiatus between principal photography and post-production for a gargantuan comic-book blockbuster like “The Avengers” would probably be content to kick up their heels for a bit, take a well-deserved vacation, and maybe, if they’re feeling exceptionally ambitious, start poking around for the next project they’ll start working on sometime […]
Film review
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“Man of Steel”
Hollywood owes an enormous debt to the creators of the first caped crusader, the apparently immortal Superman. His comic books spawned radio shows, television series, and all those costumed superheroes, magically gifted adventurers who could fly, float, burst into flames, turn invisible, suspend the laws of physics, and satisfy other juvenile fantasies. The latest addition […]
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“This Is the End”
If you’ve grown weary of the Judd Apatow school of comedy — the patented examination of male anxieties in their various forms, starring the usual rotating roster of familiar faces — “This Is the End,” which finds the Apatow players facing down the apocalypse, is likely not going to bring you back into the fold. […]
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“The Purge”
Like it or not, popular film, like other popular arts, often reflects important currents and significant truths appropriate to its time and place, providing a telling commentary on its cultural context. All those familiar summer blockbusters, for example, suggest some not entirely inspiring notions about the movie-going public’s demand for the constant bombardment of sound […]
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“Before Midnight”
It’s been 19 years since movie audiences were first introduced to Jesse and Céline, the chatty, opinionated couple played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who have been the focus of the now three movies in Richard Linklater’s “Before” series of films. In 1994’s “Before Sunrise,” we watched as the pair met by chance aboard […]
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“After Earth”
Despite the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Evil Empire, the empty fears about Y2K, the uneventful coming and going of the millennium, the film industry regards the future with a love for both panic and profit. For some decades now, the post-apocalyptic vision has dominated science fiction movies, and when Hollywood […]
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“Now You See Me”
Bank-robbing magicians is the basic idea behind “Now You See Me,” and it’s such a ridiculous and yet ingenious premise for a movie that it’s a wonder it hasn’t been done before now. The marriage of magic to the heist film genre is a natural fit; both require a fair amount of misdirection, sleight-of-hand, and […]
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“The Hangover Part III”
The magical number of three helps account for the success of some of the important literary and cinematic trilogies — in literature, for example, the Oedipus cycle, Shakespeare’s history plays about Henry IV and V, Dumas’s volumes about the Three Musketeers, Dos Passos’s “U.S.A.,” Farrell’s Studs Lonigan novels. In the cinema, the most obvious are […]
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“Fast & Furious 6”
That’s right, Vin Diesel. It’s me. Did you really think I’d miss our biennial date, the one where I hang out in the dark with a lapful of candy while you drive and punch and growl and drive? Honestly, the fact that we even have this time together is downright shocking, given that the “Fast […]
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“Star Trek Into Darkness”
Decades after the famous TV show and its several sequels, after numerous feature-length adaptations, after wearing out generations of crew members, including the most famous captains, Kirk and Picard, the “Star Trek” franchise continues to boldly go where it has gone many times before. For the latest addition to the franchise, “Star Trek Into Darkness,” […]
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“At Any Price”
When we first meet Henry Whipple, the farmer and seed salesman played by Dennis Quaid in Ramin Bahrani’s “At Any Price,” he’s crashing a funeral with his reluctant son, Dean (Zac Efron), in tow, hoping to take some land off the hands of the dead man’s poor, bereaved family. It’s not the sort of introduction […]
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“The Great Gatsby”
The hype preceding the long-awaited release of “The Great Gatsby” rivals the hoopla surrounding summer blockbusters — Cartier features Gatsby jewelry and Brooks Brothers (naturally) offers a Gatsby line of clothing; there’s a video game, and who knows, maybe the toy stores will sell Gatsby action figures. As someone who has taught F. Scott Fitzgerald’s […]
