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I, Tonya
Great 17 Points 2017

Margot Robbie was great, but Allison Janney shows why she got the Oscar in I Tonya. Before seeing this, I had no idea about the poor white trash background of the skater’s mom who routinely used phrases like “lick my a$$” and chain-smoked her way through Tonya’s life. The move was great and a ho…

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Trotsky
Great 66 Points 2017

The three men who led the Russian Revolution – Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin – come alive in Trotsky, a 2017 Russian miniseries. Caveat emptor, Trotsky is a Putin-era Russian production that takes some dramatic and therefore historical license, plus features at least one R-rated sex scene per e…

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WikChip Video Global tragedy made sleek and sexy
Chappaquiddick
Really Great 83 Points 2018

Being a Kennedy came with compulsions, including sailing, drinking, womanizing and the presidency, those last with fatal effect. Ted Kennedy’s date with death didn’t lead to another dead Kennedy, but to the manslaughter of a loyal supporter: Mary Jo Kopechne, a name familiar to baby-boomers acros…

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WikChip Video She didn't drown. She suffocated, slo...
12 Strong
Great 83 Points 2018

12 Strong is no run-of-the-mill war movie, to be valued on its moral complexity and clever comebacks. No, 12 Strong is morally simple and often wooden, making it rather unfashionable in our morally confused era. Of course, we also live in the Islamist Era, sharing God’s Earth with a medieval …

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WikChip Video Cool details about the real Horse Sol...
The 15:17 to Paris
Very Good 83 Points 2018

Clint Eastwood’s terrorist-on-a-train film unspools like a cinéma vérité home movie. Three yokels from Sacramento – California’s middle-American capital city – get the chance to be heroes and don’t blow it.

Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos & Anthony Sadler famously play themselves as the three du…

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WikChip Video Ellen interviews 3 American heroes.
Operation Finale
Perfect 66 Points 2018

The banality of evil gets a powerful debunking in Operation Finale, an awkwardly if accurately titled docudrama about the Mossad’s 1960 capture of Final Solution logistics chief Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Little Adolf was famously said to embody “the banality of evil” as he dissembled during …

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WikChip Video The (real) Man Who Got Eichmann
First Man
Very Good 83 Points 2018

First Man is a forced march, joyless despite the profoundly joyous – if harrowing – adventure it chronicles. One disaster or near-disaster after another, and then … triumph. Some of this stems from the nearly inchoate mid-century man that was Neal Armstrong and some from his joyless marriage….

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WikChip Video How They Do It, in Hollywood
White Boy Rick
Great 66 Points 2018

White Boy Rick is more than a primo Matthew McConaughey movie, though it is definitely one of those. It is a darkly funny – basically true – tale of a family gone wrong in a city gone hella wrong, 1980s Detroit.

Yann Demange’s film is a grim sociological examination, proctological in its pen…

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WikChip Video Matthew McConaughey on Rooster McCona...
Bohemian Rhapsody
Very Good 83 Points 2018

Queen were never one of my bands. No Queen on vinyl, nor even any in my pocket. Sure, I was awed by the rangy brilliance of Bohemian Rhapsody, plus well entertained by the propulsive insouciance of Killer Queen and pop perfection of Crazy Little Thing Called Love. But the fascist commercial…

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WikChip Video Legendary Set
The Last Czars
Great 66 Points 2019

The Last Czars dramatizes the personal and political perils of Nicholas & Alexandra, the last Czar & Czarina of the Russian Empire. Nicholas the Bloody and his profoundly unhappy family were such wanton rulers they made the Bolsheviks look good, thereby triggering "the greatest catastrophe in h…

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WikChip Video Lovely Synopsis