MovieSorter

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Elegy
Great 66 Points 2008

Ben Kingsley gets in much deeper than planned after seducing a much younger Penélope Cruz in Elegy. Isabel Coixet’s movie comes by its sexual fixations via pedigree: Phillip Roth’s novel The Dying Animal. Think of it as Portnoy’s Complaint, the When I’m 64 rendition – "Will you still nee…

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WikChip Video Ben Kingsley seduces Penélope Cruz
American Sniper
Perfect 66 Points 2014

Saving Private Ryan has a new neighbor atop the pantheon of Great American War movies. Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper and Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper illuminates the reality of America’s 21st century war as never before, just as Steven Spielberg’s classic did about the Greatest Generation’s …

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WikChip Video 10 Questions with the real Chief Kyle
The Conversation
Good 66 Points 1974

The Conversation was one of Francis Ford Coppola’s celebrated early Seventies movies, nominated for Best Picture and winner of the Palme d’Or. Deeply accomplished, occasionally fascinating, a time capsule of San Francisco from 1973, it nonetheless disappoints all these decades later.

The min…

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WikChip Video Coppola talks 'The Conversation' in 1974
Blood Father
Really Great 66 Points 2016

An awkward title is about the only thing wrong with Blood Father, a terrific piece of pulp fiction starring a never better Mel Gibson. Bad Dad would be a better title, what with Bad Moms all over the multiplexes right now. That said, this dark…

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WikChip Video Mel knows AA meetings from real life.
The Salesman
Great 66 Points 2016

The Salesman validates my love of movies by bringing to the screen a slice-of-life at once prosaic and yet theatrical, and insanely thrilling. It’s also familiar to a Western audience, though set in Iran. Yeah, it’s an Iranian movie, making it utterly fascinating to Westerners like me who are i…

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WikChip Video Asghar Farhadi describes his film
Good Time
Great 66 Points 2017

Good Time is a helluva good time movie, if your taste in movie entertainment includes sickly funny slices of life from the underbelly of society. Mine does, for better or worse, so this demented masterpiece struck me and most of my entire theater as OMG and increasingly LOL pretty much all the …

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WikChip Video No more making fun of Robert Pattison
Small Soldiers
Really Great 66 Points 1998

Small Soldiers looms large two decades after its premier. Spielberg inspired and produced, Joe Dante’s masterpiece is classic Hollywood fantasy, with a great cast featuring Frank Langella & Tommy Lee Jones.

The classic Hollywood part includes being left-wing and anti-American. The villains …

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WikChip Video Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
Hotel Mumbai
Great 66 Points 2019

The 2008 Mumbai attacks were of 9/11 savagery and comprehensiveness, yet have faded from Western consciousness. Hotel Mumbai recreates them with stunning alacrity, moving quickly from the Islamist terrorists coming ashore in rubber boats to starting to shoot-up train stations, restaurants and e…

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WikChip Video A Measure of Justice
Spider-Man: Far...
Perfect 66 Points 2019

The fate of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in sticky good hands as Spider-Man improves to perfection in Tom Holland’s sophomore outing. Indeed, Far from Home gives us everything we want in a blockbuster.

It starts by playing out the changing-of-the-guard that began in the still-in-theaters…

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WikChip Video Cool Minutiae
Once Upon a Tim...
Perfect 66 Points 2019

Hollywood loves Hollywood, always has and still does, especially Quentin Tarantino, local boy made good. He has outdone himself with Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, which is quite simply Peak Tarantino.

It’s literally AND figuratively about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: true crime even…

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WikChip Video Easter Eggs Revealed