Film
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Die Hard Death Knell
Almost a quarter-century after Die Hard premiered, the travesty of John McClane lives on. He's bruised and balder, wrinkled and wearier. Whatever once seemed charming...
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Swan Song
This is the end for director Steven Soderbergh. He says he's packing up, retiring from film, moving on to other artistic projects. If he is...
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Zom Rom Com
A geeky-looking boy is mired in existential despair. He worries about his pale skin, his poor diet, his bad posture. He wants to meet people....
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Hunting Bin Laden
Zero Dark Thirty is not a ''pro-torture'' film. It's also not much of an ''anti-torture'' film, either, in so far as it isn't simply interested...
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Mazel Tov
Celebrated Spanish actress Carmen Maura plays a ditzy mom in Mikael Buch's new gay romantic comedy Let My People Go! Maura, you may recall, was...
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Chain Male
Here comes Quentin Tarantino, galloping into the terrible history of American slavery with a shotgun in his hands and a bundle of dynamite slung across...
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The Best and Worst Films of 2012
Don't be discouraged by Hollywood schlock -- we're living in a wonderful age of film. Even if there were a few duds in the last...
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Vocal Prowess
I must confess: I've never seen Les Misérables onstage. Until a few weeks ago, when I finally threw myself into all things Schönberg, Javert and...
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Hobbit Forming
I was ready to be underwhelmed by The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Nearly a decade after The Return of the King, director Peter Jackson hasn't...
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Mobster Capitalism
If you're looking for a mediocre night at the movie theater, look no further than Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly. It has everything: a retread...
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Bond That Binds
Midway through Sam Mendes's Skyfall, James Bond is stuck in a familiar situation. He's tied to chair, smirking as a peculiar-looking man lectures him on...
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Log Cabin Fever
Lincoln is why Hollywood should exist. Steven Spielberg's wonderful film about our 16th president isn't a war epic or a maudlin biography. The film only...
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Unfilmable
If there's anything worth praising in Cloud Atlas, the colossal adaptation of David Mitchell's nesting doll of a novel, it's the spectacle. Directors Tom Tykwer,...
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Survival Instincts
I don't have to tell you that How to Survive a Plague is an important film. Nor do I have to tell you that it...
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Killing Yourself
There's no such thing as time travel without plot holes. As characters jump backward and forward in a timeline, technical complexities multiply. Laws of physics...
