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Out in Theaters: ‘ZOOLANDER 2’

Ben Stiller‘s approach to round two of the Zoo is akin to chucking a baby bird from the nest to see if it will fly or plummet, only to discover a 25-pound lead weight secured to said birdling’s ankle bits. No scene demonstrates this better than when Hansel (Owen Wilson), in an attempt to elicit Derek’s (Stiller) magical modeling stopping power, is throwing objects at the now-out-of-fashion Derek Zoolander. Failing to summon the “fire” that stopped Mutagatu’s (Will Ferrell) M-shaped throwing star and saved the Malaysian Prime Minister all those years back, each progressively larger prop strikes Zoolander’s duck-face curtly in the sucker. By object four or five, a tasty-looking bottle of Reposado that acts as an accidental stand-in for the cockeyed audience, Zoolander cries out, “This just isn’t working.” No Ben Stiller, it really, really isn’t. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘DEADPOOL’

Deadpool has been lurking around the primordial soup of supers since his debut print appearance in February of 1991. Striking a nerve with comic fans fancying some bite with their bark and some rabies to their Cujos, Deadpool arrived on the scene a supervillian before slipping into the moral grays of anti-hero-dom and donning those infamously R-rated wisecracks into his persona like a latex-tight getup. By the time he was leading his own franchise, a cultly rabid surrounded the merc with a mouth like bush flies buzzing around fresh-squeezed dookie. When transported to tinsel town in 2009’s much derided X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Deadpool found himself properly trounced; literally nutless, drained of personality and wit, with mouth rendered useless. The character was as effectively brain-dead as the project he found himself housed within. The tongue-tied, tatted-up war boy that was Deadpool circa 2009 was quickly relegated to the bin of supers who couldn’t withstand the transition to the silver screen and even the suits at Fox did all they could to forget this whole X-Men Origins thing ever happened in the first place.       Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘HAIL, CAESAR!’

The Coen BrothersHail, Caesar! exists in some zany cinematic purgatory of indecisiveness. Their critique of 1950s Hollywood dwells in an occasionally bemusing middle ground; that is, it can’t decide whether it wants to be a skewering of or a love letter to the golden era of tinsel town. Those who’ve found solace in the bewilderingly esoteric arms of A Serious Man or the bombast of The Hudsucker Proxy will likely concede Hail, Caesar! as a new coming for the seriocomic duo but I like my Coen’s like I like my coffee and Hail, Caesar!’s semi-satirical goofball makeup couldn’t be further from the blackest of comedy that defines the brothers’ greatest ventures. Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘THE FINEST HOURS’

Craig Gillespie experienced his breakout “hit” in 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival with Lars and the Real Girl. You know the one. That strange indie splash that made leagues of women (and men) jealous of an inanimate sex doll, quasi-adorably (and entirely eerily) doted on by a mustached Ryan Gosling. From there, Gillespie directed an underrated and ably cast remake of Fright Night. As a suave vampire, Collin Ferrell gave his crowning scenery (and neck) chewing performance. Some would call this Gillespie’s transition to the mainstream and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong, though the Disney-produced baseball drama The Million Dollar Arm really saw the last twinkle of a celebrated indie director taken by the vast empire of film as multi-media conglomerate.  Read More

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Sundance ’16 Review: ‘THE BIRTH OF A NATION’

Nate Parker‘s The Birth of a Nation is an urgent primal scream from American history’s darkest hour. Parker produces, writes, directs and stars in this much needed telling of the trials and tribulations of slave-turned-revolutionary Nat Turner. The relatively well-to-do preacher’s eyes are open to a new interpretation of the good book when his master shops out his sermons, profiteering off Turner’s calming demeanor to quell rebellion amongst more brutalized slaves. He’s soon in high demand from the most vicious slave owners across the land, all who want less sass and more backbreaking for their neglected and enslaved laborers. Read More

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Sundance ’16 Review: ‘COMPLETE UNKNOWN’

An old flame forks her way back into the life of a married man in Joshua Marston‘s mysterious and somewhat satisfying Complete Unknown. Marston struck a chord with debut Maria Full of Grace, which played Sundance 12 years ago, giving a drug mule a face in performer Catalina Sandino Moreno. With Complete Unknown, the Californian director harnesses a selfsame ability to craft complex female leads but allows the narrative to come to tatters as it crests its many tonal shifts. Read More

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Sundance ’16 Review: ‘MANCHESTER BY THE SEA’

After debuting on Saturday night, Manchester by the Sea quickly became the buzziest film at Sundance. When Amazon made an unprecedented $10 million dollar deal to sweep up distributing rights, the echo chamber only got louder. On the one hand, writer/director Kenneth Lonergan must welcome the fat paycheck with open arms. And yet, such a lofty price tag sets a certain sky-high expectation for the film before its even had a chance to digest in anyone’s tummies or see the light of day for most viewers. All finances aside, Manchester by the Sea is a emotionally resonant tearjerker/masterful character study with Casey Affleck stepping up to the plate to claim some majorly overdue attention. Read More

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Sundance ’16 Review: ‘LO AND BEHOLD: REVERIES OF THE CONNECTED WORLD’

Werner Herzog‘s dulcet tones ripple from the screen, warming the audience with his distinctive Herzogian accent and lolling cadence. His latest topic of interest: the internet. As can be expected of the revered German filmmaker and documentarian, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World is a thoughtful study of the past, present and future of this thing we call the internet; how it originated, how it binds us, and how it could lead to the end of times. Read More

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Sundance ’16 Review: ’31’

Rob Zombie‘s transition to the film world is, if nothing else, intriguing. After finding success uncharacteristic to the metal genre with band White Zombie, the metal rocker decided that basing album concepts off classic horror movies wasn’t cutting it. He wanted in on the game. By 1999, he had written an original script, The Crow: 2037,  but the project was abandoned for a variety of reasons. Instead Zombie paired with Universal Studios to make his horror house debut, House of 1000 Corpses and so began his bloodstained path to 31. Read More

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Sundance ’16 Review: ‘YOGA HOSERS’

Yoga Hosers, the second feature in the proposed True North trilogy, refers to the fact that the two main characters, both named Collen, like yoga (or at least writer/director Kevin Smith‘s grossly ignorant appropriation of yoga) and are hosers (Canada’s way of saying fool or dolt.) Convenient store clerks and high school students, the Colleens are frequently buried up to their eyeballs in their smartphones, snapping selfies, posting to the ‘gram and generally disengaging from the physical world around them. When an ancient army of foot-long Nazi sausage clones, called Bratzis, begins to attack their small Canadian town, the girls must put down their iPhones to save the day. Read More