Aliens‘ Lance Henriksen stars as Lucas McCarthy, a police detective tormented by the memory of sneering evil killer Max Jenke (Brion James, Blade Runner), whom he helped put in prison. Jenke is sentenced to death and bursts into flames in the electric chair. Somehow he busts out of the straps and walks across the room […]
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The Wolf of Wall Street
The rise-and-fall story of real-life former penny-stocks swindler Jordan Belfort exudes a definite vibe of Scorsese déjà vu, most notably Goodfellas and Casino, even if the characters here are entitled white dudes instead of Mafiosi. Like Belfort himself, Wolf is wild, vulgar and often a helluva lot of fun. But also like its antihero, the […]
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American Hustle
Masking baldness is a small ruse, to be sure, but it’s par for the course in David O. Russell’s (Three Kings, Silver Linings Playbook) loping, loopy and very funny caper set in the late 1970s and early ’80s. The story is loosely based on Abscam, a 1980 FBI sting operation that netted bribery convictions of […]
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Saving Mr. Banks
This holiday season, Hollywood’s gift to itself — oh, you shouldn’t have! — is also Walt Disney Pictures’ Christmas offering to moviegoers: Saving Mr. Banks, a depiction of the trying times that went into the making of Disney’s 1964 classic Mary Poppins. Unwrapping it, you may be surprised to learn that so much material is […]
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Muscle Shoals
Even in what has been an impressive year for the rock ’n’ roll documentary — or rockumentary, if you wanna sound like Rolling Stone magazine — Muscle Shoals stands out. How could it not? The film, which screens Thursday through Sunday at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, chronicles the irresistible oddity of Muscle Shoals, […]
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Escape from Tomorrow
With Escape from Tomorrow, one fears the story behind the movie would loom larger than the movie itself. Luckily, that is not the case. After all, it opens with a decapitation on Disney World’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster. For those who don’t know, much of Escape from Tomorrow was shot surreptitiously at Disney […]
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Inside Llewyn Davis
There are several shots in Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest that (intentionally) offer a similar imagery, only with one very significant difference: Its protagonist, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac, Drive), is a lone wolf in the truest sense — aloof, misunderstood and tragically unsuccessful in his personal and professional endeavors. Set in 1961, the film opens […]
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All the Boys Love Mandy Lane / Mischief Night
Well, “new” may be inaccurate when we’re talking about All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Despite being a festival-circuit hit in 2006, the debut film from director Jonathan Levine (Warm Bodies, 50/50) sat unreleased until now. The seven-year wait proves not to be worth it. It’s easy to see why all those boys love (read: […]
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Getaway / Fast & Furious 6
Then arrives Getaway, which put the brakes on Hawke’s streak. The film goes nowhere, despite centering on a man and a car on a fast and furious mission. As a former NASCAR driver, Hawke’s character is tasked with playing a “game.” His wife (soap actress Rebecca Budig) has been kidnapped, and if he wants to […]
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Kill Your Darlings
Yes, it’s another biopic about the aforementioned famed beat poet—in the past ten years, about five or six movies has been about or featured him as a character—but what makes Kill Your Darlings so different, and infinitely more watchable, is that it’s as big a mishmash of genres as Ginsberg’s words were on the page: we’ve […]