recent product reviews
Fistful of Dollars (1964)
Iconic final scene, but rest of the movie is damn boring. The slow and melodic pace, typical of Leone and his westerns, puts you right to sleep. Lots of weird dubbing issues, which makes more sense after learning the entire dialogue track was recorded in post. What language did they…
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Interesting story, great effects, and a few great action sequences. The Marvel formula works, but it’s starting to get repetitive. All of these superhero movies are starting to run together for me. I’m not even sure what they could do to make them better. Stan was intense, intriguing, and cool,…
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Death Proof (2007)
A Tarantino film. Campy 70’s stylistic elements, and he pours it on thick here, with dated angles and framing of shots, film and color treatments, old-time fonts and title graphics, and all the hissing and popping and sloppy editing of a vintage film. Add in profanity-laced, fast-talking dialogue, a glorified…
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Son of Rambow (2007)
The slapstick, offbeat humor, and child innocence comedy make for an unfunny mix. It’s just silly. Poulter is good, though.
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Searching for Sugar Man (2012)
An engaging detective story. A little scripted, staged, and overdramatized at times, but still good. Nice effects, animation, silky dolly shots, lots of good B-roll, and a ready-made soundtrack polish things up quite nicely. It’s got all the qualities that make it trendy to like. The combination of mystery, intrigue,…
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Frozen (2013)
Excellent animation. In the details, you can see a lot of Pixar’s influence. Skin is imperfectly perfect, fingers are wonderfully three-dimensional, blocks of ice refract and reflect light perfectly. All of the ice effects were really great. The story’s pretty good, but a little too much singing and dancing for…
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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Totally a Scorsese film. A flashback New York story about money, drugs, and loose women. Frequent narration to the viewer, lots of quick talking, and just the right amount of industry lingo to keep it authentic. The difference here is that this movie was an epic three hours long, and…
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Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
A deep, engaging, depressing character study. Easy to see why he and Leto are Oscars. Both completely devote themselves to their tragic roles. It’s no stretch for McConaughey to play a Texan, but the weight loss was astonishing. Leto’s good. Why does he do so little acting? Cleanly directed and…
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Captain Phillips (2013)
Cleanly directed and very suspenseful. It’s all more powerful knowing that it’s a true story. Hanks is good in a very real, very human role. He really shines in the film’s last few minutes. With a simmering ferocity in his eyes, Abdi is creepy and perfect. Photos of the real-life…
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I'm a photographer, web developer, travel enthusiast, and movie buff living in Alexandria, Virginia, USA.In the summer of 1993, I started writing reviews for every movie I saw and haven't looked back. I'm up to 2,371 reviews now. This makes me cool or a complete dork, depending on your perspective.
Some of these reviews contain spoilers, so if that bothers you, don't read!
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