The Untouchables (1987) Review

The Untouchables is a stone-cold classic. Brian De Palma’s bravura direction amounted to a clinic on how to make a supreme piece of studio funded entertainment, with showboating performances from a massive cast, all filtered through the elegant and stylized dialogue courtesy of David Mamet; his vulgar poetry really sets this one on fire. It’s…

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Goon (2011) Review

The list of truly memorable hockey movies is short, but near the very top, and definitely sitting in the penalty box for excessive fisticuffs, is Goon, the raucous and extremely bloody 2011 comedy from director Michael Dowse (What If, Take Me Home Tonight) and writers Jay Baruchel (Man Seeking Woman) and Evan Goldberg (Pineapple Express,…

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Lion Review

It’s not usually the type of movie I’d see at the cinema but as I was down London yesterday after the BAFTA’s ceremony the only film that was showing at the time was Lion and after all the talk and hype the film has been getting, in addition to Dev Patel picking up a supporting…

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Nostalgia for the Light (2010) Review

Sobering. Troubling. Shattering. The 2010 documentary Nostalgia for the Light hits with the blunt emotional force of a freight train, while also providing a glimpse into the cosmos that has rarely been seen. This revelatory and consummately constructed 90 minute film delves into one of the world’s great genocidal atrocities, and is startlingly unique in…

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Reign Of Fire (2002) Review

I’m picky when it comes to fantasy movies. Very picky. I’m not a fan of LOTR or any of its seemingly endless derivatives. But while not perfect, I’ve always had a HUGE soft spot for Rob Bowman’s Reign of Fire, which sports a genre-popping screenplay by Gregg Chabot, Kevin Peterka, and Matthew Greenberg that had…

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Jackie Review

The elegiac and introspective drama Jackie is not an attempt at a traditional biopic of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and it’s all the more poignant as a result. Taking a very specific route with its narrative and presenting the story during the incredibly sad and difficult days that immediately followed her husband’s assassination, Pablo Larrain’s smart…

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The Founder Review

I expected to be starving after watching The Founder, John Lee Hancock’s sneakily dark expose of the origins of McDonald’s but I was sorely mistaken . Robert D. Siegel’s swift screenplay effectively laid out the broad-stroke history to one of the world’s most popular franchise restaurants, never backpedaling on any of the ethically and morally…

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