Until 1968, the term “zombie” was used to refer to the Haitian folklore belief of reanimating a dead body through magical means. In 1972, films with a distinctly feminist point of view were rare, with the popularity of the “women’s lib” movement still in its infancy. In 1978, the vampire film was old news, as […]
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One of the music cues Donald Trump used during his presidential campaign was from the soundtrack for Air Force One, a movie in which America’s core institutions are taken over by a man whose only loyalty is to Russia. There’s also a point in the movie when the clear best choice is to overrule the president’s […]
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Going to the movies can be overwhelming these days, in whatever year this is. There are so many choices! This weekend alone there are three big films opening in wide release: Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama Dunkirk; Luc Besson’s space fantasy adventure Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets; and Malcolm D. Lee’s […]
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With Dunkirk, writer-director Christopher Nolan, most famous for his Batman trilogy but even better at mind-benders like Memento and Inception, applies his cerebral skillset to another familiar genre: the World War II movie. Rather than turn the true story into a puzzle, Nolan keeps the plot simple and delivers an intense, carefully calibrated mini-epic about surviving […]
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There’s aging badly and then there’s Revenge of the Nerds. What passed for collegiate underdog hijinks in 1984 goes by different terms today — like rape, unlawful surveillance, and revenge porn. We’re supposed to cheer when Robert Carradine’s head nerd, Lewis Skolnick, beds a cheerleader who thinks he’s her quarterback boyfriend and wins her heart […]
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There isn’t much battle action in War for the Planet of the Apes, but it still feels like a war movie — a World War II movie, specifically, set largely in a wintry prison camp, with some captives collaborating with the enemy in the vain hope of postponing their own deaths while others make escape […]
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I love rewatching my favorite movies. When you sit down to view any film, you approach it with your own experience and meet it in the middle. Then, over time, you change and your viewpoints change and you can derive and add new meaning by rewatching something that, unless George Lucas was involved, hasn’t changed […]
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It’s easy to criticize Hollywood decision-makers for how often they take the easy way out, whether it’s putting white Englishmen in their ancient Egyptian epics or overloading films with men and including one woman. But where they often get a litany of passes is the casting of able-bodied actors to play disabled characters. I complain […]
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In a way, the most important relationship in Beatriz at Dinner is the one between the title character and someone who only appears in a handful of photographs. Played by a noticeably deglamorized Salma Hayek — for whom the role was tailor-made by director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White — Beatriz is a holistic […]
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Some superhero movies have subtitles referring to the dramatic events or villains featured therein: Apocalypse, The Age of Ultron, Civil War, The Last Stand. Then there’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, which refers to a dance at Peter Parker’s high school. Yes, the new incarnation of the web-slinger is a scrawny 15-year-old who’s at least as concerned about […]
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When Edgar Wright premiered his new film, Baby Driver, earlier this year at SXSW, critics and viewers were quick to compare it to La La Land. Both films centered around the budding romance between a soulful, brooding would-be musician and a peppy, dreamy coffee shop waitress; both were set to music from start to finish; […]
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When Clint Eastwood starred in the 1971 Don Siegel drama The Beguiled, it was in the hopes of pushing his image beyond the spaghetti Western antihero or misplaced musical star (yes, we remember Paint Your Wagon). The Beguiled gave Eastwood the opportunity to play a romantic lead, and much of the 90-minute runtime has Eastwood […]
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