It was one of Walt Disney’s great disappointments that Fantasia (1940) under-performed during its original release, and when it did find an audience, in the 1960s, it probably wasn’t the one Walt would have imagined: people on drugs. Critic Danny Peary documented this strange phenomenon in his landmark 1980 book Cult Movies: “Fantasia has become […]
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The plucky, rough-around-the-edges Canadian thriller Level 16 is a Black Mirror-lite story about teenage girls being trained in a creepy, militaristic sort of finishing school called the Vestalis Academy and located in a secret fortified bunker. The girls, about a dozen of them, spend every waking hour learning how to be “clean girls” — obedient, passive, […]
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OK, Marvelinos! You’ve seen Captain Marvel and reveled in its 1990s awesomeness! (Remember how everyone back then had cats?) But you’re still wondering about a few things — and that’s where we come in! Buckle up and keep reading as we answer your burning questions about the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How […]
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Many of the people seeing Captain Marvel (myself included) won’t know anything about the character going in except that she’s from Marvel Comics and that you’d think she’d be a bigger deal given that she’s named after the company. After seeing the movie, a middling, good-enough episode in the Marvel Cinematic Universe series, I still […]
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“You only get one shot. Do not miss your chance to blow – this opportunity comes once in a lifetime.” — Eminem Throughout film history, musicians and athletes have put their celebrity to use as actors to varying degrees of success. Some of these stars (Queen Latifah, Justin Timberlake, Arnold Schwarzenegger) have gone on to […]
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Last year, on Halloween, I read the first reports about a Mandarin duck inexplicably appearing in Central Park. Flaming orange frills over a dark plum breast, brushed stripes of black and white feathers, forest green, royal blue, and auburn tufts slicked back into a mohawk at the top of his head — he became a […]
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(Guest columnist.) As CEO and co-founder of Netflix, I wanted to address some concerns that have come up recently. We don’t like to be in the news except for ordinary things like capriciously raising our prices, or for the daffy emails I used to send in the middle of the night announcing changes to our […]
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In the loudly menacing The Hole in the Ground, a solid debut from Irish director Lee Cronin, young mother Sarah (Seána Kerslake) and her son, Chris (James Quinn Markey), have just moved to an isolated house in the country — which, not to blame the victims here, never turns out well. Their house is near […]
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We’re so accustomed to stalker movies now that they can be told in shorthand. Greta is a too-efficient example of this, in addition to being a cautionary tale about why you should never do something nice for a stranger. Directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) from a screenplay credited to him and Ray Wright (The […]
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A Madea Family Funeral is typical of Tyler Perry’s Madea series: excruciating and baffling with occasional flecks of bemusement at how misguided it is; garishly lit and cheap-looking, like it was shot on a sitcom soundstage (which it was); woefully overlong and ham-fistedly plotted because writer-director-producer Perry keeps hitting pay dirt with these things and […]
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Like most self-absorbed teenage boys, my perspective on love in 2012 was complicated, to say the least. I was unattractive even by 14-year-old standards, I hadn’t had my first kiss, and every show or movie I got my hands on was about a nerdy guy with a beautiful girl. I felt like the story I […]
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I loved the first two animated adventures about the Viking boy and his fire-breathing friend, but How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World falls a bit flat. Maybe too much time has passed? It’s been five years since Part 2, nine years since the first one, and as much as I enjoyed them, I never […]
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