America has embraced many bands and musicians over the years, but only a few dozen have wrapped themselves into the fabric of the country’s pop culture like Huey Lewis and the News. A massive presence in the formative days of MTV, the blues-influenced pop rockers unleashed a string of feel-good, smash-hit singles, including “The Heart […]
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I Wish
In the Japanese-language film I Wish, two brothers are coping as best they can with their parents’ separation and impending divorce. Twelve-year-old Koichi (Koki Maeda) is pensive and anxious, not cripplingly so, but enough for him to worry — not without some justification — why no one in his town seems alarmed about living in […]
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Jon Lyle Williams and the Bravest Retreat — Jon Lyle Williams and the Bravest Retreat
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal;mso-outline-level:1″><span style=" Times New Roman” ,”serif”;mso-fareast-times=”” new=”” roman”;=”” mso-font-kerning:18.0pt;mso-fareast-language:es-bo”=””> I assume Jon Lyle Williams and the Bravest Retreat miss it, too, because their self-titled album seems like an ode to the decade with a certain affection for their Oklahoma roots thrown in for good measure. Williams’ voice is a husky and powerful […]
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Cherry Bomb
The title refers to a stripper (Julin Jean, The Final) who is raped on the job by five guys in the “champagne room” at 3 a.m. Because one of them is a big construction honcho in the community and properly lawyered up, the cops do nothing. In revenge, her estranged brother (John Rodriguez) accidentally kills […]
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Of Dolls & Murder
What are nutshell studies? CSI viewers might recall season seven’s year-long arc of dollhouse miniatures of the crime scene left at each crime scene (“I think Malibu Barbie did it”). Those were based on the real-life models ranging from 1-inch- to 1-foot-scale, made with an über-meticulous attention to detail in the 1930s by the unheralded […]
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Django, Kill! (If You Live Shoot!)
After helping steal a trunkful of Wells Fargo gold, half-breed Django (Tomas Milian, Traffic) and his fellow minorities are not only denied their share by Oaks (Piero Lulli, My Name Is Nobody) and his evil white bandits, but gunned down and dumped in a mass grave they were forced to dig. Being the hero of […]
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The Deep Blue Sea
Written and directed by Terence Davies — who performed such duties on 2000’s well-received The House of Mirth and 1992’s The Long Day Closes — the film announces its dreary, depressing nature right from the opening scene, in which Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz, Dream House, The Lovely Bones) decides she wants to die. So she […]
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Black Limousine
At an AA meeting, Jack meets Hollywood actress Erica Long (Bijou Phillips, Hostel: Part II), who’s just as messed-up as he is. When he later sees her while on his job, he attempts to strike up a relationship, despite her extreme reluctance. His ability to listen wins her over, so things begin to look up […]
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Too Big to Fail
For this streamlined adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s nonfiction best-seller of the same name, director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) centers the story around the one man who had possibly the worst great job at the time: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson (a very good William Hurt, The Incredible Hulk). In trying to prevent […]
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Extraterrestrial
The Spanish-language film is a boy-meets-girl story under the threat of an alien invasion. Julio (Julián Villagrán) and Julia (Michelle Jenner) awake in her apartment after a drunken one-night stand neither remembers. Of more concern is that the streets are empty and an alien ship hovers overhead menacingly. They’re pestered by a nosy neighbor (Carlos […]