Screen

An Ang Lee masterpiece

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Being stranded in the middle of an unforgiving ocean is a theme that’s been explored in films as diverse as Swiss Family Robinson and Hitchcock’s surprisingly tense Lifeboat. But being cast adrift for more than 200 days in a lifeboat with an adult Bengal tiger? It ...

The hidden sounds of Alabama

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The section of the Tennessee River that forms the northern border of Muscle Shoals, Ala., didn’t always go by that name. Early Native Americans called it “The Singing River” and believed a river princess sang its soft melody...

Chloe falls flat

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Chloe is a conundrum. Envisioned as a psychosexual thriller about a woman scorned, director Atom Egoyan’s latest puzzle is instead little more than a messy affair with mood lighting, sexy lingerie, heavy breathing and swelling, um, music. Everyone here is dripping ...

Infer-nah

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Very early on in director Ron Howard’s ungodly inert Inferno, one of the few interesting characters throws himself off a building, striking several rooftops...

An unpretentious timewaster

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Ten percent to the usual charities?” I love a line like that, smack in the middle of a scene featuring bank robbers dividing up the spoils. It proves they’re good guys at heart, willing to spread it around (if only for the sake of appearances) while blowing the rest ...

Tom Cruise’s foreign policy

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If you conceived a child back when Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah’s couch, it would now be old enough to tell you to move on. Despite welcoming back rapists and murderers when they win a Super Bowl, modern society seems intent on holding a grudge against a guy who, at ...

More suspense from ‘Whiteout,’ please

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Here's a really cool idea for a film: you're a U.S. Marshal working at a United States research facility in Antarctica, helping keep the peace. Like a campus cop, your primary job is dealing with drunks and minor thefts, but you're hoping that a major crime will ...

Friendly skies ‘Up In The Air’

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Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has a job that keeps him flying 200 days/ year in Up In The Air — he’s a corporate downsizer brought in to fire excess employees. It’s a tough job and Bingham has made a career out of detaching, disassociating from anything that could ...

A patient Western

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At one point in Meek’s Cutoff, set in 1845, the frontier settler played by the excellent, plain-spoken Michelle Williams fires two warning shots after an alarming encounter with a Native American. Hurriedly she loads the rifle with gunpowder and ammunition, while ...

Vague ones

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I spent most of the beginning of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story trying to decide if Forest Whitaker’s character was named Saul, Sol,...

SeaWorld can suck it

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Breaking news: You know those giant, majestic, ocean-dwelling creatures with the first name “killer?” Turns out if you lock them in tiny spaces, it kills them, and if you get in with them, they kill you. Nothing says “family fun” like aquatic murder and animal ...

Origins of evil, zombies and a film festival on the rise

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It’s a cool spring evening with a bit of a breeze coming in off the mountains — just enough to slam a few doors and lift a few curtains. Old iron gates swing on their hinges in the courtyard. Though it’s too dark to clearly see the surrounding peaks, there’s a ...