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Napoleon Dynamite (2004): D
Dear Mr. Dynamite (Jon Heder), As both a critic and a semi-compassionate adult, I’m writing to inform you that director Jared Hess’ movie about you, Napoleon Dynamite, is a work of such crude, cruel nastiness that you should seriously consider filing a lawsuit against the filmmaker. This “comedy,” which tracks your adolescent misadventures in small-town…
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The Manchurian Candidate (2004): B+
Considering the intrinsic geopolitical underpinnings of John Frankenheimer’s 1962 Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate, not to mention the stellar work by Frankenheimer and his illustrious cast (including Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury, Laurence Harvey and that creepy mustached Manchurian brainwasher), remaking the film for modern audiences seemed like a dubious undertaking. Yet Jonathan Demme –…
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The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001): C
Nothing more than a bland inside joke for genre aficionados, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is writer/director/star Larry Blamire’s campy ode to square ‘50s sci-fi adventures. Shot in faux-amateurish black-and-white by Kevin Jones, and featuring a group of largely unknown actors who deliberately go overboard in caricaturing the stilted acting performances of those bygone Cold…
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Collateral (2004): B-
Tom Cruise’s skin-deep posturing as a business-like assassin, enhanced by his ludicrous gray hair and beard, goes a long way towards contributing to the implausibility of Michael Mann’s Collateral, the story of a killer named Vincent (Cruise) who hires Max (Jamie Foxx), an L.A. cabbie, to drive him to his evening’s five murderous appointments. Cruise’s…
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The Lost Boys (1987)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Director Joel Schumacher never met a movie he didn’t almost ruin, but even if the flashy filmmaker exhibits a persistent aversion to dramatic depth, there’s much to appreciate about his Brat Packers-as-stylish-vampires camp-a-thon The Lost Boys. Starring Jason Patric as a teenager who moves to a seaside California town…
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Spartan (2003): C+
It’s a bad sign that, three weeks after seeing Spartan, David Mamet’s latest thriller, I can scarcely recall what happens. The president’s daughter is kidnapped and apparently sold into the white slave trade (no, I’m not kidding), and stoic military spook Val Kilmer is assigned to rescue her. But when the government decides to cut…
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The Village (2004): F
M. Night Shyamalan may be the most overrated mainstream filmmaker working today, and The Village is an instant contender for worst film of the year. As usual, the over-hyped filmmaker uses his trademark directorial flourishes – long, unbroken tracking shots, a focus on lame dialogue (here, not a single contraction!) over action, an ominous sense…
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Bus 174 (2003)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) On June 12th, 2000, a young, frazzled man took a bus and its eleven passengers hostage in Rio de Janeiro, sparking a standoff that became the focus of Felipe Lacerda and José Padilha’s masterful documentary Bus 174. The gunman, Sandro do Nascimento, was one of Brazil’s “street kids” –…
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The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Welcome to The Asphalt Jungle, watch it bring men to their knees. In John Huston’s seminal crime flick, a crew of experienced hoods organized by a crafty German mastermind (Sam Jaffe), funded by a duplicitous businessman (Louis Calhern), and led by a bruising goliath (a mesmerizing Sterling Hayden) steals…
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The Flower of My Secret (1995): B
Leo (Marisa Parides) writes popular romance novels under a pseudonym, but, mired in a loveless marriage to an adulterous military man in Bosnia, she no longer has the desire to write her profitable melodramatic stories. When writer’s block strikes, she gets a job working as a literary critic for a newspaper, and she promptly trashes…
