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 […]
Inception
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Back from Hell
Presented as four days of a taped holiday — because apparently, that’s what young people do — the movie follows a handful of pals who vacay together, screw around with a Ouija board and eat shish kabob outdoors. In other words, not a Hell of a lot happens beyond the occasional person screaming from outside. […]
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Warrior
In Philadelphia, his estranged brother, high school physics teacher Brendan (Joel Edgerton, “Animal Kingdom”), is a family man upside-down on his mortgage. Dire circumstances force the two independently to enter a winners-take-all, mixed-martial-arts tournament in Atlantic City, with “all” equating to a prize of $5 million. For Tommy, it’s a chance to move away from […]
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Hesher / Just Peck
In the infancy of “Saturday Night Live,” John Belushi starred in a sketch about an obnoxious party guest, “The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave.” That’s the character of Hesher in a nutshell, minus the cultural impact. As played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Inception”), he’s an aimless, homeless, near-worthless stoner metalhead who essentially enters the house of grieving […]
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World on a Wire
From “The Matrix” to “Inception” to “Source Code,” the concept of a constructed reality is a popular trope in today’s science-fiction films, but you’ve never seen it tackled as it is in “World on a Wire.” In fact, few have. “No one’s actually seen this before in the United States,” said Brian Belovarac of Janus […]
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Source Code
The less you know about the plot, the more pleasurable the experience. Without spoiling anything, however, its Escher loop of a story plops Jake Gyllenhaal’s Everyman character aboard a commuter train, where his government mission is to give him eight minutes to find a bomb that then will explode. If he can, they can find […]
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Black Heaven / Heartless
Just because the concept is as old as cinema itself doesn’t mean it’s no longer worth exploring, so long as the perspective shifts in new and interesting ways. Think Christopher Nolan’s “Inception.” Then think about checking out two current imports from IFC Films — one French, one British. I’m not suggesting they’re even in the […]