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There’s Somehow Even More Family And Furious Stupidity in Ridiculous ‘F9’

It might not have been until F9: The Fast Saga that the Toretto crew finally launched into outer space but the long-running Fast & Furious franchise left Earth’s rotations a long time ago. When Fast Five reconfigured what was possible for the crew of once-car-jackers and small-time criminals by making them larger-than-life master-criminals to whom the laws of physics bent the knee in surrender, all bets were finally off. Helmer Justin Lin had reached a pinnacle of the utterly ridiculous, high-octane bombast that fueled the car-based action films and laid the template for all that would follow. Fast would never be the same.  Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2’

Like the US government, the big whigs at Marvel have a sordid history of interventionism. Professed “creative differences” drove visionary Edgar Wright from Ant-Man, ran Patty Jenkins off Thor: The Dark World and kept Ava DuVernay at bay from Black Panther. The films in the MCU are larger than any standalone film; they must click and connect in complicated corporate webs, webs that have given us material such as the infamous Thor in a sauna scene in the widely forgotten Avengers: Age of Ultron. Which makes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, a film written and directed by one man, James Gunn, such a wildly fresh breathe of air.
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Out in Theaters: ‘DEEPWATER HORIZON’

Oil. We use it every day. It fills our gas tanks. Warms our homes. Even makes up the roads we drive. In Deepwater Horizon, the coveted resource turns on man 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana, becoming a nightmarish force that ends the life of 11 crew members onboard the fated vessel and torments the slurry of survivors racing to escape its scarlet abyss. With all the fury of a possessed malevolent entity, the routine drill site turns to fire and brimstone one fated evening, Dante’s inferno is brought roaring to life, and a brave few must do all they can to save as many as they can. Read More