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Tupac: Resurrection (2003): C
Tupac: Resurrection provides an “autobiographical” take on the late gangsta rapper’s tumultuous life, yet those who don’t believe in the holiness of Tupac – this reviewer being one of them – will find the documentary’s gushing adoration for its subject annoyingly one-sided and misleading. Lauren Lazin’s film charts the rapper’s rise to stardom with montages…
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Hellspawn
Demons are this week’s speciality, from those that abuse and debase (Mail Order Wife) to those who perpetrated WWII’s holocaust (Downfall) and those literally attempting to escape Hades to bring about hell on Earth (Constantine). And though none of these films plumb truly terrifying depths, all are – to some extent – worth checking out.…
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The Isle (2000): B-
Before 2003’s heralded Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring, Korean director Kim Ki-Duk was best known for his unnerving shock-cinema love story The Isle, a creepy, gruesome, gorgeous and flabbergasting treatise on romantic obsession and violent, nasty male-female relationships. Hee-Jin (Suh Jung) is the mute proprietor of fishing shacks sitting out in a river who spends…
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The Return of the DVD Review
Well, after close to a year (not counting my quick DVD write-up of I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, which I’d already reviewed during its theatrical release), I’ve finally written a couple of a new DVD reviews. My thoughts on Criterion’s two new Jules Dassin DVDs are now up at Slant magazine. Night and the City…
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Mediocre Times
In a few days, I’ll have reviews of two must-have Criterion Collection DVDs, but for now, I’ve got Slant magazine write-ups of three mediocre-to-lousy theatrical releases. Enjoy. Hitch (Slant magazine) Bad Guy (Slant magazine) The Other Side of the Street (Slant magazine)
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Horror, Porn, and Iraq
I’ve got three new reviews of three very different films for this Monday morning. Over at Slant magazine, I provide the lowdown on this past weekend’s number one movie, Boogeyman, the upcoming NC-17 documentary Inside Deep Throat, and Bahman Ghobadi’s Iraq-set drama Turtles Can Fly. Boogeyman (Slant magazine) Inside Deep Throat (Slant magazine) Turtles Can…
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Hotel Rwanda (2004): C
It’s difficult, simply because of its subject matter, to be totally unmoved by Hotel Rwanda, the based-on-real-events account of Paul Rusesabagaina (Don Cheadle), the manger of a posh African luxury hotel who heroically sheltered Tutsis during the 1994 genocide orchestrated by the majority Hutu population. Yet more often than not, Terry George’s film proves itself…
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Polyester (1981): B
While it might be a tad simplistic to state that every John Waters film is, at heart, exactly the same, Polyester certainly shares fundamental similarities to many of the director’s prior and subsequent offerings. Waters’ 1981 freak-a-thon was “filmed in Oderama,” meaning that, during its initial theatrical release, moviegoers were provided scratch-and-sniff cards to use…
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Worst Movie of the Year?
It’s only January, and yet competition for Worst Movie of the Year may be over. Yes, that’s how bad Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark is. I provide the gory details over at Slant magazine. Alone in the Dark (Slant magazine) I’ve also got a review of Robert Aldrich’s1965 The Flight of the Phoenix below.
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The Flight of the Phoenix (1965): B+
Robert Aldrich’s The Flight of the Phoenix concerns a plane populated by oil company employees and military men that, due to a monstrous sand storm, crash lands in the Saharan desert. Forced to cope with the dawning realization that no rescue party is forthcoming and their water supply is depleting, the men – led by…
