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‘Breaking Bad’ Season Five: “Ozymandias”
“The reaction has begun.” Leave it up to Breaking Bad to kill off one of the four leads in an episode and have that not be the scene everyone is talking about. Last week’s “To’hajiilee” was, for me, a...
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‘Breaking Bad’ Season Five: “Granite State”
“Why don’t you just die already?” For once, the Sunday night television conversation was centered around a different series last night — Dexter, and how utterly disappointing the finale was. I’ve only...
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‘Breaking Bad’ Series Finale: “Felina”
“I did it for me. I liked it.” And so it ends. Can I now safely say that Breaking Bad was the best TV drama there ever was? Not without watching a whole lot of other TV dramas I haven’t caught up with...
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Defiant ‘Gravity’: Cuaron Does It Again!
In space, no one can hear you scream. Or gasp. Or cheer. Or breathe all heavy, because you’re having a panic attack. How do I know? Because I’ve been to space — or, at least, gotten as close as I’ll...
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‘Captain’ Jacked: Greengrass Returns To The Docu-Thriller
Back in 2006, I had to make one of the toughest calls I’ve grappled with on a Top 10 List. (My life is really hard, okay?) Would my #1 film of the year be Paul Greengrass’ gripping, devastating...
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Solomon Chained: McQueen Unleashes A Mighty ‘Slave’
Sometimes, you feel like a movie is just speaking directly to you. I saw Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave last night, and I could so identify with the protagonist Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) —...
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‘Tomorrow’ Bland: It’s A Small Film After All
And then this happened. My last review was Twelve Years A Slave, a movie that could very well top my year-end “Best Of 2013″ list, a movie that could very well win Best Picture at the Academy Awards...
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‘Buyers’ Remorse: AIDS Returns To The Academy Awards
If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want a glass of milk. And if you give a major movie star AIDS, he’ll probably want an Oscar. So it goes. The year 2013 is shaping up to be a year of Very...
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Lone Survivors: The Stubborn Old Men Of ‘Nebraska’&‘All Is Lost’
Some movies are tougher sells than others. Certain films are almost willfully difficult to sell. How about a nice uplifting movie called All Is Lost, which features exactly three instances of dialogue...
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Rearranging ‘Artpop’: An Edit Of Lady Gaga’s Latest
Oh, Lady Gaga. How far we’ve come in such a relatively short time. It was only six years ago that the name “Lady Gaga” would have sounded like nonsense, which is exactly what I thought of it when I...
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All By Myself: Another ‘Lone Survivor’ Hits The Big Screen
If there’s a theme at the movies for 2013, it’s survival. Sure, lots and lots of movies are about survival — like, almost all of them. The biggest movies at the box office tend to be about the survival...
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Broke Folk In New York: ‘Frances Ha’&‘Llewyn Davis’
How’s this for irony? A film about an unappreciated artist made by some of the most praised filmmakers in the world. To many, the Coen brothers are gods of cinema, peerless in American cinema. They...
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Russell Does The ‘Hustle’: An All-American Ode To Bullshit
Hey, Academy, are you paying attention? But of course you are! Here’s a movie featuring a whole bunch of last year’s Oscar nominees, including several past Oscar winners, made by a guy who’s made two...
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Catching Heat: The Warmest Women Of 2013
(Films discussed in this post: Blue Is The Warmest Color, The Heat, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Drinking Buddies, Enough Said, The Invisible Woman.)Women are so hot right now. Again. Or… still. No...
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Away From ‘Her’: The Ultimate Long-Distance Relationship
Her is a rather unusual film, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s seen Spike Jonze’s other movies (or his music videos). He’s collaborated with Charlie Kaufman a couple of times, first on the...
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Screen Full Of Sugar: Disney’s Accidentally Meta ‘Mr. Banks’
Why is P.L. Travers such a bitch? That’s the question central to Saving Mr. Banks, and it’s up to Walt Disney, of all people, to solve the mystery. Movies like this one can be challenging, because the...
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Big Good ‘Wolf’: Scorsese’s Latest Is Excessive To The Max
Is Leonardo DiCaprio this generation’s Robert DeNiro? Yes — at least in the sense that he’s Martin Scorsese’s current muse, and yes in the sense that the movies he stars in tend to have some very hefty...
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A Divorce: Farhadi Repeats Himself In ‘The Past’
A quarreling couple. A troublesome pregnancy. A deceitful employee. A daughter who knows more than she lets on. If this all sounds familiar, you probably saw A Separation, the 2011 Academy Award winner...
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Orphan Is The New Bad: The Best Fucking TV Of 2013
And now it’s time to talk TV. I don’t watch a whole lot of TV, compared to the average American. The number of reality shows I watch regularly — or ever, unless I’m a captive audience — is zero. (Yes,...
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‘August’ Of Wind: Pot Smoking, Pill Popping & A Lot Of Bluster
It’s hot in Osage County in the summertime — likely because of all the star wattage you’ll find there. Let’s take a tour. Here we have the Oscar Queen, Meryl Streep, peerless amongst all actresses who...
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