The first image we see in Ken Russell’s The Devils is one of comedy: King Louis XIII of France prances about on stage, wearing a string bikini that leaves little to the imagination, in a pantomime of the Birth of Venus. Below him, a bored audience of high-court sycophants sends up the bare minimum applause. Power […]
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“What’s your favorite baseball movie?” is a pretty tough question. Just because two movies deal with the same sport doesn’t mean they have anything else in common. Baseball movies come in all shapes, sizes, tones, and attitudes, so with a new season just getting underway, use this handy guide to choose a baseball movie based […]
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Futuristic cyber-thriller Ghost in the Shell is loaded with advanced technology, but it’s in the service of a disappointingly basic plot with few surprises. Add to that the bafflingly tone-deaf treatment of racial and cultural issues and you’ve really got a “Why’d they bother with this?” situation on your hands. In a heavily CGI’d future Japan […]
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If we were playing Family Feud and the question was “Name a Kevin Costner movie,” your best bet would be to hit that plunger and yell out one of his sports films. While a certain “Sly” actor has created an athletic hero who has his own statue, when you think of sports on film, Costner […]
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This weekend’s big release is a Hollywood adaptation of the beloved and critically acclaimed Japanese anime film, Ghost in the Shell. It’s already been the subject of much debate regarding accusations of whitewashing and cultural appropriation, but while those are negative associations I think there’s a positive aspect of the film worth discussing that’s every […]
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Over the next several weeks countless college-age teens will descend upon exotic locales to enjoy spring break, that idyllic period of drunken debauchery that MTV wants us to think is fun but is really a rum-soaked panic attack with less dancing and more groping. This free-spirited mentality is something Hollywood’s latched onto with countless movies […]
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Welcome to Film Face-Off. Two films enter, one film leaves. Well, technically Jeff Bayer simply pits two movies together, makes up five categories, and then declares a winner. Sometimes there is a good reason for this, sometimes there is not. Most of the time there is a clear winner (in his opinion). Welcome to Film […]
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Remember Power Rangers, that wacko show you used to watch as a kid? You know, with the colorful superhero team that assembles into a giant robot to fight stock footage from old Japanese kaiju movies? What if I told you there’s a new movie version of that hitting theaters this weekend? What, you didn’t realize? […]
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Trainspotting, a cult favorite since the moment it arrived 21 years ago, was Danny Boyle’s second movie and most of the world’s first exposure to Ewan McGregor. Boyle has directed nine more films since then, and McGregor has exposed himself countless times, but fans keep jonesin’ for another hit of that sweet, sweet ‘spotting. The […]
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The red-band trailer for the upcoming CHIPS movie contains no fewer than five f-bombs, two discussions on the hygiene of a particular act between people who love each other very (very) much, and one incident of homophobic hijinks as a man’s face bumps into another man’s business and they discuss just which part of his […]
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One of this weekend’s most anticipated new movies — or to put it more accurately, this week’s most anticipated new movie about motorcycle-riding police officers in California — is CHiPs (Cannibalistic Humanoid Police). The film stars world-renowned funnyman and husband to Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard, who also directed, wrote, and produced the film. We haven’t […]
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One of the most reliable sub-genres of the past 10 years has been the raunchy, R-rated sex comedy, a type of film that can be made cheaply yet yield fantastic grosses (both kinds). There were precursors, but the main progenitor of today’s Apatow-flavored hits was a Canadian cheapie set in Florida in the 1950s: Porky’s. It opened […]
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