Corrigan often plays losers and underdogs, but rarely as the lead. Here, he’s ice cream parlor worker Kenny Boyd, sometimes further humiliated by having to don a costume as a mint chocolate chip cone at kids’ birthday parties. But, hey, it beats the loony bin, from which he’s newly sprung. Bullied and tormented since his […]
movie
Posted inArts & Culture
ATM / Brake
I’m beginning to think Chris Sparling is trying to carve a screenwriting career as the Tight, Enclosed Spaces Guy. First, he put Ryan Reynolds in a coffin for the entirety of Buried. Now, he’s trapped three young co-workers (played by Men in Black 3‘s Alice Eve, The Hurt Locker‘s Brian Geraghty and The Wackness‘ Josh […]
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Dead zone
Photo: Ande Spenser Lensed locally, Time Expired is a terminal-illness comedy — strange as that may sound — written by Oklahoma native Rachel Tucker. The film is focused on Randall, played by Eric Starkey (Bringing Up Bobby), who discovers that he is dying. Rather than visiting the Grand Canyon or bungee-jumping off a bridge, all […]
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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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Endeavour
Set in 1965, the Masterpiece Mystery telefilm finds young Detective Constable Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans, Being Julia) at a career crossroads, thinking of quitting the force when a big case diverts his attention: the disappearance — and subsequent murder — of a poetry-loving student. Needless to say, it’s not the only corpse that will show […]
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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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Best Laid Plans
Subbing as the British film’s George and Lenny are, respectively, drugged-out thug Danny (Stephen Graham, Al Capone in TV’s Boardwalk Empire) and mentally handicapped giant Joseph (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, TV’s Lost). The former enrolls the latter against his will in unregulated MMA scuffles for quick paydays. Danny and Joseph are friends out of necessity, depending upon […]
Posted inMusic
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 […]