Happy People: A Year in the Taiga Love a good documentary? If so, you’re in luck, since two excellent, if decidedly different, ones are in town this week. Werner Herzog is easily among the most singular of documentary makers, having made such elegantly strange works as Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Still, fans […]
AMC
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The Frankenstein Theory
Wait, wait! Don’t run off! This one’s better than the average entry, even if it’s not so revolutionary to change the minds of those who despise the delivery system. It opens Friday at AMC Quail Springs Mall, 2501 W. Memorial — one of about 15 theaters nationwide to get it. The picture’s snowy setting is reason […]
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Amour
In other words, the guy is definitely not the lovey-dovey type. But that unblinking, cold-blooded aesthetic is largely what makes Amour, which opens Friday at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, so remarkable. In its depiction of an elderly Parisian couple coming to terms with illness and looming death, the film is almost brutal in its […]
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Smashed
Opening today exclusively at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, 2501 W. Memorial, the indie drama is reminiscent of 1988’s Clean and Sober, also a sturdy-enough addiction movie that lives and dies on its central performance — in other words, one actor shoulders the entire burden, elevating what is otherwise unremarkable (but not incompetent) material. He […]
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It’s a TV-on-DVD fall frenzy!
The Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season Now that the third season has started, I guess we’ll know soon enough, but The Walking Dead must figure out a way to deliver a consistent season. It delivers awesome season openers and closers, but the ones in between can be maddening; they can take several episodes to […]
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It’s a TV-on-DVD summer spectacular!
Breaking Bad: The Complete Fourth Season If Breaking Bad‘s current fifth and final season goes south (not bloody likely), at least season four delivers a climax that could have serves as a satisfying serious closer, were it not renewed. But it was, and no wonder: Bryan Cranston may have the tube’s richest character arc, as […]
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Beasts of the Southern Wild
Just as did director Guillermo del Toro in Pan’s Labyrinth, first-time feature director Benh Zeitlin requires a suspension of disbelief to become part of a world seen and understood through a young girl’s eyes. Just as the creative force of Ofelia’s imagination in that 2006 film fought back against Franco’s fascism, this one, embodied in […]
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‘Bad’ teacher
In the AMC cable series, which kicked off its fifth and final season Sunday, Bryan Cranston portrays Walter White, organic chemistry teacher by day, meth manufacturer by night. Since nearly the start, Breaking Bad staff writers call upon Nelson to ensure their series’ science is solid. “It was a little bit of a difficult decision […]
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Your Sister’s Sister
The film is scheduled to open Friday at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, 2501 W. Memorial. Written and directed by Lynn Shelton over 12 days, Your Sister’s Sister is another indication of the ongoing mainstreaming of “mumblecore,” a quasi-film movement punctuated by improvisation, modest production values and, all too often, amateurish notions of storytelling. But […]
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The Killing: The Complete First Season
That’s the question posed by the first season of AMC’s The Killing, and also one famously answered — and then infamously not — by its finale (an extended cut of which is on the three-disc Blu-ray set) that incited the Internet equivalent of a riot. Whereas so many viewers were angry, I was elated: Seriously, […]