Seconds tells the story of Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), a terminally unsatisfied and bored executive whose familiar life has grown stale. Lately, he has been in communication with a supposedly deceased friend who promises him a chance at a new life. Taking the plunge, Hamilton wanders into a shadowy corporate world of identity transplantation in […]
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Seconds
Seconds tells the story of Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), a terminally unsatisfied and bored executive whose familiar life has grown stale. Lately, he has been in communication with a supposedly deceased friend who promises him a chance at a new life. Taking the plunge, Hamilton wanders into a shadowy corporate world of identity transplantation in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Fugitive: 20th Anniversary Edition
Even people who have never seen it — shame on you — tend to know what it’s about: Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford, never better) is accused of murdering his wife. The cops don’t believe his story of the real culprit being a one-armed man … and neither does the jury that sentences him to […]
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Silent no more
It’s amazing that it was ever made in the first place. The film, rediscovered by the Oklahoma Historical Society, tells a four-way love story but also shows the lost way of life of its actors — about 300 Kiowas and Comanches. Those traditions were discouraged when the film was shot in July 1920 in the […]
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The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond
The horror film begins in 1927 Turkey, where an excavation unearths cave etchings of the great god Pan, which somehow inspires one of the explorers to craft a board game based on what they found. Skip to present-day Maine, where that board game is found in a lakeside cabin by — surprise! — a bunch […]
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Now You See Me
In this summer’s sleeper hit, four magicians of varying specialties and egos are brought together by a mysterious, hoodied benefactor. Played by Jesse Eisenberg (30 Minutes or Less), Woody Harrelson (Seven Psychopaths), Isla Fisher (The Great Gatsby) and Dave Franco (21 Jump Street), they perform a live trick to end all tricks: robbing a bank […]
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Blancanieves
While not achieving the same storybook ending, Spain’s Blancanieves is every bit a celebration of the cinema as The Artist, this one is arguably more accessible because it plays in the currently in-vogue sandbox of fairy tales: Snow White and the Huntsman, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Jack the Giant Slayer among them. In finding inspiration in the Brothers Grimm version of Snow […]
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This Is Martin Bonner
Not for nothing does This Is Martin Bonner carry that matter-of-fact, take-it-or-leave-it title. The film is a temporary glimpse into an ordinary man’s conventional life yet is told unconventionally, in that it doesn’t offer the regular beats to which moviegoers are accustomed (if not numbed). We swoop in, we observe its subject for a while, […]
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Cockneys vs Zombies
In jolly ol’ England, the Bow Bells Care Home is set to be demolished to make way for luxury apartments, thereby displacing many a needy elder. The move comes earlier than anticipated when the construction crew unearths a “plague pit” chock full of the living dead. Meanwhile, one of the residents (Alan Ford, The Sweeney […]
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Heavy Traffic
It was years before Heavy Traffic — Bakshi’s second theatrical film — would find its way into my VCR. It came my way long after I had digested his PG-rated fantasy films like Lord of the Rings and Wizards and had memorized every line of dialogue to Coonskin, Heavy Traffic’s uber-controversial follow-up. And when I […]