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(1988) |
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"A profoundly ridiculous premise, surely, but it works, not only as story and special effects showcase, but satire of the filmic conventions of two genres seemingly left to history's waste bin."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1984) |
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"Either the slyest satire of consumerism you will ever see or a filmmaker, reared on action figures and electric trains, acting out his childhood fantasies of being locked in a department store at night."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2008) |
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"Scenes featuring the monster are oddly the most realistic."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"A deeply self-indulgent picture that exemplifies the worst, navel-gazing preoccupations of so many contemporary documentarians."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2007) |
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"I have little doubt that this all worked a lot better in the book."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2007) |
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"More thought seems to have went into providing grist for future [sequels] that have not been made than the film that was."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1936) |
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"This really is a subtly detestable film at times."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2007) |
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"It's not as good as you heard."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1946) |
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"Imagine Lassie goes off to war... Lassie returning home shell-shocked, twisted by his war-time experiences. Imagine a judge orders Lassie put down. A courtroom trial. Lassie defended by the Wizard of Oz."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1969) |
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"Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? is a strange film, but ultimately one that rewards you for your patience."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2007) |
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"Andrew Wagner shouldn't take it personally that I dislike his movie with such passion."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1982) |
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"Virgin's mesmeric final moments...are really what elevate the picture from mere cultural curiosity to unheralded subversive brilliance."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1986) |
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"Adults (and their younger comrades-in-training, teenagers) are uniformly loathsome, spoiling the Garden of Boyhood with their egoism and physical/emotional sadism"
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1951) |
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"As a filmmaker, the problem with being ahead of your time is that most audiences/critics/quasi-Luddites won't like your movie."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1985) |
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"Teen Wolf begs the question of why being part wolf would improve your basketball (or seduction, or dancing) skills so dramatically."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"Bobcat Goldthwait doesn't simply act in bad comedies, now he writes and directs them, too."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2007) |
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"Despite the interesting questions they raise, it seems the filmmakers' plea for tolerance prevailed over true intellectual honesty and the serious study of a psychologically troubling behavior."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1986) |
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"If Assan Motors wants their employees to to act like Japanese people, why not build the plant in Japan?"
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1962) |
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"Of course, you try to critique the film they made, not the one you would have preferred. This being said, you rather wish they'd picked a different lie."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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--
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(2005) |
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Click here to see the review!
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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--
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(1957) |
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Click here to see the review!
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"It's a story populated by characters not people, all displaying wildly antisocial behaviors for the seeming purpose of giving the teenage Burroughs something to write about when older. It may be factual but it is not truth."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"To his credit, Frears doesn't try to solicit too much sympathy for his Queen, but the film goes down the navel-gazing rabbit hole just the same."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1941) |
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"As great as The Maltese Falcon is, the picture has two fairly significant shortcomings that no one really wants to talk about."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1992) |
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"Strangely moving, a Passion play for Laura Palmer as governed by the murky dream logic of a director who expands upon the mythology of his iconic television show while simultaneously rewriting it."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1940) |
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"What, no chance meeting with John Wilkes Booth while hunting for beaver pelts? How about a rail-splitting contest between Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, bragging rights and a crumpled five-dollar bill to the winner?"
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2003) |
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"I can't help but think the filmmaker got a tad too close to her subject. Like standing a foot away from a Seurat, Ms. Gilbert sees a series of dots rather than a leisurely Sunday afternoon in the park."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1953) |
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"It's always bizarre when films seek to remind us of other, better ones, demonstrating how inferior they are with the comparison."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1980) |
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"Great films are often unrecognized at the time of their release, or even decades later."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"The best filmmaking brings flesh to bone and there are few dancing skeletons that could use more humanity than 9/11."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2005) |
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"This isn't to say the picture is without merit as it's amusing to watch famous people describe a man they can barely conceal their distaste for."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"The smartest studio film in a long time."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"Perhaps we are sick only so someone can sell us the cure."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2003) |
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"Reminders that These Things Actually Happened become something close to a necessary evil for so little in the picture has the ring of authenticity."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1975) |
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"There's something unsettling about church weddings."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"The Prestige is a neat trick, even if Nolan is a little too proud of his narrative sleight of hand; magicians may never betray their secrets, but Nolan holds no such creed."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1991) |
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"Todd Haynes' first feature-length picture...is not a particularly good movie regardless of what the Sundance Film Festival says."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1975) |
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"Representing a thematic cousin of Antonioni's own pop artifact Blow-Up, Nicholson's hollow man...stumbles down the rabbit hole of social responsibility on his way to unrealized redemption."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1985) |
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"Freddy's Revenge is the kind of bad film that's interesting to talk about - this has to count for something."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1932) |
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"While only preceding King Kong...by a few months, it predates (in its own charmingly unsuspecting way) the 1960s hippie movement by a good thirty years."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2004) |
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"Sigh."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"Marie Antoinette functions less as a film than a two-hour music video for Sofia Coppola's mix tape of favorite songs."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1993) |
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"Media doesn't simply reflect who we are - it tells us. It is the mirror but so are we."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1972) |
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"Often what makes films great are the questions they pose, not the ones they solve. Chloe in the Afternoon is full of questions."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(1974) |
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"The Longest Yard asks what it means to be criminal in a system without fairness, where...violence is cloaked in duty and righteousness."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"I won't reveal how the whole situation resolves itself, only that there is a musical montage featuring Coldplay...Jacinda Barrett breaks character and speaks in an Australian accent...and some other things happen that...are always happening in movies."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"A director's love letter to himself, the martyred, fashionably-dressed messiah whose work may someday save the world if only we'd let it."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"Jesus Camp [is] one of the most frightening films of 2006."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"Does David Lynch know he's weird?"
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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(2006) |
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"Not to completely bash this trifle of a movie, as I'm sure writer/director Ol Parker is an entertaining gentleman at parties, but it really is emblematic of everything that is wrong with current independent filmmaking."
[movie review] |
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Pretentious Musings |
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