Working again with McDonagh, Colin Farrell (Total Recall) is Marty, a screenwriter having troubles on the job — all he has on paper is a title — and at home with his girlfriend (Abbie Cornish, Sucker Punch). These pale to the life-or-death situation his slacker pal, Billy (Sam Rockwell, The Sitter), gets him into, involving […]
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Amanda Earhart — Tell Me What You Want
Her debut EP, Tell Me What You Want, is characterized by funky, bright instrumentation with a mellow groove that harkens back to an age before Auto-Tune. Born and raised in Oklahoma City, Earhart shows off an impressive vocal range throughout the six songs. Whether she’s singing low and level, like in “Tell Me What You […]
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Lake Placid: The Final Chapter
I’m so kidding. However, it appears to pick up from where LP3 left off — I haven’t seen it — with crocodile hunter Reba (Yancy Butler, Shark Week) surviving a tussle with a giant croc … only to have it not be as dead as she first thought. “You again? You really wanna do this?” […]
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Kill for Me
For Hailey, it’s her dad (Donal Logue, Silent Night). For Amanda, it’s a stalkery ex-boyfriend. But problems can solved and, you know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. In other words, Kill for Me, I kill for you. Director Michael Greenspan’s follow-up to the disastrous Wrecked is a marked improvement. It’s like a gender-swapped […]
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
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, […]
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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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Funny or Die Presents: The Complete Second Season
Played with flawless deadpan by Steve Tom as an ersatz Leslie Nielsen, Haligan is the host of Funny or Die Presents, but also the Head of West Coast Sales & Marketing for the fictional Funny or Die Network, programming from which this sketch series is built. For season two, Haligan may have traded his sterile-white […]
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Marathon, man!
Comedy! Missed the first-season set of Episodes? Skip it. Instead, grab the new two-disc set collecting the first two years. Although very much a Hollywood in-joke, the Showtime series tells that in-joke with excellence, anchored by Friends vet Matt LeBlanc starring as an A-holier version of himself, reduced to starring on a hockey sitcom overseen […]
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‘Circus’ folk
Singer-songwriter Rebecca Loebe rarely feels right at home on the road as she does when she plays The Blue Door, as she will Thursday. The Atlanta native cut her teeth in Georgia’s famed Eddie’s Attic, the club that helped foster the careers of Indigo Girls, Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles and The Civil Wars, among others. John […]
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The Thieves
So don’t complain that you have to read subtitles; literacy is good for you. Depicting the theft of a national treasure from a seemingly impenetrable art vault, a 10-minute prologue puts viewers right in the mood for its jaunty, addicting vibe — one that marries the globetrotting derring-do of the Mission: Impossible franchise with the […]