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Hipsters: Not the Annoying Brooklyn Kind, but the Fun Russian Dancing Kind
Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union because it couldn’t satisfy the people’s unquenchable need for chartreuse checked suits…
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Empire of Silver: Another Chinese Historical Pageant
This year’s “sweeping” post-post-Fifth-Gen Chinese epic, Empire of Silver is filthy with luxuriant clichés, from sun-roasted Gobi landscapes…
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Hugo: Martin Scorsese’s 3-D Kid Flick
Martin Scorsese’s first foray into 3-D family filmmaking centers on its title character, played by Asa Butterfield, a…
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The Descendants: George Clooney As Reluctant Parent
Because it’s a total star turn for George Clooney, and because it’s been seven years since director Alexander…
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The Muppets: Nostalgia Is Rewarded
Desperately trying to appeal to not just the Gen-Xers who grew up with Kermit but also the tykes…
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Another Happy Day: Ellen Barkin Is Very, Very Angry
In his first feature, writer/director Sam Levinson (son of Barry) turns to screeching family dysfunction for inspiration; the…
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My Week With Marilyn: A Tepid Movie-Set Romance
In the TV-movie-quality impersonation that is Simon Curtis’ My Week With Marilyn, Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) has arrived…
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Elite Squad: The Enemy Within: The Brazilian Crime Saga Continues
Packing an entire season’s worth of The Wire‘s dirty cops, self-serving politicians, serpentine plotting, and gruesome, wasteful collateral…
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Granito: How to Nail a Dictator: Not Every Documentary Demands a Sequel
In 1982, documentary filmmaker Pamela Yates traveled to Guatemala to capture both sides of the then-raging civil war,…
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The Women on the Sixth Floor: Friendship Across the Class Line in ’60s France
The pleasing sounds of Carmen Maura’s whispery Castilian lisp open this 1962-set film about the friendship between a…
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The Weird World of Blowfly: The Song Remains Insane
Now this is a resume: dapper king of Miami soul, groove-master songwriter for the likes of Sam &…
Film
Eames: The Architect and the Artist: Two Titans of Postwar Design
“The best for the most for the least” was the utopian business credo of Charles Eames, who with…
Film
You Are All Captains: Filmmaking on the Fly in Morocco
Early in You All Are Captains, director Oliver Laxe—playing a version of “himself,” a Spaniard teaching a filmmaking…
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The Other F Word: Punk Rockers Love Their Kids
Flea almost cries. Twice. There’s your four-word summation of The Other F Word, a half-poignant, half-absurd documentary on…
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Into the Abyss: Werner Herzog in the Lone Star State
An egalitarian study of crime and punishment in a small Texas town, Into the Abyss is also an…
Film
Melancholia: Lars von Trier Imagines the End of the World
The first thing you see in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia is a close-up of Kirsten Dunst’s face. Behind…
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Everyday Sunshine: Remember the ’80s? Remember Fishbone?
“They should have been the band that went way beyond any of us who were influenced by them,”…
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Hell and Back Again: Following a Wounded Vet Home From Afghanistan
Danfung Dennis’ documentary seeks to chronicle the personal experience of war with extreme and sustained intimacy. The nightmare-vivid…
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The Swell Season: For Fans of the Band Only
This tour doc—shot in moody, close-up-heavy black-and-white—traces a few years on the road with Glen Hansard and Markéta…
Film
We Were Here: Recalling the Early AIDS Crisis in San Fran
During the early ’80s, the Bay Area was initially slow to recognize the “gay cancer” that, one subject…