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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
31927 |
| Total Ratings: |
248809 |
| Total Reviews: |
28188 |
![[177903690 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?177903690)
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| JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 3 - PARABELLUM |
"More of the same, but the same is pretty good."
Jay Seaver says... "If you've enjoyed the first two "John Wick" movies, you'll almost certainly enjoy the third - this series still brings the stylish, astonishingly-staged violence better than most anybody else has since the last time John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat got together. It's definitely starting to get a little stretched, though, like the makers are a bit too aware of the franchise's status as an unlikely hit and developing a tendency to wink at themselves. "Parabellum" still plays its world of assassins just seriously enough to work as both intriguing and an excuse to enjoy the mayhem, but it's right on the edge of implosion, and may not be able to pull it off much longer." (more)
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| SHADOW |
"Beautiful and bloody."
Jay Seaver says... "Zhang Yimou's "Shadow" is probably the most visually striking wuxia film since "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", so striking that when it gets off to a bit of a halting start, one might be tempted to consider that an acceptable trade-off for just being able to look at the thing for a couple hours. That it would quickly becomes more was not guaranteed, but it does, offering up palace intrigue an spurts of action that make it one of the best films that the genre has produced in recent years." (more)
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| HUSTLE, THE |
"Bunco Flop!"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Once upon a time—1964 to be exact—there emerged a film by the name of “Bedroom Story,” a comedy starring David Niven and Marlon Brando as a couple of con artists in the French Riviera—one suave and decidedly posh in his targets and the other cruder and more low-rent (take a wild guess as to who played who)—competing against each other to swindle an American heiress (Shirley Jones) to prove which of them was the best at their rarefied position. To be frank, it was not especially amusing—the humor too often leaned heavier on crudity than sophistication—and the only thing keeping it from falling into complete obscurity is the decidedly bizarre spectacle of Marlon Brando—one of the greatest actors of all time but one not exactly famous, especially at that time, for his light comedic touch—trying and largely failing to prove himself as a farceur. Nearly a quarter-century later, “Bedtime Story” was dusted off and remade as the 1988 comedy “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” with Michael Caine in the David Niven part and Steve Martin following in Brando’s footsteps. Although the screenplay was virtually identical to the extremely uneven original, the resulting film proved to be better than it had any right to be thanks to the slick staging of the material by director Frank Oz and the expert byplay between Caine, Martin and the late Glenne Headly as their winsome target. Now, thirty years after that, the same plot, plus a gender flip for the main characters, has been revived for the screen for a third time with “The Hustle” and after watching this iteration, students of the various versions will find themselves longing for the comparative dignity of the original “Bedroom Story.” Although the notion of doing a female-centric take on this material sounds like a promising idea in theory, it turns out that other than the change in pronouns, most everything else has remained basically the same and the whole thing winds up having all the wit, energy and fizz of a not-incredibly-funny joke being told for a third time." (more)
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| DETECTIVE PIKACHU |
"One Guy, A Girl And A Pikachu"
Peter Sobczynski says... "In one of the many hilarious bits in the 1933 Marx Brothers classic “Duck Soup,” wacky dictator Rufus T. Firefly is handed a Treasury report and announces “Clear Why a four-year-old child could understand this report” before turning to his aide and remarking “Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can’t make head or tail out of it.” I found myself thinking about that line a lot while watching “Pokemon: Detective Pikachu” for a couple of reasons. For one thing, as someone whose exposure to the entire Pokemon phenomenon over the years has been limited at best (someone tried to explain it to me once and got grumpy when I mentioned that it sounded a little too close to slavery for its own good), i concede that there are no doubt numerous aspects to the proceedings that would be best appreciated or at least understood by those with a greater working knowledge of the subject at hand. For another, since the film at hand was doing absolutely nothing to entertain or amuse me with its slapdash antics, why not let the mind drift to an authentically entertaining film in the way that a drowning man might yearn for a life vest? Alas, even that was not enough to help pass the time with this strenuously annoying film, a hard-sell spectacle that clearly yearns to be the next “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” but only winds up being the next “Space Jam” and just so that there is no confusion in the matter, that is most decidedly NOT a compliment." (more)
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| TONE-DEAF |
"Fun mayhem around what might be Robert Patrick's best role."
Jay Seaver says... "SCREENED AT BOSTON UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 21: Richard Bates Jr. makes a valiant effort to frame "Tone-Deaf" in a way where its black comedy is about something bigger than just the funny murder, although I'm not sure that it's that deep: There's more there than "get a load of those Boomers/Millennials and their messed-up priorities!", but maybe not that much. It is, at least, pretty consistently funny, with an especially entertaining turn from a guy who seldom seems to get a role this good." (more)
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| LONG SHOT |
"Bedfellows Make Strange Politics"
Peter Sobczynski says... "Whether you like “Long Shot” or not will depend to a large degree on exactly how much thought you are planning to give it, either while watching it or afterwards. On the one hand, it is a breezy and brash romantic comedy and look at it simply on that level, it does work thanks to a number of very funny scenes and the offbeat chemistry generated by its two leads. On the other hand, if one sits down and analyzes the politics driving the narrative—sexual and otherwise—to any degree, large parts of it begin to come across as either willfully inane or borderline creepy. The end result is a work that contains enough charm and wit to sort of warrant a recommendation but only with the caveat that some of the elements on display are really not going to play well with some audience members." (more)
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| ASAKO I & II |
"Some people are always looking to recapture first love."
Jay Seaver says... "From what was said after the screening of "Asako I & II" that I attended, the film Ryusuke Hamaguchi made is rather different from Tomoka Shibasaki's novel, maintaining the basic concept but apparently giving the title character a more sympathetic characterization and otherwise moving things around. To whatever extent that's true, it seems to work out well; the movie version may occasionally be frustrating but only when meant to be, and it uses its concept of two apparently identical lovers to cover a lot of romantic ground without losing a sense of intimacy." (more)
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| WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY |
"Odd but nonetheless intriguing."
Jay Seaver says... "This genuinely peculiar little movie that does its best to correct the long-held and deliberately created impression that Emily Dickinson was a reclusive spinster is not just an acquired taste but also kind of a hard sell, and filmmaker Madeleine Olnek tends to concern herself less with opening this sort of highly-targeted movie to a broad audience than with the act of setting the record straight. It sometimes makes for the sort of movie where sometimes only one person in the room is laughing at a joke, but that one person is enjoying it." (more)
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'IF SHE'S NOT A KILLER, SHE'S A TARGET.'
- Randy, Scream 2
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