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![]() Charlie Wilson’s War is great American comedy, successful on many levels: belly-laugh funny, serious as a crutch, magnificently produced, charismatically performed. How could it not be? A feel good story about an oh-so-likable Texas Congressman taking it to the Evil Empire when no one else wo…
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The Real Socialite behind Charlie Wilson
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![]() An immensely well done piece of agitprop, built around Sean Penn’s Best Actor performance and featuring Gus Van Sant’s most fully realized directing effort, this admirable biopic presents a world apart, yet right next door to the one in which most of us live and were raised. Straights needn’t …
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Sean Penn displays a lightness of being.
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![]() It’s a romantic thriller. No wait, it’s a lame sorta scifi story that never really adds up. Pity, because the strong cast works well, with romantic leads Matt Damon and Emily Blunt demonstrating real chemistry. How does a misfire like The Adjustment Bureau get made? You can just see the…
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![]() A fine, fine movie, Lincoln delivers an outstanding history lesson centered on an iconic performance for the ages. With it, Stephen Spielberg continues his own ascent into the American pantheon, while Daniel Day-Lewis creates his single most memorable role. The movie focuses on a great legi…
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Mrs. Lincoln & her Husband at the show
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![]() Part cultural artifact, part rock-n-roll circus, Scorsese’s film elegantly captures the ageless wonder of the Rolling Stones. Pop sensations for half a century now, Mick, Keith and their mates still possess the power to make young girls wild with desire, one of many truths revealed by the movie’s…
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Killer Catalog + Top Chops
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![]() This magnificent political biography also happens to be a very good movie. Not a great movie, but a great and important story, well told and even better acted by its two leads. Lessons in history and leadership should all be so charismatic. The movie has rhythms and totems unfamiliar to Amer…
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American superstars as African heroes
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![]() Saddam Hussein’s elder son Uday savaged Iraq for decades until US Special Forces took him out in 2003. The devil gets his due in The Devil’s Double, a high octane biopic based on his body-double’s memoirs. From outrageous tragedy a magnificent movie emerges, momentous as a hurtling Mercede…
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Pacino's Scarface? Cooper's Funnyface.
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![]() Spectacular calamity followed by impressive vengeance makes Olympus Has Fallen an amply satisfying cinematic experience. So what if it’s jingoism. It’s extremely well executed jingoism, by jingo! Patriotic action-movie fans – like me – happen to like this sort of button-pushing entertainment…
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Stunts and FX make the movie.
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![]() White House Down is bombing at the box office, surprising both Hollywood and Channing Tatum fans.1 Stiff opening competition from The Heat is part of the reason, but this heavily hyped movie’s commercial coup de grâce is almost certainly its coup…
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Good running-mates. Bad platform.
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![]() A big, bawdy brouhaha of a movie, David O. Russell’s followup to Silver Linings Playbook never fails to entertain, especially in recreating the Seventies. Yet it never coheres to a point. It’s all pointless seems to be its point. Silver Linings Playbook…
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JLaw's nut nukes nuke, blames husband.
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