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Rescue Dawn (2006): A-
Remaking Little Dieter Needs to Fly as a fictional feature always seemed a project doomed to unflattering comparisons, as Werner Herzog’s 1997 documentary about the titular German-American fighter pilot and his escape from a Vietnam POW camp remains one of the purest and most moving evocations of the director’s belief in man’s violent relationship to…
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28 Weeks Later (2007): B+
As swift and ferocious as its virus-infected undead cannibals, 28 Weeks Later – the follow-up to Danny Boyle’s gritty 2002 zombies-in-London hit – confirms that a Fox Atomic-produced horror sequel need not be technically clumsy, stupid, crass and fright-free. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto), the film picks up its predecessor’s story twenty-eight weeks after…
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Spider-Man 3 (2007): C
Spider-Man 3 opens with Peter Parker (Toby Maguire) drunk on the adoration showered upon his web-slinging alter ego Spider-Man, a cockiness that unfortunately also seems to have consumed director Sam Raimi, who –with this third installment in the lucrative Marvel Comics-based franchise – seems convinced that he can chew whatever he chooses to bite off.…
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71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994): C
A real news report about a Vienna bank shooting that left three people dead and ended with the shooter’s suicide opens 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, which then proceeds to flash back to the events leading up to the senseless crime via de-contextualized splinters of fictional scenes concerning the victims. What drove young…
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Dark Star (1974): B-
Set to the country ditty “Benson, Arizona,” the intro spaceship sequence of Dark Star is an apt career-opening moment for John Carpenter, whose directorial debut – like so much of his underrated genre output – is steeped in classic Western tropes. Nods to Howard Hawks, however, are here married to a tongue-in-cheek spoof of Kubrick’s…
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Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (2007): A-
Die-hard Aqua Teen Hunger Force fans may have never expected the Cartoon Network animated series – part of the channel’s “Adult Swim” line-up, and a spin-off of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast – to make it the big-screen, but they’ll likely be the only ones prepared for the sheer, uninhibited insanity of Aqua Teen Hunger…
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Benny’s Video (1992): C
Anyone’s who’s seen a Michael Haneke film will know where Benny’s Video is headed from its opening VHS images of a pig’s slaughter. Modern alienation and a murderous act that defies social and moral law are right around the corner courtesy of detached and discontent Benny (Arno Frisch), a teenager with MIA parents, a successful…
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The Seventh Continent (1989): C+
The Seventh Continent’s static presentation of schoolgirls successively leapfrogging a pommel horse sums up the cinema of Michael Haneke: cold, structurally rigorous, and repetitive. Proving that his work’s formal and thematic lynchpins existed from his career’s outset, the Austrian director’s debut film concerns the inspired-by-real-events tale of a bourgeois family – husband Georg (Dieter Berner),…
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Killer of Sheep (1977): A
Killer of Sheep begins with a father chastising his son for not protecting his brother from bullies, concluding the reprimand by telling the boy that it’s time for him to learn what life is really like. Such a lesson is blisteringly delivered by Charles Burnett’s 1977 masterpiece, which is finally receiving its first U.S. theatrical…
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Dead Silence (2007): D+
Dead Silence’s ghoul, Mary Shaw, is an undead ventriloquist who slays her victims by eating their tongues when they scream. In spite of all the yawning elicited by the film, there’s little chance such a fate will befall anyone unlucky enough to endure James Wan’s unscary movie, which somehow operates under the assumption that a…
