That’s what makes The Perks of Being a Wallflower so impressive. New to Blu-ray and DVD, it understands the excess of feeling that characterizes being a teenager, and it doesn’t prettify or minimize the trials faced by the shy and socially awkward kid sitting alone in the school cafeteria. Written and directed by Stephen Chbosky, […]
drugs
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Black’s Game
1. Among its producers is Nicolas Winding Refn, the filmmaker who steered Drive straight to the top of my list of 2011’s best films. 2. It opens with a title card that translates to “BASED ON REAL HARDCORE SHIT.” 3. See No. 2; repeat as necessary. Based on a novel based on a true story, […]
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Paul Williams: Still Alive
Both documentaries deal with a musician wrongly presumed to be dead; the difference here is that the love comes straight from the director, Stephen Kessler (Vegas Vacation), whose impetus for the project is purely, deeply personal. With all the extra layers removed, I began to feel it, too; his adoration for his subject is infectious. […]
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Game change
Sen. Constance Johnson Credit: Mark Hancock Senate Bill. 902 would direct the state Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision to “develop and adopt rules permitting the prescription of medical cannabis by physicians” to patients with debilitating medical conditions. The legislation would also enable that board to set fees for the production, distribution and consumption of […]
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Why Stop Now
In the kind of one-note part that threatened to kill his career before the one-two punch of Zombieland and The Social Network saved it, Jesse Eisenberg stars as Eli, a young man with a bright future as a pianist ahead of him, if not for having to act as a surrogate father for his own […]
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The Good Doctor
Now, he’s fallen in love with one of his patients, Diane (Riley Keough, Magic Mike), a young woman with infected kidneys. He so wants to be near her that he starts taking steps to keep her sick — and therefore, in his care at the hospital — like replacing the goods in her medication with sugar […]
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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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The Sorcerers
Explains the Monserrats to a complete stranger (Ian Ogilvy, TV’s Return of the Saint) they’ve secured in what looks like an electric chair, the couple has devised a scientific system offering “complete abandonment with no thought of remorse … intoxication with no hangover, ecstasy with no consequence.” (To the viewer, this means a sequence of […]
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Supernatural Activity
The gist is that for its season/series finale, one of those ridiculous ghost-hunting shows goes to Hicksville, Texas, in search of the “yeti-demon” known as Smallsquatch. To give you an immediate idea of the level of humor the flick operates, the creature tickles its victims to death. Ha-ha! I mean, ha-ha? This flimsy setup allows […]
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Rites of Passage
It concerns a group of party-hearty students at the University in Santa Barbara — that’s right: in, not of, per the opening scrawl — taking a field trip to a burial ground of the Chumash Indians, a tribe evidently known for shape-shifting and downing toxic, hallucinatory flower tea. Along with much sexual activity and drug […]