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Celeste & Jesse Forever

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 […]

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Apartment 143 [Emergo]

The hauntings occur in the apartment occupied by Alan White (Kai Lennox, Beginners), a widower whose wife recently died in a car crash, leaving him with their curious young boy (newcomer Damian Roman) and resentful teenage girl (22-year-old Gia Mantegna, daughter of Joe). Tired of the unexplained occurrences, Mr. White has hired a two-man/one-woman team […]

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The Lucky One

His books sell millions of copies, and Hollywood’s adaptations of them sell millions of tickets more: The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, Dear John, The Last Song, A Walk to Remember, Nights in Rodanthe. Love means never having to say anything of value. Now there’s The Lucky One, a big-boy vehicle for High School Musical […]

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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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Area 407

As far as I know, Area 407 is the first one to merge the medium with Jurassic Park. It begins on a suspiciously near-empty New Year’s Eve flight from New York to L.A., and told from the perspective of two sisters who look nothing alike (newcomer Abigail Schrader and unknown Samantha Lester). They take turns […]

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Shark Week

Patriot Games‘ Patrick Bergin is Tiberon (get it?), a madman who clutches a pearl necklace, has Kick-Ass’ Yancy Butler draped on his arm, and channels John de Lancie. He’s collected these poor souls for reasons unbeknownst until the final five minutes; you can gather it’s for personal revenge. He forces them into his baby shark-infested […]

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Dexter: The Sixth Season

As season six opens, he worries whether his dark traits will take root in his toddler, but the arc of these dozen hours is tracking down the so-called “Doomsday Killer” — actually, killers plural: two end-times zealots (Edward James Olmos and a clench-jawed Colin Hanks) who believe God wants them to bring about the end […]

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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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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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