November is the month wherein movie lovers, programmers, and critics turn their attention to the genre of film noir — Noirvember as it’s come to be known. While the main impetus for this is undoubtedly the hashtag-friendly wordplay of the name, there really is no time of the year that better reflects the aesthetics of […]
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There have been few career turnarounds and rapid-fire ascendancies in Hollywood as impressive as Taylor Sheridan’s. A working actor for the last 20 years, he subsisted on bit parts almost exclusively (he had a recurring role on the FX biker series Sons of Anarchy, which ended in 2014). He was, by his own account, ready […]
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Bill Murray was an actor once. Oh sure, he still stands in front of a camera and plays pretend. Very well, when he wants to. But that’s not what Bill Murray is known for anymore – Bill Murray is known for being Bill Murray. Though that’s not a Zen ideal so much as internet folklore. […]
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In 1934, when Agatha Christie published Murder on the Orient Express, trains were still a popular means of transportation, and Asia was still called “the Orient.” Much has changed in the last 83 years — for example, in her entire life Agatha Christie never had more than one flavor of Oreos — yet her story […]
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No one will deny Cate Blanchett could play the phone book and it would be amazing. So to say her performance as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok is wonderful is a foregone conclusion. But Hela as a character opens the door to comparing her with the Marvel and DC universes’ other villainesses, of which there are […]
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When you hear the words “fan fiction,” you might think of something like a 2,000-word wish fulfillment detailing Luke Skywalker’s happy marriage to Han Solo as they take care of an idyllic forest cottage in a galaxy far, far away. In your head, it’s probably riddled with grammatical errors, flat or flowery narration, and poorly written dialogue. Although it’s true that fan fiction’s […]
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The mighty Norse god Thor, as played by Chris Hemsworth, is a fun presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe®, but his last stand-alone film (Thor: The Dark World) was the worst of the franchise. The latest, Thor: Ragnarok, regains its sense of humor and gives Thor plenty of entertaining interaction with others, redeeming this particular […]
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Rob Reiner is not exactly the first name that pops up when people list their favorite directors — usually those lists include people like David Fincher, Stanley Kubrick, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, and others with more of an auteur imprimatur. Yet Rob Reiner has directed more 20 feature films since his […]
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Everyone knows horror auteur Rob Zombie wrote and directed two Halloween films – which performed so well the franchise has since been handed over to screenwriter Danny McBride and director David Gordon Green for yet another retooling – but what the casual movie-watcher may not know is that five of Zombie’s six features are set […]
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(For a film-by-film breakdown, see Part 1.) Films: 8 Total runtime without credits or flashbacks: 11 hours, 17 minutes, 9 seconds Total Michael Myers kills: 68 Overall KPH: 5.9, or a kill every 10 minutes and 10 seconds. Eliminating the Michael-less H3, the 7 films run 9 hours, 45 minutes, with a KPH of 7.0, […]
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Since 1978, Halloween hasn’t just been a day to worship Satan and eat small candy bars. It’s also been a celebration of a long-running, highly influential film series about a masked killer: Batman. Just kidding. Trick-or-treat! It’s Halloween, John Carpenter’s seminal stab-fest that was subsequently ripped off by Friday the 13th, a lot of others, […]
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We doubted that Saw 3D, the seventh and “final” chapter in the gruesome franchise, would be the last one (that it was the seventh we did not dispute), and our cynicism has paid off (again). Part eight, Jigsaw — now it’s named after the villain instead of his favorite weapon — isn’t what you’d call “necessary,” […]
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