Cinema Mishmash

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Here is a sure indicator that a movie franchise has gone too far: when the latest installment, despite the spectacle of its explosions and special effects, is more or less a bore. That is, sadly, the state of things in the X-Men department. By the look of things, the film has left the caretakers of [...]

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Aside from being a kind and gracious soul (as displayed again at his appearance tonight at the film’s North American debut at the Chicago International Film Festival), John Woo is a talented filmmaker. He is well known for the visual flourish he brings to action sequences, which is tirelessly put to use is Red Cliff, [...]

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I just really can’t reconcile the number of films that have been made which star Nicolas Cage as the mildly vacant character swept up in some sort or frenetic intrigue. If there is any definitive proof that Hollywood is catering to the the least ambitious part of our collective movie consumption, it has to be [...]

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Anyone of a certain age is sure to remember the Witch Mountain movies of the late 1970s, in which a pair of otherworldly kids with telepathic and telekinetic powers were constantly on the run from some threat of another. (Okay, I don’t remember the details, only that the girl Tia had a cool name and [...]

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If the societal revenge flick genre didn’t exist before, it does now with Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, a multi-threaded re-imagining in which Hitler and the Nazis get what’s coming a lot sooner than historical truth and, as one would expect from the reining cineaste auteur, with a visual and narrative flourish that no one could [...]

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If you thought that slapstick kung-fu comedy began with Kung Fu Hustle or Shaolin Soccer, or that gravity-defying, supernatural swordsmanship got is contemporary cinematic debut with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you would be off by (at least) the better part of a decade. Among the many Chinese and Hong Kong films of which western audiences [...]

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Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies is a CIA action thriller that hits all of the marks you would expect from an experienced director with two heavyweight actors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe (for whom the pun is intended). We’ve seen our fair share of derivative Iraq war fictions, and while this one may have been [...]

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If a film manages to provoke dialogue or debate, then it cannot be considered to be without value. In the case of Babylon A.D., that debate was: Which is worse, a bad story or a bad ending? The argument could made that both descriptions apply to this Vin Diesel vehicle, but I submit that the [...]

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Valkyrie tells the true story of Nazi army  Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) and the many men and women who formed an underground resistance movement against Hitler during World War II – from within the German armed forces.  Von Stauffenberg was the key figure in what was one of several attempts to assassinate Hitler, [...]

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I’ve never been a huge sports fan, but imagine that if your favorite player, at the crucial point in the game, missed the free throw or strikes out, the pain is felt a little more strongly when you know that a great talent didn’t live up to your very personal expectations. That’s how I feel [...]

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Begin with something nice, I always say. With that in mind, and the Blu-ray disc of 10,000 B.C. has the nicest of beginnings. Which is to say, when one loads the disc in the player, the movie actually begins playing right away. No really, it’s true. No trailers, no cable TV series promotions, no guy [...]

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