Screen

Corruption of small-town innocence

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They were staples of popular literature, Broadway and the movies long before the movies could talk: comic yarns in which small-town naifs pack their bags and hit the big city, where they learn about life and love and what they’ve been missing...

Leave only memories; take only pictures

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Images hold a very special place in the mind of the viewer. Simultaneously of one time and timeless, objective and subjective, images bring forth textures and dimensions often lost in memory that can reduce the complex into simplistic categories of black and white...

You’ve seen this film before

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The mystery of Topher Grace’s film career, and why it isn’t better, continues with Take Me Home Tonight...

Double Take: ‘Source Code’

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When you die, the last eight minutes of your life remain electromagnetically imprinted in your brain. If we could inject someone into that persistent memory, they could solve crimes after the fact. It’s the fascinating premise for director Duncan Jones’ sci-fi ...

Corporate fate

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David Norris (Matt Damon) is a young go-getter New York politician who has a chance encounter with the quirky, engaging Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt), a ballerina who captures his attention immediately. Strange forces are at work and Norris is assaulted and wakes up in ...

Brutality depicted

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New rule: You can watch Django Unchained as many times as you want, but you have to watch 12 Years a Slave at least once first...

Bungled burlesque

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The choicest dialogue in Burlesque provokes the sort of laughter that other, intentionally funny films only dream of generating. Gather ’round for some free samples...

Singing on the ice

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I admired much of the original Happy Feet (2006), but five years later, I’m still considering suing its makers for emotional distress...

Revelations kill the suspense

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A horror movie that works cuts through analysis, shrugs off opinions and snobbery, and eschews complexity — either in technique or in budget. You know it works when the hairs on the back of your neck rise. You know it works when others in the audience — as if moved ...

Abridged and confusing

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In a future where the government keeps a tight rein on the populace, the annual reminder of an earlier failed uprising is The Hunger Games, a televised battle to the death of teens chosen from each of 12 districts. When her young sister Prim (Willow Shields) is ...

Bland, flavorless cheese

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Sand dunes at sunset, summer lovin’ (had me a blast!), a third-act medical crisis and a clutch of letters designed to be read aloud in voice-over: Another month, another adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks romance. This month’s is called The Last Song, starring Miley ...

Hunters becoming hunted

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The 1987 film Predator inspired a number of spinoffs, from the inane (Alien vs. Predator) to the ghastly (Predator 2), and it was definitely time for a reboot before the titular hunter became a tedious cliché. Predators is a nonstop thrill ride of an action film, ...