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The Triplets of Belleville (2003): B+
Surrealist adult animation without all the Disney treacle, The Triplets of Belleville is a unique and playful Parisian fairytale about a club-footed mother’s valiant mission – aided by her trusty dog and the titular trio – to rescue her kidnapped Tour de France-competing bicyclist son from square-bodied mobsters. Written and directed by Sylvain Chomet, the…
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High Heels (1991): C-
With 1991’s High Heels, Pedro Almodóvar hit a new career low, producing a florid riff on ‘40s and ‘50s women’s pictures that’s not funny, suspenseful, or original. The Byzantine plot – about a caddish man who’s two-timing TV news anchor Rebeca Del Paramo (Victoria Abril) with her pop star mother Becky (Marisa Paredes), as well…
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Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990): C+
Pedro Almodóvar’s controversial 1990 Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! was originally rated NC-17 before being released unrated, but, ironically, it was one of the director’s least risqué films to date. A black comedy about the (literal and figurative) bonds of love, it’s an off-kilter – and off-putting – mix of humor, sex, and Stockholm…
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The Hunted (2002): C+
William Friedkin’s The Hunted is lame on so many counts (its underdeveloped hunter-becomes-the-hunted story, its uneven pacing, its shoddy peripheral characters, perhaps the worst single-scene performance by Benicio Del Toro ever, in which he teaches a girl about the sacredness of animals) that it’s hard to believe there’s actually some worthwhile meat on its bruised…
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Thirteen (2003): B-
Big girls, they don’t cry…but they do, according to Catherine Hardwicke’s sensational Thirteen, begin stealing, doing drugs and getting homemade piercings shortly after they become teenagers. A rather basic tale about the perils of going along with the in-crowd and the extremes to which teenagers will act out for attention, the film details former straight-arrow…
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3 Women (1977)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Robert Altman’s Ingmar Bergman-esque psychodrama 3 Women charts immature Texas waif Pinky’s (Sissy Spacek) move to an arid California town, where she begins working at a nursing home spa and obsessively latches onto co-worker Millie (Shelley Duvall), a walking, talking McCalls who blathers on about pigs-in-a-blanket recipes and her…
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High Noon (1952)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) With exhaustion, disgust, and resignation pouring out of his face like the sweat dripping from his brow, Gary Cooper’s Marshal Will Kane stands alone against a band of killers and a town of craven cretins in Fred Zinneman’s iconic High Noon. When word arrives that dastardly killer Frank Miller…
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Spider-Man 2 (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) It ain’t easy being super. Just ask Spider-Man, whose acrobatics take a back seat to angst in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, a sensational summer treat that delivers more high-flying adventure, comic book melodrama and sheer joy than any superhero movie since Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman. Refusing to succumb to…
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They Live (1988)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) They Live, John Carpenter’s paranoia-drenched 1988 thriller about corrupt capitalist extraterrestrials hoodwinking humans via mind-control, may be the loopiest, and coolest, entry in the director’s canon. A vagabond construction worker (pro wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) uncovers the real reason behind American economic disparity when he finds a pair of…
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The Terminal (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) A Steven Spielberg film about an alien trapped in America who desperately wants to return home? No, it’s not E.T., but rather The Terminal, an uneven blend of comedy, romance, and corniness about an Eastern European immigrant (Tom Hanks’ Viktor Navorski) confined to an airport when his fictional native…
