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Straight Outta Compton

15/8/2015

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by Nathan Sacks
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Even by the standards of the musical biopic, Straight Outta Compton commits remarkable acts of historical revisionism. This is a sanitized, Hallmark, cookie cutter version of reality that is inexplicably being described as “unvarnished” and “uncompromising” by movie critics. Please. The film has several coats of varnish and features loads of artistic and dramatic compromises so glaring that parts of the film are unintentionally funny. In fact, SOC isn’t so much a biopic as it is a superhero film that treats Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and Dr. Dre (and only those three men) as epochal geniuses with only minor, overcomeable flaws.
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Director: F. Gary Gray
Producers: Matt Alvarez, Scott Bernstein, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, David Engel, F. Gary Gray, Bill Straus, Tomica Woods-Wright
Writers: Jonathan Herman, Andrea Berloff, S. Leigh Savidge (story), Alan Wenkus (story)
Cinematographer: Matthew Libatique
Editors: Billy Fox, Michael Tronick
Music: 
Joseph Trapanese
Cast: O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Neil Brown Jr., Aldis Hodge, Marlon Yates Jr., R, Marcos Taylor

Runtime: 147m.
Genre: Biography/Drama/Music
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: August 14, 2015
US Distributor: Universal Pictures

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Ant-Man

17/7/2015

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by Nathan Sacks
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[Note: The following is an attempt to write an Ant-Man review without using the words “Marvel,” “comic book,” “superhero,” or “corporate,” thereby avoiding lapsing into constant cliché.]

Ant-Man’s descriptor is a built in contradiction—the tiny blockbuster—that can either be seen as clever and refreshing or unbearably precious. Your mileage may vary, and it might depend on your appreciation for source material like Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man (1956) or the film Fantastic Voyage (1966) and its Isaac Asimov novelization. Honey I Shrunk the Kids aside, we haven’t seen many movies about people who shrink since the golden age of '50s sci-fi. Ant-Man demonstrates that this is an unheralded sci-fi niche that, with the right approach, modern audiences can come to appreciate.
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Director: Peyton Reed
Producer: Kevin Feige
Writers: Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, Paul Rudd, Stan Lee (comic book), Larry Lieber (comic book), Jack Kirby (comic book)
Cinematographer: Russell Carpenter
Editors: Dan Lebental, Colby Parker Jr.
Music: Christophe Beck
Cast: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Judy Greer, Abby Ryder Fortson, Michael Peña, David Dastmalchian, T.I., Hayley Atwell, John Slattery, Martin Donovan

Runtime: 117m.
Genre: Action/Comedy
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: July 17, 2015
US Distributor: Walt Disney Studios

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Dope

19/6/2015

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by Nathan Sacks
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The best compliment one can give Dope is that it has the energy, playfulness, and visual invention of a young filmmaker’s first feature, but it is not. Writer-Director Rick Famuyima made his film debut with The Wood in 1999 and followed that with the romantic comedies Brown Sugar in 2002 and Our Family Wedding in 2010. Hopefully, Dope will rebrand Famuyima as more than a passable helmer of rom-coms aimed at African-American audiences, but as a unique filmmaker with vision—even if that vision is indebted a great deal to previous Hollywoodized depictions of young, sexually frustrated nerds in high school.
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Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Producers: Nina Yang Bongiovi, Forest Whitaker
Writer: Rick Famuyiwa
Cinematographer: Rachel Morrison
Editor: Lee Haugen
Music: Germaine Franco
Cast: A$ap Rocky, Blake Anderson, Shameik Moore, Zoë Kravitz, Blake Anderson, Bruce Beatty, Quincy Brown, Kiersey Clemons, Kimberly Elise, Rick Fox, Chanel Iman


Runtime: 103m.
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Country: USA
Premiere: January 24, 2015 – Sundance

US Theatrical Release: June 19, 2015
US Distributor: Open Road Films

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Avengers: Age of Ultron

1/5/2015

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by Nathan Sacks
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The influence of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and the Marvel universe on pop culture now reaches Disney and Star Wars-levels of incalculable. It is a common childhood love of many of today’s most notable storytellers. George RR Martin grew up reading those comics, and has said Avengers #9 (“The Birth of Wonder Man”) defined the moral outlook of his Game of Thrones novels. The director of Avengers: Age of Ultron himself, Joss Whedon, grew up with Avengers and X-Men comics in the 70s, and transposed those titles’ serial storytelling elements to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other television shows. I wouldn’t be surprised if Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad grew up a Marvel reader—his Walter White has a monstrous yet tragic quality that is a regular feature of complex Marvel baddies like Dr. Doom, Magneto, and Namor the Sub-Mariner.
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Director: Joss Whedon
Producer: Kevin Feige
Writers: Josh Whedon, Stan Lee (comic book), Jack Kirby (comic book)
Cinematographer: Ben Davis
Editors: Jeffrey Ford, Lisa Lassek
Music: Danny Elfman, Brian Tyler
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Joansson, Jeremy Renner, James Spader, Samuel L. Jackson

Runtime: 141m.
Genre: Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: May 1, 2015
US Distributor: Disney

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The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

23/1/2015

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by Nathan Sacks
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Not quite a children’s classic or a stoner cult flick, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T is located somewhere in the middle of that Venn diagram. Its story has the rigorous simplicity of a fable, and yet the expressionistic, psychedelic sets and visuals make the film hard to forget. It is perhaps best known for being the sole screenplay contribution of Theodore Geisel, better-known as Dr. Seuss, and yet its subtext may make it a darker and weirder story than any book Seuss put to paper.
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Trylon microcinema
January 23–25

Director: Roy Rowland
Producer: Stanley Kramer
Writers: Dr. Seuss, Allan Scott
Cinematographer: Frank Planer
Editor: Al Clark
Music: Frederick Hollander, Heinz Roemheld, Hans J. Salter
Cast: Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Hans Conried, Tommy Rettig, Jack Heasley, Robert Heasley, Noel Cravat

Runtime: 89m.
Genre: Family/Fantasy/Music
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: July 1, 1953
US Distributor: Columbia Pictures

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Top Five

12/12/2014

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by Nathan Sacks
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The premise seems self-indulgent on paper: a superstar comedian past the twilight of his fame opines on matters of life, politics, sex, and the Hollywood industry to an attentive reporter, who works for The New York Times no less and also happens to be a beautiful woman. Chris Rock’s Top Five could have been an unwatchable spectacle of ego. Then again, based on the premise My Dinner With Andre might have seemed masturbatory garbage as well. Top Five manages to leverage a flimsy concept into a solid comedy with at least a half-dozen comic set pieces that had me laughing as hard as any recent movie.
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Director: Chris Rock
Producers: Eli Bush, Barry Diller, Scott Rudin
Writer: Chris Rock
Cinematographer: Manuel Alberto Claro
Editor: Anne McCabe
Music: Ludwig Göransson
Cast: Adam Sandler, Rosario Dawson, Gabrielle Union, Kevin Hart, Chris Rock, Whoopi Goldberg, Jerry Seinfeld

Runtime: 102m.
Genre: Comedy
Countries: USA
US Theatrical Release: December 12, 2014
US Distributor: Paramount Pictures

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Kill the Messenger

10/10/2014

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by Nathan Sacks
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“I thought my job was to tell the truth.” – Gary Webb
On October 8, 1998, only an hour after the House of Representatives voted to impeach Bill Clinton, the Inspector General finally released a second report investigating allegations of the American government buying cocaine from the Nicaraguan contras to fund their illegal war in that country. Whereas previous reports had concluded that there was no evidence linking the CIA and cocaine trafficking, this unredacted version acknowledged at least “six cases” in which “knowledge of allegations or information indicating that persons or individuals had been involved in drug trafficking did not deter their use by the CIA.
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Director: Michael Cuesta
Producers: Pamela Abdy, Naomi Despres, Jeremey Renner, Scott Stuber
Writers: Peter Landesman, Gary Webb (book "Dark Alliance"), Nich Schou (book "Kill the Messenger")
Cinematographer: Sean Bobbitt
Editor: Brian A. Kates
Music: Nathan Johnson
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Robert Patrick, Jena Sims, Robert Pralgo, Hajji Golightly

Runtime: 112m.
Genre: Biography/Crime/Drama
Countries: USA
US Theatrical Release: October 10, 2014
US Distributor: Focus Features

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Jimi: All Is by My Side

26/9/2014

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by Nathan Sacks
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Like Deep Impact and Armageddon, hot on the heels of the James Brown biopic Get on Up is Jimi: All is By My Side. Starring Andre Benjamin (better known to many as Andre 3000 of OutKast), All is By My Side vividly recreates the slang and fashions of 1966 London, while only rarely falling into the trap of rock nostalgia clichés and, in fact, ends up becoming a celebration of the purity and fearlessness of Hendrix’s approach to music.
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Lagoon Cinema
Director: John Ridley
Producers: Danny Bramson, Anthony Burns, Jeff Culotta, Brandon Freeman, Tristan Lynch, Sean McKittrick, Nigel Thomas
Writer: John Ridley
Cinematographer: Tim Fleming
Editors: Hank Corwin, Chris Gill
Music: Danny Bramson, Wassy Wachtel
Cast: Andre Benjamin, Imogen Poots, Hayley Atwell, Burn Gorman

Runtime: 118m.
Genre: Biography/Drama/Music
Countries: UK/Ireland/USA
US Theatrical Release: September 26, 2014
US Distributor: Open Road Films

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Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

22/8/2014

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by Nathan Sacks
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Adaptation is a tricky thing. Even when the aspects of a book one so admires get translated faithfully to film, those same aspects can seem lacking. For instance, one of my favorite books is The Old Man and the Sea, which was the subject of a 1958 Spencer Tracy film deemed “the most literal, word-for-word rendition of a written story ever filmed.” Yet the film, perhaps because it is so faithful, still lacks the totalizing, punishing effect of the book. What does this prove? That the quality of a work of storytelling depends on more than just arc, sequence of events, dialogue. There is a secret alchemy involved, which is why some faithful versions of books score so high in the collective consciousness, while others are viewed as unnecessarily vestigial for the same reasons.
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Directors: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez
Producers:
Sergei Bespalov, Aaron Kaufman, Stephen L’Heureux, Marc C. Manuel, Alexander Rodnyansky, Robert Rodriguez
Writer:
Frank Miller
Cinematographer: Robert Rodriguez
Editor: Robert Rodriguez
Music: Robert Rodriguez, Carl Thiel
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Eva Green, Powers Boothe

Runtime: 102m.
Genre: Action/Crime/Thriller
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: August 22, 2014
US Distributor: The Weinstein Company

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

8/8/2014

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by Nathan Sacks
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The latest franchise reboot, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, belongs to a new and interesting breed of films in our culture: films that audiences declare failures long in advance of their release. Recall the responses to John Carter and The Lone Ranger. In both cases, box office and critical response were assumed to be awful, and critics and prognosticators were almost gleeful in their collective savaging of these films. Of course, many thought these films weren’t really that bad, but those opinions were swiftly forgotten in favor of the damning Internet hive response. These movies seemed to be convenient scapegoats for so-called experts who are obsessed with box office and Tomatometer percentages (i.e. everything other than film qua film). I felt like the only critic at my screening who went into the movie with a positive outlook. The easiest and most obvious thing for a movie critic to do is complain about a movie when everyone else is ready, even eager to do the exact same thing. 

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Director: Jonathan Liebesman
Producers: Michael Bay, Ian Bryce, Andrew Form, Bradley Fuller, Scott Mednick, Galen Walker
Writers: Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, Evan Daugherty
Cinematographer: Lula Carvalho
Editors: Joel Negron, Glen Scantlebury
Music: Brian Tyler
Cast: Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, Alan Ritchson, Noel Fisher, Pete Ploszek, Johnny Knoxville, Jeremy Howard, Danny Woodburn, Tony Shalhoub, Tohoru Masamune, Whoopi Goldberg, Minae Noji, Abby Elliott

Runtime: 101m.
Genre: Action/Adventure/Comedy
Countries: USA
US Theatrical Release: August 8, 2014
US Distributor: Paramount Pictures


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