Screen

Reel to reel | Week of September 19, 2013

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Afternoon Delight Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) is a quick-witted and lovable, yet tightly coiled, 30-something steeped in the creative class of Los Angeles’ bohemian, affluent Silver Lake neighborhood. Everything looks just right — chic modernist home, successful husband, ...

‘Valentine’s Day’ an ideal date movie

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When making movies, it's possible to have too much of a good thing...

Metal Lurching

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To walk in to The Man with the Iron Fists by choice is to give up your right to bitch about story and character. This is a movie written and directed by The RZA, a member of the powerhouse rap group The Wu-Tang Clan; produced by Eli Roth, the guy who made Hostel; and...

‘Armored’: Terrible tough guys

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Ever wonder what kind of guy drives an armored car full of cash? Yeah, I never did either, but that’s the environment that Armored presents us with: a bunch of edgy, tough-guy losers who somehow have ended up as employees of Eagle Shield Security...

‘Nine’ is sexy, engaging and stylish

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Films are dreams, whether the director is aiming for hyper-realism or whether we’re allowed to fly through the odd, the dreamy, and the troubling of their imagination. Director Rob Marshall’s Nine is a sexy, engaging, stylish and enlightening journey through the ...

‘Horrible’ pretty good

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You can practically hear little coils of contempt tightening inside Jason Bateman every time he’s in a pickle on screen. In the new comedy Horrible Bosses, the Bateman specialty is the are-you-trying-to-tell-me response. At one point in the film, when confronted ...

‘This isn’t a comic book’

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Writer/director Jeff Wadlow’s Kick-Ass 2 is “morning radio shock jock” offensive, which is a thematic departure from the source material written by Mark Millar. But is it better to flinch from the vile, reprobate, misogynistic glee of Millar’s comic miniseries or to ...

When death misses

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There was a scene, lo those many (OK, 11) years ago, in the original Final Destination. One of the characters who inadvertently “cheated death” and ruined “death’s grand design” had holed up in a cabin, which then had to be made accident-proof...

A magical tale through film history

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Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is a scruffy orphan who lives in forgotten spaces hidden in the walls of Gare Montparnasse, a bustling train station located in the center of Paris. It’s 1931 and memories of The Great War are fresh, even as everyone tries to resume their ...

Reel to reel | Week of October 25

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20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA...

Geneticists and horror

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Equal parts Species and The Savage is Loose, the eccentric and crafty new thriller Splice isn’t for audiences who require strong, noble rooting interests in their questing protagonists of science. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, neither of whom make it a habit to ...

Bright Phoenix

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The most laughable part of Her isn’t the complex, sophisticated romantic relationship between a man and his software operating system; it’s the high-waisted, Clint Eastwood-esque pants everybody wears. Forget flying cars; just promise us a future where we don’t have ...