The daughter of musician Quincy Jones and actress Peggy Lipton has proven herself a fine comic actress in film (I Love You, Man) and television (Parks and Recreation), and now a surprisingly sharp screenwriter in Celeste & Jesse Forever — not only the smartest and funniest romantic comedy you’re likely to see between now and […]
comedy
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Piranha 3DD
It is there in the prologue where two former Okies (Gary Busey and Clu Gulager) and a farting dead cow get the party started, sending hatched baby piranha to Merkin County, Ariz. — a joke that should calibrate you with the movie’s wavelength … as if the bra-size title didn’t do that already. (I’d like […]
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Thunderstruck
I am a huge Oklahoma City Thunder fan. Kevin Durant is my favorite athlete. I went to his basketball summer camp a couple of years ago and got to meet him. He was chilled — a real nice guy. When I heard he was going to star in his own movie, Thunderstruck, I was interested. After […]
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The Chapman Report
Based on a novel that itself was based on Alfred Kinsey’s landmark, controversial survey of human sexuality, The Chapman Report — now on MOD DVD from Warner Archive — dramatizes the data-collection efforts of Dr. Chapman (Andrew Duggan, It’s Alive) and his assistant, Paul Radford (Efrem Zimbalist, TV’s The FBI) in one particularly prosperous California […]
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Juan of the Dead
As played by Alexis Díaz de Villegas, Juan is a middle-aged, self-“employed” fisherman in Cuba whose layabout life gets some much-needed excitement when zombies dissidents invade their economically ravaged, crime-ridden village. Ironically, it motivates Juan and his otherwise lazy gang, as they start a dissident-extermination business whose motto is, “We kill your loved ones.” Armed […]
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Mickey and Me
On one hand, I feel like local filmmaker Mickey Reece should be run out of town. He is too talented not to be making “real” movies for a living on the coasts. On the other hand, I’d sure hate to lose him. His latest feature, Mickey and Me, premieres Saturday at City Arts Center. Musical […]
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Lisztomania
Almost a year after his death, Warner Archive brings one of his wildest — and that’s saying something — to a long-overdue American DVD release with 1975’s Lisztomania. Based loosely — in every sense of the word — on the life of Franz Liszt, it’s a musical comedy horror sex fantasy unlike any you’ve ever seen. […]
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The Liquidator
Rod Taylor (The Birds, Hotel) is Boysie Oakes, a mistaken wartime hero with a silly name, whom the Secret Service hires as an assassin. The joke is that not only does Oakes not want to become Agent L, but he doesn’t have the stomach to harm a fly. “No more romping around the mulberry bush: […]
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Jersey Shore Shark Attack
The great William Atherton, the reigning sleazeball of ’80s movies from Ghostbusters to Die Hard, plays a greedy developer breaking ground on a premiere beach club and spa near the New Jersey boardwalk. The underwater drilling — illegal, of course — unleashes a school of CGI albino sharks, just in time for the big Fourth […]
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ParaNorman
But while Coraline sustained a masterful level of Grimm-like creepiness, ParaNorman is only fitfully brilliant. The premise is promising. Eleven-year-old Norman Babcock (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee, Let Me In) has a familiar problem: He sees dead people. Lots of ’em, actually, which makes him something of a pariah in the hamlet of Blithe Hollow, Mass. […]