White Christmas

From the very first frame, a color palate of red, green, and white (with eventually a consistent dash of blue) set the audience for certain amount of holiday cheer. Seriously, there is some well-done color here. Most films directed by Michael Curtiz that you might think of off the top your head--Casablanca,...

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens

There has been an awakening...have you felt it? Those words, terrifyingly spoken by a character we know now to be Snoke, were the introductory lines we heard right after Thanksgiving 2014 in the first of three terrific trailers for the first Star Wars film in a decade (not including the not-so-well-received...

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Tangerine

Sean Baker has directed a film with an iPhone, a movie that starts with two transgender L.A. prostitutes sharing a doughnut on Christmas Eve. "Merry Christmas, bitch!" is one of the first lines spoken by one of the prostitutes, someone who has just been released from prison. Let's just say that your...

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7 Days of Halloween: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Mr. Burns of The Simpsons has a simple command to "release the hounds," and it could have its origin in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the 1959 adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's third Sherlock Holmes novel, directed by Terence Fischer, which starts with an aristocrat sending loose his fiendish...

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7 Days of Halloween: The Descent

I once went spelunking in rural Pennsylvania when I was in Boy Scouts. I feel very fortunate that the experience was nothing like "The Descent." In my experience, like that of virtually every human in recent human history who has gone caving, the scariest thing is when your guide tells you to turn off your helmet light so that you can see just how dreadfully dark it is under the earth. I might have...

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7 Days of Halloween: Nosferatu

The first time I saw "Nosferatu," the first adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," was in high school, and regrettably, it was a DVD of the 1998 "remastering" with an introduction from David Carradine and a soundtrack provided by the metal band Type-O Negative. However, this newest version, released...

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7 Days of Halloween: 28 Weeks Later

From the very first attack, there seems to be about a thousand things happening simultaneously. But just as with the first film ("28 Days Later"), "28 Weeks Later" dispenses with one complication of these kinds of horror films: these monsters can run, and they are a hell of a lot meaner than any other...

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7 Days of Halloween: Scream

From the beginning of the iconic opening scene featuring Drew Barrymore, "Scream" makes it unconventionally known that it is the Hollywood horror movie so well aware of the tropes of the genre that it doesn't mind totally embracing them. Barrymore appears briefly as a young high school student ready to watch a scary movie one evening when she receives a bizarre call from what could sound like a deeply...

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7 Days of Halloween: Star Trek ("Wolf in the Fold")

There's no starship but instead a room that can only be described as a brothel or a strip club featuring yet another scantily clad female, providing another example of how "Star Trek" in some ways was one of television's most sexist shows. Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley),...

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7 Days of Halloween: Carnival of Souls

"Carnival of Souls" is a horror film with the same production DNA as "The Naked Kiss" from 1964, which was released two years after this Herk Harvey eerie independent horror film. Eerie is a word I worried I would use often in this review, and I can't be blamed: an eerie vibe is constituted throughout...

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The Best Beach Boys Songs

Having recently written a top Beatles list and with the summer release of "Love and Mercy," a biographical film of Brian Wilson, I was inspired to follow up with my take on the best Beach Boys music. "Love and Mercy" is the directorial debut of Bill Pohlad, who produced "Brokeback Mountain,"...

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Mission: Impossible -- Rogue Nation

I can remember watching the first "Mission: Impossible" film when I was nine years old all those years ago. In 1996, when that first film was released, Tom Cruise had been one of Hollywood's hottest stars for about a decade, and (the Peter Graves controversy aside) he effortlessly helped established...

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The Greatest Beatles Songs

I've been thinking a lot of the Beatles lately. I'm currently reading an old copy of Hunter Davies' authorized biography of the group just before their breakup, Ringo Starr turned 75 a few months ago, and I glanced through Elvis Costello's article in Rolling Stones magazine this past summer. And so,...

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White People

"For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth...And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground." That's from the Bible's Isaiah, and it's mentioned in the conclusion of Errin Whack's...

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Mad Max: Fury Road

1979 seemed like such a peaceful time. In that universe, Australia didn't seem so hot and sandy, and Max wasn't all that mad. Things have changed so much. In the fourth installment of the "Mad Max" franchise, "Fury Road," Max is indeed very mad, and things are very chaotic. George Miller returns Mad Max to the screen after a thirty-year hiatus. Miller had quite the challenge in revitalizing his famous...

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The Best Scene in "Casablanca" Involves a Song, But It's Not "As Time Goes By"

I would bet that the scene audiences like most in "Casablanca" is the scene involving the singing of "As Time Goes By." It's a scene many adore and cherish, justifiably so; the American Film Institute even ranked it second in their list of the best songs in American films, second only to "Over the Rainbow."...

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Jurassic World

"I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to maintain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of...

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