| | 'Fast & Furious 6': Don't ask, just go for the rideAt some point during "Fast & Furious 6," it's wiser to toss your hands in the air and let the dumbness wash over you. Don't ask how this or that could possibly happen or wonder if anyone in the audience is actually gullible enough to believe it could. Full Story 'The Sapphires': Tale filled with charm, appealThere are all kinds of reasons why "The Sapphires" shouldn't work as a piece of filmmaking. The storytelling is ragged around the edges. Some of the characters are decidedly one-dimensional. Scenes set in Vietnam during the height of the war are notably unconvincing. Full Story 'Peeples' formulaic but it has its moments"Peeples" is an African-American "Meet the Parents" that slips funnyman Craig Robinson into the Ben Stiller role. Casting the musically minded Robinson in this formula comedy about screwing up your first encounter with your potential in-laws is like replacing Stiller's Greg Focker with Jack Black. Full Story 'Iron Man 3': Blockbustering by remote controlA little too much and a little not enough, director and co-writer Shane Black's "Iron Man 3" nonetheless has everything Disney and Marvel need to keep the "Avengers" superhero constellation shining and regenerating well into the 23rd century. Full Story Matthew McConaughey perfectly at home in 'Mud'In Hollywood, they call it "on the nose" casting. And if ever you doubted that Matthew McConaughey was the perfect pick to play the yarn-and-myth spinning rural romantic title character in Jeff Nichols' Southern Gothic melodrama, "Mud," he puts your mind at ease the way Mud himself would -- with a tale. Full Story 'Pain & Gain': Total BayhemAs an eyes-only experience, "Pain & Gain" is impressive, in an overbearing sort of way: long-lens shots of Miami sunsets, hot bodies around turquoise swimming pools, and big orange fireballs. Full Story 'Lore': The end of innocenceThe natural world is humming and thrumming, the rivers coursing, the green grass rustling, the bright sun arcing over woods and fields. But the five siblings dragging themselves across those woods and fields in Cate Shortland's fierce and powerful "Lore" have been buffeted by forces of man, not nature: namely, war. Full Story 'A Place at the Table': Blunt, poignant look at twin illsAmerica's twin ills, the swollen ranks of hungry people in the country and the national "obesity epidemic" are explained, in blunt and poignant terms, in "A Place at the Table," a new documentary about "food politics" and the forces that let hunger in America make a comeback. Full Story | |
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