I like the Star Wars franchise, but I don’t revere it the way some do.  I’ve actually met people who claim to have seen the first one (A New Hope) fifty or more times.  Now you can’t even see the original […]

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Based on real people and events, Loving tells the story of Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) and his wife Mildred (Ruth Negga).  Richard is a white bricklayer; Mildred is black; after marrying in the District of Columbia they return to live in […]

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If Alfred Hitchcock were still alive and making movies, he might have made this slick, visually stunning, disturbing suspense drama.  As I was watching it, I saw specific shots and camera angles that I feel he would have enjoyed and […]

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Just now getting a release is a strange but compelling movie called Man Down, starring an actor for whom I have little feeling, Shia LaBeouf.  However, he’s pretty good in this modern war / family drama / apocalypse story.  Yes, that’s […]

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Raunchy comedies are not my cup of tea, so it should not be a surprise that I despise films like this.  But allow me to give credit where credit is due — old pros Billy Bob Thornton and Kathy Bates […]

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War once again rears its ugly head in Allied, a World War II thriller that wanders from North Africa to England and occupied France.  Intelligence agent Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) is assigned a suicide mission with French woman Marianne (Marion Cotillard) […]

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War rears its ugly head again in this old-fashioned but very effective World War II drama, Hacksaw Ridge.  This was a story of which I was completely unaware, and I am glad to see it brought to the big screen.  Based […]

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This Ang Lee drama looked really interesting to me, and it turned out to be a complex, multifaceted film that addresses America’s involvement in the Iraq War on a very personal level — but I also found it to be […]

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Another film that was somewhat difficult to watch is the teen angst drama The Edge of Seventeen.  This comic drama centers on awkward teenager Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), whose life becomes ever more complicated when her only friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) […]

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This film festival favorite was a difficult drama for me to watch, though it did get better and better.  It is a very realistic glimpse of life in a crime-ridden area of Miami, focusing on a handful of black and […]

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