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Out in Theaters: ‘DEATH WISH’ 

In all of the nightmare scenarios that Eli Roth has cooked up in the past, he probably couldn’t have written a more unwelcoming and hostile zeitgeist to deliver his latest film, Death Wish, into. Just two weeks after an assailant took the lives of 17 victims at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the Bruce Willis-starring, gun-toting revenge fantasy – a remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson film of the same name – champions vigilante justice and romanticizes gun violence in gleefully tone-deaf manner, one that only works in a deluded Trumpian analysis of America and opportunist justice. Worse still, with no style or swagger of its own to speak of, Death Wish has little flair to hang upon its misguided and decidedly uncritical core, making it one big, stinking waste of time and not much fun to boot.  Read More

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Out in Theaters: ‘BATTLE OF THE SEXES’ 

In 1973, self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig Bobby Riggs and feminist “libber” Billie Jean King faced off in an exhibition match that changed the world of sports. It was dubbed The Battle of the Sexes and so too is the film from  Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. The spectacle served up the largest crowd ever to witness a tennis match and not merely for the novelty of man pitted against woman. The contest was the early-70s female liberation movement given a sporting arena and provided a battleground where Title IX, an Educational Amendment guaranteeing equal financial resources to male and female sports, essentially won out.   Read More