Reviewers’ grade: CHilary Swank takes a break from winning Oscars to star in this adequately creepy tale of a small Louisiana backwater town that is visited by the 10 plagues of the Old Testament. Working as a religious mythbuster, Swank believes that all miracles can be explained away by science until frogs start dying like […]
Arts & Culture
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Two angry psychiatrists from a failed romance get thoroughly analyzed in their lawsuit
In March, a jury in Los Angeles listened to nine psychiatrists testify, along with other witnesses who openly described their sex lives, before finally deciding that neither party in the shrink-vs.-shrink contest was all that emotionally healthy. Dr. David Martorano had sued the UCLA psychiatry department, blaming a loss of promotion on a failed affair […]
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The Namesake
Reviewers’ grade: A-In chronicling two generations of an Indian American family, “The Namesake” mines the divide between cultural identity and assimilation. Our story begins in 1977 with the arranged Indian marriage of scholarly Ashoke Ganguli (Irfan Khan) and beautiful Ashima (Tabu). They move to New York, struggling with this strange new world and raising two […]
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Are We Done Yet?
If you can’t say something nice about something, my mother always taught me, don’t say anything at all. Bearing that in mind, let me just say that “Are We Done Yet?” could be much worse. A loose remake of 1948’s “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” and a sequel to 2005’s best-forgotten “Are We […]
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Blades of Glory
STRONG>BWill Ferrell and Jon Heder played two disgraced figure skaters who have been banned from the sport for life. When they realize that they are banned as singles skaters only, the pair makes a joint comeback as the world’s first all-male doubles team. And that’s the part of the movie that actually makes a little sense. Most […]
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Meet the Robinsons
Reviewer’s grade: A- Lewis, a brilliant scientist in the making, is an orphan who is hustled away in a flying time machine by Wilbur, a kid from the future. In Wilbur’s day, a villain known only as The Bowler Hat Guy is attempting to take over the world with the aid of computer-run bowler hats. […]
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Peaceful Warrior
Reviewer’s grade: C- Victor Salva’s “Peaceful Warrior” is a predictable, often cheesy example of the film genre we can call “sports inspirational,” with Zen master as coach. Calling to mind films like “The Karate Kid,” TV shows like “Kung Fu” and books like “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Salva’s heavily meaningful film focuses […]
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Why ‘Bubba Ho-Tep’ hit it big during OKC run
Coscarelli is the writer/director of the 1979 horror cult classic “Phantasm” and its three sequels. The original film and “Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead” will hit DVD in new special editions Tuesday, along with his little-seen 1989 foray into action-adventure, “Survival Quest.” As an independent filmmaker working outside of the studio system, he’s understandably […]
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A Tennessee prison tries to poach California inmates
A Tennessee prison tries to poach California inmates (The West Tennessee Detention Facility (Mason, Tenn.) made a video pitch for California inmates, hoping some would volunteer to be outsourced under that state’s program to relieve overcrowding. The hard-timers should come east, the video urged, because of West Tennessee’s “larger and cleaner jail cells, 79 TV […]
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The Lookout
Reviewers’ grade: A- Film noir heroes tend to be damaged goods, but even by those dour standards, Chris Pratt, the protagonist of “The Lookout,” is more damaged than most. Once a popular high school jock, Chris has suffered a head injury that leaves him barely able to execute the most innocuous tasks. Haunted by the […]