Screen

‘The Blind Side’ defies expectations

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Sandra Bullock retrieves much of the career momentum that The...

Unexpected capitalism on the Oregon Trail

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His name is Figowitz, but everyone calls him “Cookie.” It fits him well. Not only is he the cook for this outfit of beaver...

Jonze takes ‘Wild’ risks; succeeds

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Truly, I am madly, deeply in love with the film version of Where the Wild Things Are. Not since Robert Altman took on Popeye a generation ago, and lost, has a major director addressed such a well-loved, all-ages title. This time everything works, from tip to tail, ...

Teen dream, parental nightmare

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Project X is the movie equivalent of that good-looking, well-off teenage boy your gut tells you to keep away from your teenage daughter. Something sets off the warning bells — that he has lost his mind to his hormones, that he objectifies women in the worst way, ...

Reel to reel | Week of June 21, 2012

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17 GIRLS Based on a 2008 headline-grabbing news story about an alleged pregnancy pact among 17 high school girls in the fishing town of Gloucester, Mass. — an act at once unexpected and incomprehensible to adults and boys in their world. At Denver FilmCenter/Colfax...

Grade A-Holes

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The proliferation of comic book movies has reached its cultural apex, so thoroughly dominating the box office and public consciousness that a backlash was practically invited. While the public plays Oliver Twist, wallets open and begging for more, those who ...

These guys have all the fun

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Somebody asked me, what would be a dream project of yours?” director Douglas Tirola recounts. “I immediately had this vision of a book on my shelf at home that I have had since I was a teenager — the 10th anniversary collection of National Lampoon...

American boy

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Soft-spoken and even, Charles Bukowski sounds nothing like his face looks. Or like his prose reads. In his introduction to the 1979 edition of...

Comedians review reels of forgotten treasure

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Nick Prueher would never wish his career on anyone...

Down to business; business accomplished

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Getting low means getting down to business, in the parlance of the backwoods oddity played, wonderfully, by Robert Duvall in Get Low. Let’s get down to business, then. This film, calm but full of feeling, relays an intriguing story brought to life by some ...

Think about what you’re trying to do to me

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Let’s go back, let’s go back; let’s go way on, way back when, back when we use to swipe our favorite alternative band’s cassette...

Decoding the Master

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By its very nature, cinema is a collaborative art. As Orson Welles said, “A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.” To whom then does a movie belong? In his 1954 essay, “A certain tendency in French cinema,” the young critic, ...