Feature-debuting director Colin Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed marks the rarest of indie comedies — the speculative kind — as Jeff, a cocky magazine writer (Jake Johnson, TV’s New Girl) in Seattle, relies on his intern, Darius (Aubrey Plaza, TV’s Parks and Recreation), to use her feminine wiles to get close to the lonely grocery clerk/would-be […]
science
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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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Iron Sky
The Nazis mistake the landing as a prelude to an invasion, so the Third Reich prepares to strike the earth before the earth can strike it. Iron Sky has all the makings of a big batch of poor taste. Instead, it’s an inspired goof of a spoof that bridges the worlds of highbrow and lowbrow […]
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Karate-Robo Zaborgar
As silly as it is satisfying, the Sushi Typhoon serving is both an update and a spoof of a live-action kiddie series from the 1970s, à la Ultraman, so the approach is both reverent and respectfully raunchy (think The Brady Bunch Movie). It’s about the love story between a man named Daimon (Yasuhisa Furuhara) and […]
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The Hunger Games
I also found it disappointing — not as a near-billion-dollar grosser, but as a movie purported to be both action and science fiction. It’s too inert for the former and not imaginative enough for the latter. The title references a brutal annual competition staged by the government of a dystopian future, of which this film’s […]
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God and science
Dr. Brad Strawn In The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology, & the Church, author Brad D. Strawn explores how developments in modern science have changed ideas of spirituality, and the implications for the church. The book argues against the long-held theological view that a soul provides the spirituality and mental capacities of a […]
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Lockout
I know exactly what a Besson production will mean: high-concept action rendered as a high-octane cartoon in live-action, with a severe chance for martial arts. The French filmmaker’s name equals a style equals a brand. His aesthetic appears even when he doesn’t direct. His creative stamp supersedes all. And so it is again with Lockout, […]
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‘Bad’ teacher
In the AMC cable series, which kicked off its fifth and final season Sunday, Bryan Cranston portrays Walter White, organic chemistry teacher by day, meth manufacturer by night. Since nearly the start, Breaking Bad staff writers call upon Nelson to ensure their series’ science is solid. “It was a little bit of a difficult decision […]
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Academic achievement
Manning, the school’s founding president, leaves after having helped shape OSSM into one of the nation’s finest schools. Newsweek recently ranked it 35th on the magazine’s annual list of the 1,000 best schools in the U.S. “I knew it would be fun to create a school, not just build buildings, that sort of thing — but […]
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Perfect Sense
Spread director David Mackenzie’s movie imagines a new disease in which victims inexplicably become overwhelmed with grief, then lose their sense of smell entirely. While not thought to be contagious, the threat is so unfamiliar that the public overreacts, anyway. Meeting in the midst of this madness are epidemiologist Susan (Eva Green, Dark Shadows, Cracks, […]