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Pure Genius
Up Review The people at Pixar perform a master-class on story with practically every film they put out now. Toy Story, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and now with Up: these folks create modern classics on a near-yearly basis. For my money, Up is their best at least since The Incredibles and maybe their best ever (full disclosure, I…
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Half A Solid Movie
Angels and Demons Review These movies (Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code) are simply miracles. Da Vinci was tremendously boring, ended essentially with Tom Hanks reading a monologue from a newspaper, and made over $750 million worldwide. Huh? I think that success either a) had to do with the controversial theological elements or…
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It’s Good, Bottom Line, But It Won’t Change Your Life
Star Trek Review Riding on a ton of positive reviews Star Trek comes loaded with positive expectations. So that may unfairly bias viewers going to see it. It is without a doubt a very polished film made with a lot of skill. Visually it looks fantastic, the special effects seem first-rate, especially compared to the…
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I know you want to go see it anyway, but don’t!
Wolverine Review Listen, at this point you probably pretty much know if you’re going to go see this movie or not. And if you love Wolverine it’s hard to blame you, surely even if the movie sucks you want to at least see what it was like, right? WRONG! Don’t do it. I mean it.…
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No Honestly, It’s Not Even Guilty Pleasure Fun
Fighting Review Listen, when you go see this movie you’re probably not expecting much. Which is actually kind of sad, because this underground fighting movie has the magnificent Oscar nominated Terrance Howard and director Dito Montiel’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints was decent, energetic, personal and had the best performance I’ve seen Channing Tatum…
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American Violet: No Really, It’s Super Good
Since this movie, American Violet, is an indie and I’m not sure how widely it’s being distributed I’m going to just copy/paste my review from The Diamondback. This review ran on www.diamondbackonline.com under the Diversions section this past week. “Take note: American Violet is no well-intentioned political indie lacking in artistic value, but a major…
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It’s Fun While You’re There, But Forgettable Later
Monsters Vs. Aliens 3-D Review I actually saw this movie in 3-D, which is still novel enough that I was pretty excited. But as neat as it is to initially see something fly out at you from the screen that gimmicky fun eventually wears off and you need a good story. Monsters Vs. Aliens is…
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Same Old, Same Old
Fast and Furious Review The above picture is from pretty much the only really strong scene of Fast & Furious, a truck-hijacking shot with longer takes that allow the viewer to see what is going on and appreciate the stunt work. There’s also a chase scene on foot shortly after which is similarly shot and…
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Nowhere Near As Bad As You’ve Been Led To Believe
Knowing Review Knowing has been talked about by some critics as an early front runner for worst movie of the year. Here’s why that’s so off-base I can’t even fathom it. The movie’s about Nicolas Cage (playing an MIT professor) finding a list of numbers that predict disasters and trying to do something about fate,…