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| EFC STATS |
| Movies Listed: |
31817 |
| Total Ratings: |
248395 |
| Total Reviews: |
28120 |
![[174855412 Hits]](/cgi-bin/gd.cgi?174855412)
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| ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL |
"a.k.a. Do Androids Dream Of Boy Band Rejects?"
Peter Sobczynski says... "At first glance, the notion of a sci-fi epic combining the talents of Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime meeting of the minds—the contemporary genre equivalent of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas coming together for “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The trouble with “Alita: Battle Angel,” the long-gestating live-action film adaptation of the popular 90s manga, is that it only takes a few minutes to realize that both of them have put their worst creative foot forward on this one—instead of a film combining Rodriguez’s cheeky wit and cheerful exuberance and Cameron’s unquestioned mastery of staging and executing incredibly complex action beats, they have offered up one that inexplicably and disastrously puts its focus on Rodriguez’s stately epic vision and Cameron’s flair for screenwriting with downright disastrous results." (more)
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| INTEGRITY |
"Someone forgot this conspiracy thriller's conspiracy."
Jay Seaver says... ""Integrity" is the movie that took the biggest hit around here to make room for more screenings of "The Wandering Earth" (this didn't actually play until Monday despite showtimes listed starting Friday) and it turns out that's fair. This movie is a dull alleged thriller that gets more excitement out of the appearance that it will lazily use tired plot twists than anything it actually does." (more)
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| HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U |
"Doing It To Death"
Peter Sobczynski says... "When the original “Happy Death Day” came out in 2017, it was obviously better than most of the horror schlock ground out by Blumhouse Productions over the last few years but not quite good enough to fully recommend. The conceit of the film—a goofball fusion of “Groundhog Day” and your standard-issue college campus-based mad slasher exercise—was certainly intriguing but the screenplay never quite lived up to the promise of the premise as it grew a little repetitive at times (and not just in the intentional ways) and didn’t quite stick the ending. At the same time, however, it was made with a lot of style and a refreshing sense of humor that stressed the absurdity of the whole situation over endless sprays of blood and, best of all, it contained an undeniably winning and hugely entertaining performance from relatively unknown actress Jessica Rothe in the central role. It was a miss, I suppose, but it was the nearest of possible misses and when the news was announced that a sequel was being hustled into production after its predecessor proved to be a big hit, I found myself actually looking forward to it despite the fact that rushed sequels to horror films, especially ones with stories that don’t seem to obviously lend themselves to the franchise treatment, usually leads to artistic doom. Happily, “Happy Death Day 2U” is far more than just a lazy bit of hackwork hoping to exploit the goodwill engendered by its predecessor to squeeze a few more bucks out of the gullible. Instead, this is a smashingly entertaining film that retains all the stuff that worked the first time around while improving on the stuff that didn’t quite click. The end result is so good that even if you missed the first one, there is still a pretty good chance that you will have a blast here." (more)
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| ARCTIC |
"Survival is straightforward, but satisfying."
Jay Seaver says... "There's often not a whole lot to say about this sort of survival adventure, especially if it's pulled off as well as "Arctic" is. You admire the difficult conditions, note how well the star communicates what's going on in his head with looks and body language, maybe try and find some other theme, and eventually decide that to a certain extent, the movie defies analysis because it's about a visceral experience. It can seem either very easy or like an impossible bit of alchemy because it feels like something anyone could do given the right location, and it's hard to pin down what makes a given attempt great." (more)
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| HIGH FLYING BIRD |
"Soderbergh Holds Court"
Peter Sobczynski says... "“High Flying Bird,” the latest film from Steven Soderbergh, may be set within the world of professional basketball but it is by no means a “sports movie” in any traditional sense—outside of a couple of dribbles on the court, the focus on this engrossing, dialogue-heavy drama is on the game behind the one be played out on the court that generates billions for those running the show but which leaves most of the actual players out to dry." (more)
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| TITO AND THE BIRDS |
"High Flying Birds"
Peter Sobczynski says... "There is no doubt that this weekend will find millions of parents taking their children to the multiplex to go see “The LEGO Movie 2” and I have no problem with that—it is smart, funny, visually dynamic and manages to live up to the expectations set by its equally impressive predecessor. That said, here is hoping that a few of those parents will realize that it will almost certainly be around for a few weeks and instead elect to take the kids to “Tito and the Birds,” a new animated feature from Brazil that may not feature characters that will turn up on T-shirts and video games but which does tell a story that will engage both younger and older viewers alike." (more)
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| LEGO MOVIE 2, THE |
"Rise Of the Anti-Stud"
Peter Sobczynski says... "I must confess that when “The Lego Movie” came out in 2014, I just did not quite get it. Oh, I thought it was bright, funny and clever enough to give it a good review and all—I hadn’t taken complete leave of my senses—but it wasn’t until I happened to revisit it a couple of weeks later that I belatedly began to realize just how inventive it really was, both formally and narratively, and how smart and incisive it was in how it explored its real subject, the myriad ways in which imagination and creativity manifest themselves in different people using the ever-popular Lego toys as a point of departure for those who slavishly follow the instructions to build their towering creations and those who prefer to create them on their own. The good news with “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” is that it didn’t take me nearly as long to recognize how good it is this time around. Obviously, the film no longer has the element of jaw-dropping surprise going for it—the realization that this was a film that was far more than just an extended toy commercial—but what it understandably lacks in that regards, it more than makes up for that loss with large doses of wit, intelligence and more emotional depth than one might rightly expect from a project in which all of the characters are made of plastic bricks." (more)
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| AMITYVILLE MURDERS, THE |
"Zero Curb Appeal"
Peter Sobczynski says... "According to IMDb, there have been approximately 17 films that have been inspired to some degree or another by the allegedly haunted house at the center of what would become popularly known as “The Amityville Horror.” I cannot claim to have seen all of them—though I do remember catching the one where the evil is reborn within a dollhouse and the one where Bella Thorne was somehow involved—but of those that I have failed to avoid over the years, I have found them all to be unwatchable garbage with the sole exception of “Amityville II: The Possession,” the legendary 1982 prequel that took its inspiration from the genuine real-life mass murder that preceded all the paranormal piffle and which was such an unabashedly sleazy stew of abuse, incest and wild overacting that when the demonic stuff finally kicked in during the last half-hour, it almost seemed besides the point compared to what had come before it. Like that jaw-dropper of a film, “The Amityville Murders” takes that real-life crime as its jumping-off point but it seems to have been made by people who asked themselves “What would you get if you took “Amityville II,” stripped out all the around-the-bend lunacy and replaced it with stuff borrowed from the lesser “Paranormal Activity” sequels and the gratuitous use of Lainie Kazan?”. Shockingly—well, more shocking than anything you’ll find her—the answer is “Not much.”" (more)
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SHORT STUFF: THE 2018 OSCAR-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARY SHORTS
by Jay Seaver |
| "The theaters in my area that pick up the Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts almost always break them up into two packages, and it's usually a smart idea: With every entry pushing the definition of the "shorts" category to its limit, that's a chunk of time where a narrative feature would probably be given an intermission anyway. This year's program, on the other hand, clocks in at a relatively lean 139 minutes, or roughly the length of a Marvel movie, an hour less than its theoretical maximum length. Many places are still breaking it up, which is reasonable enough, as it's the sort of presentation where it certainly doesn't hurt to spend a little time resetting and reflecting." (more) |
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'SOMETIMES YOU JUST GOTTA SAY "WHAT THE HECK."'
- Joel's Father, Risky Business
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