Studio: Lionsgate
Gary Ross
Mar 22, 2012
Cinema
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A publishing phenomenon with over 26 million copies in print, The Hunger Games trilogy seemed bound to become a film from day one. Despite the books’ popularity, The Hunger Games series contains an incredibly difficult story to get right.
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Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Joseph Cedar
Mar 20, 2012
Cinema
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Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik are father and son scholars; each a well-regarded researcher within the field of Talmudic studies with their own individual idea of what should qualify that distinguishment. This familial rivarly is at the center of director Joseph Cedar’s absorbing and often darkly comic Footnote, Israel’s Academy Award nominee for best foreign picture.
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Studio: Magnet
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim
Mar 02, 2012
Cinema
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When Erma Bombeck said that there was a thin line between laughter and pain, she probably never even imagined the lengths to which Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim would take their comedy. And now that we’ve quoted a writer who couldn’t be at a further end of the comedy spectrum from those two, we can focus on the closest thing in Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie that resembles a plot.
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Mar 01, 2012
Cinema
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Sean “Pellet” Pelletier giddily describes the sensation of being a huge music fan and hearing the band Pentagram for the first time. “It’s like being a devout Christian and walking down the street one day and bumping into Jesus, and he knows your name and shakes your hand and asks you over for dinner and drinks.”
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Studio: GK Films
Directed by Angelina Jolie
Dec 24, 2011
Cinema
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It’s not that the amateurish directing is at fault in Angelina Jolie’s debut as a writer/director: it borders on competent. But her atrocious script and misguided approach to the subject matter render In the Land of Blood and Honey odious.
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Studio: Columbia Pictures/MGM
Directed by David Fincher; Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård and Robin Wright
Dec 21, 2011
Cinema
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Based on the first book of the immensely popular Millennium trilogy by the late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson, the English-language The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo comes on the heels of the Swedish film version, which was a global blockbuster before reaching the States in a limited but long-running theatrical release last year.
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Dec 10, 2011
Cinema
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Even an ensemble cast of a very high pedigree can’t overcome a plot that’s been compacted into near-incomprehensibility. John Le Carré‘s bestselling Cold War thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was previously adapted as an acclaimed seven-part BBC miniseries.
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Studio: The Weinstein Company
Dec 10, 2011
Cinema
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Andrea Riseborough, a chameleonic English actress who earned a BAFTA nomination for her lead performance in the 2008 BBC film, Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley, is bewitching as Wallis Simpson in Madonna’s second directorial effort.
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Studio: Fox Searchlight
Directed by Steve McQueen; Starring: Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan
Dec 02, 2011
Cinema
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In English director Steve McQueen’s second feature film, co-written by McQueen and Abi Morgan, Michael Fassbender plays Brandon, a well-to-do New Yorker whose looks, stylish wardrobe, and piercing stare can, we’re led to believe, bring pretty women to near ecstasy on the subway. The catch is that Brandon is a sex addict who collects porn and can’t maintain relationships with women.
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Studio: Fox Searchlight
Directed by Alexander Payne; Starring George Clooney
Nov 18, 2011
Cinema
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Director Alexander Payne made ripples in the indie landscape with his superb 1999 film Election, which struck a terrific balance of flippant irreverence and tender pathos. His returns have been nearly equally as impressive since, highlighted by 2004’s sublime Sideways and 2002’s underrated idiosyncratic oddball About Schmidt. His newest film The Descendants finds Payne veering towards a more conventional Hollywood style, which isn’t a bad thing, as he proves here to be damn good at it.
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