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The Rundown (2003): C+
So this is what Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia would have been like had it been made with a Hollywood budget and starred a wrestler-turned-actor. The Rundown, Peter Berg’s jokey action/adventure film about a buff bounty hunter (The Rock) sent to a rundown Latin American town called El Dorado to retrieve…
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Whoa is Envy
It’s hard to believe that a film with Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Amy Poehler, Rachel Weisz, and Christoper Walken could stink as bad as Envy, but Barry Levinson has nonetheless pulled of this seemingly impossible feat. Check out my Slant magazine review for the bad news…
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13 Going on 30 (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) Consider 13 Going on 30 as less a movie than a demo reel for Jennifer Garner, the energetic brunette beauty of TV’s Alias. In Gary Winick’s photocopy of Big and (to a lesser extent) Freaky Friday, Garner is Jenna Rink, a thirteen-year-old girl in 1987 suburban New Jersey who,…
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Fiyah!
Is Dakota Fanning’s popularity a sign of the apocalypse? The jury is still out, but there’s no doubt that she’s the most annoying child actor since Eight is Enough‘s Adam Rich. Ms. Fanning has a new film out – Tony Scott’s revenge drama Man on Fire, starring Denzel Washington – and at least she’s mostly…
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School Faze
With one month to go before graduation from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, I’m absolutely swamped with final papers/articles. Thus, I’ve had almost no time to watch any films (save for The Rundown, which I’ll eventually get to reviewing) for fun. Nonetheless, I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing for Northern Colorado’s premiere…
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Prepare for Punishment
I enjoyed Spider-Man, and I know I’m the only person in the country who really liked The Hulk, but man, what is Marvel doing? Daredevil was a joke, and the new version of The Punisher is so disastrous, it makes the 1989 Dolph Lundgren version look good. My review at Slant magazine details the wreckage.
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A Drink and a Smoke
Jim Jarmusch finally returns, and this is all he’s brought with him? Some coffee and cigarettes? As a wise rapper once said, “That don’t sound too good, Bill Murray!” Don’t get that last line? Check out my disappointed filmcritic.com review of Coffee and Cigarettes for an explanation…
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The Alamo (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) It would be too easy to just say “Forget The Alamo,” Disney’s new block-blunder about the 1836 battle for the Texas fort between Mexican conqueror Santa Ana’s army and an outnumbered group of American soldiers. But avoiding the film might not be a bad idea. Were The Alamo’s outcome…
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Blowup (1966)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) A shallow fashion photographer (David Hemmings) in swinging‘60s London unwittingly captures a murder on film – or does he? – in Michelangelo Antonioni’s acclaimed Blowup. Hemmings’ Thomas is beset by ennui, and is only awakened from his hollow lifestyle of casual sex, materialistic excess, and inactivity after discovering –…
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Hellboy (2004)
(Originally published in Rocky Mountain Bullhorn) The quest for inclusion has, since the introduction of The X-Men in the ‘60s, been the predominant theme in superhero comics, and it’s certainly at the forefront of Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy, a humanistic action extravaganza (based on Mike Mignola’s cult comic book) about misfit creatures fighting on the…
