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Good 66 Points 1998

The biggest British movie of ‘98 was Guy Ritchie’s first ever, a very British one indeed. Much of the humor is how unintelligible most of the movie’s lowlifes are, Ritchie being a specialist in ultra vernacular comedy.

Three million Brits bought tickets. Frankly, that’s too much British com…

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WikChip Image Barry the Baptist ain't happy.
Eat That Questi...
Good 66 Points 2016

Eat That Question is well titled. Frank Zappa in His Own Words is FZ waxing loquacious, repeatedly. Zappa, the pugnacious, contradictory and iconoclastic rockstar, indeed the consummate rockstar, trades heavily on his privilege and arrogance, by turns funny, shocking and ridiculous, a Trump t…

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WikChip Video Václav Havel was a big Zappa fan.
Masterminds
Good 83 Points 2016

Masterminds starts off rock-and-roll, but soon becomes dumb-and-dumber, only not so funny or charming. Loosely “based on a true story”, it oscillates between parody and homage, albeit more the former given its deep SNL roots. Unfortunately, TV-quality sketch comedy bits don’t a great movie make…

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WikChip Video Comedy Great: Kate McKinnon
True Romance
Good 66 Points 1993

Quentin Tarantino defines True Romance more than the major stars who are in it – Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson & James Gandolfini included – or its big-time director, Top Gun Tony Scott. Pulp fiction and Mexican standoffs mark…

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WikChip Video Crazy Kids
My Cousin Vinny
Good 66 Points 1992

My Cousin Vinny is best thought of today as Marisa Tomei’s breakthrough. Perfectly paired with a then peaking Joe Pesci, the 30-something Tomei won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for a comedy. Damn.

The movie itself is a genial send-up of stereotypes, Italian-American mostly. Delivered …

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The American Pr...
Very Good 66 Points 1995

The American President succeeds grandly as a romantic comedy and ironically as a revealing peek into cushy Democratic pieties, of which Aaron Sorkin and Rob Reiner’s 1990s movie is a cinematic catechism.

It focuses on a likeable man in the third year of his Presidency who is animated primari…

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WikChip Video Cushy Left Wing values turned up to 11.
Office Space
Very Good 66 Points 1999

Beavis goes to the office in Mike Judge’s cult classic Work Sucks comedy. OK, Judge’s infamous adolescent cartoonoid doesn’t actually appear. (Ah, yeah, it’s live action.) Similar infantilism is at play however in the apparent adults who populate the movie’s dispiriting workforce. Workers a…

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WikChip Image Ah. Yeah. Great.
The Dream Team
Very Good 66 Points 2012

USA Basketball will likely romp to a gold medal in the 2012 Olympics. But even LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook can’t hold a candle to the original Dream Team. “A majestic team,” observed Chuck Daly, their coach.

Michael Jordan – just peaking as a glo…

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WikChip Image The Cover That Christened Them
Bronson
Very Good 66 Points 2008

We Americans are blessedly unfamiliar with the “most violent prisoner in Britain,” a nut called Charles Bronson. I’d of happily gone on that way had Tom Hardy not become an actor whose riveting performances demand that his every great role be viewed. And his feral performance as Charles Bronson…

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WikChip Image One more bystander hurt by Bronson
Brick
Very Good 66 Points 2005

What we have here is a hard-boiled High School movie. Students in and around an underground drug ring allow Brick to revel in deceit and ironic detachment. Rian Johnson’s first movie then leavens itself through Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s romantic heroism.

So what if JGL is mid-twenties posing …

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WikChip Image Richly Romantic: JGL & Nora Zehetner