The main purpose of the animated UglyDolls film is to make viewers aware that there is a line of plush toys called UglyDolls that they can buy. In that sense, the movie is a rousing success. No one can watch this movie and come away not knowing that UglyDolls exist. It’s less praiseworthy as a piece […]
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In 2012, the first Avengers movie served as the closing night film for the Tribeca Film Festival. This year, the latest installment served as the festival’s main competition. It was hard to deny the pervasiveness of Marvel’s latest behemoth as it Hulk-smashed through box office records; one director introduced his film at a screening with […]
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There are two things I know about Emily Dickinson: She was a reclusive spinster, and many of her poems can be sung to the tune of “Yellow Rose of Texas.” The second thing, which is definitely true, is addressed in Wild Nights with Emily, Madeleine Olnek’s deadpan biopic that tongue-in-cheekily details how the first thing […]
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Family, a sunny and likable small-scale comedy from first-time filmmaker Laura Steinel, belongs to the subcategory of movies in which bad role models and hopeless kids are paired up so they can learn from each other: Bad Santa, Bad Teacher, Role Models, School of Rock, etc. In this one, selfish, bad-with-kids career gal Kate Stone […]
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(Note: I’m going out of my way not to “spoil” anything here, including things that happen within the first 20-30 minutes that would normally be fair game in a review. You’re welcome, nerds.) When we last saw the Avengers, they were part of the lucky half of the universe that had not been wiped out […]
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Here’s your motivation: You’re lost! You’re angry, wandering through a hellscape of slasher flicks and torture porn and random demons that show up for no reason. Everything seems derivative and repetitive. You’re on a circular path you can’t deviate from. Hungry for originality, hunted by fat, greedy studios who have manipulated you for eons, you […]
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Etymology time! “Hagazussa” (“hedge sitter”), an Old High German word that gave us witchy terms like “hag” and “hex,” refers to the old women who would sit near the hedges that separated cultivated land from wild forests, gathering herbs and such while the menfolk did agricultural labor. The movie called Hagazussa is about a medieval […]
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1999 is considered one of the strongest years of cinema in living memory. There will no doubt be countless articles in 2019 marking the 20th anniversaries of that year’s greatest hits and examining their impact and legacy. But this column isn’t about those movies. This column is about the overlooked gems from 1999 — the […]
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The description of a new film recently caught our attention. The movie is called High on the Hog, and the Los Angeles Times’ logline was: “A hog farmer and his cadre of attractive young women defend their marijuana-growing operation against federal agents.” Do you get it? “High on the Hog”? They raise hogs and they […]
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Crooked Marquee is thrilled to be the EXCLUSIVE host of a brilliant parody video in which regular CM contributor Bill Bria plays a significant role: that of Ash Ketchum, opposite Tommy Kang’s Pikachu, who in this imagining is Matthew McConaughey’s character from HBO’s “True Detective.” (His impersonation is so good we initially thought they had […]
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I have a VHS problem. They are my Chapstick; bought frequently, replaced before sufficient use, and lost from my pockets as collateral damage when I retrieve change overzealously. Adventures in VHS is an attempt to subsidize that problem and justify its consuming ruin by digging into three loosely connected, barely discussed VHS tapes that I […]
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Like most movies, The Curse of La Llorona is part of the extended Conjuring universe. The connection is negligible — the older priest in this one had an encounter with the evil doll in The Conjuring prequel Annabelle — but it’s enough to slap the franchise name on it and tide fans over until the […]
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