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Grandma’s Boy (2006): C
(Originally published by Cineman Syndicate) An Adam Sandler film minus Sandler himself, Grandma’s Boy is dumb, crude and sophomoric, the type of disposable entertainment aimed directly at teenagers who think nothing is quite as funny as a well-placed groin kick or the sight of little old ladies stoned out of their gourds. However, it’s also…
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Q: The Winged Serpent (1982): B+
Larry Cohen’s maverick impulses were undiminished by the mainstream confines of Q: The Winged Serpent, a freewheeling homage to both King Kong and producer Samuel Z. Arkoff’s 1950s creature features that’s slyly infected with marrow-deep societal tensions. Small-time hood and recovering dope addict Jimmy (Michael Moriarty) flees from a diamond heist and into Manhattan’s Chrysler…
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May (2002): B
A patchwork of Dario Argento, Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day, and Mary Shelley, Lucky McKee’s May is all gouged eyes and severed limbs, cannibal love and stitched-together monstrosities. Forced by her mother to hide her lazy eye behind a pirate’s patch as a child, May (Angela Bettis) grew up an outcast whose only friend was…
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Cry_Wolf (2005): C
For its surprising first twenty minutes, Cry_Wolf exhibits a self-reflexive desire to address the teen slasher film’s penchant for simplistic misdirection and tedious serial killer construction via the use of predetermined criteria (weapon and disguise of choice, quirky modus operandi, etc.). After such a tantalizing opening, however, it becomes just what it was beginning to…
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Syriana (2005): C
Didactic and muddled to the point of incoherence, Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana is a two hour-plus lecture on the corruption of the American oil industry so wrapped up in its own Byzantine narrative logic that one quickly finds it near-impossible to make heads or tails of who’s who, who’s doing what and for what reason, and…
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La Petite Jérusalem (2005): B
In a concrete housing block outside Paris populated by both Jews and Muslims, eighteen-year-old Laura (Fanny Valette) rebels against the religiosity of her devout sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein) and Tunisian-born mother (Sonia Tahar) by adhering to a Kantian worldview. This opposition between reason and faith, however, only proves temporary in La Petite Jérusalem, as Karin…
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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005): C
Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) returns to Hogwarts for his fourth year in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, an installment that’s as gawky and shallow as its gangly-looking early-teen protagonists. Truncating sizeable chunks of J.K. Rowling’s enormous tome to accommodate its 157-minute running time, director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) appropriates the dark…
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The Doom Generation (1995): C
Littered with pop culture references and celebrity cameos, and assuming a laughable attitude of hipster vulgarity, Greg Araki’s The Doom Generation self-consciously strives for transgressive nihilism without ever recognizing the sheer absurdity of its every component. Bitchy Amy (Rose McGowan) and brain-dead boyfriend Jordan (James Duval, doing a third-rate Keanu Reeves impersonation) are disaffected teens…
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Tropical Malady (2004): A-
Divided evenly into two distinct – yet thematically harmonious – halves, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady is as stylistically striking as it is adventurous. Sculpted with a delicacy that amplifies its mood of tentative romanticism and mysterious passion, Weerasethakul’s intimate love story begins with attractive soldier Keng’s (Banlop Lomnoi) courtship of reticent country boy Tong (Sakda…
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Forty Shades of Blue (2005): B+
As with his debut The Delta, writer/director Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue proves preoccupied with characters who are both socially and emotionally estranged from their Southern surroundings. Sachs’ reserved film details the morose travails of Laura (Dina Korzun), the Russian-born girlfriend of record producer Alan James (Rip Torn), a lousy father to Laura’s young…
