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Movie Review: TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN 10/02/2011

TUCKER & DALE VS EVIL movie poster | ©2011 Magnet Releasing

Rating: R Stars: Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Brandon Jay McLaren, Christie Laing, Chelan Simmons Writers: Eli Craig & Morgan Jurgenson Director: Eli Craig Distributor: Magnet Releasing Release Date: September 30, 2011 TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL is an oddity. We can conceptually appreciate its plentiful jokes as they fly past, yet we don’t find ourselves laughing much. It’s not that the movie is unfunny in that awful way of comedies that fall flat, it’s just that, despite all the extreme gore, its quizzical tone doesn’t match the outrageousness it aims for but seldom achieves. Unless one […]Read On »

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Movie Review: ABDUCTION

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN 09/25/2011

ABDUCTION movie poster | ©2011 Lionsgate

Rating: PG-13 Stars: Taylor Lautner, Lily Collins, Alfred Molina, Jason Isaacs, Maria Bello, Sigourney Weaver, Denzel Whitaker, Michael Nyqvist Writer: Shawn Christensen Director: John Singleton Distributor: Lionsgate Release Date: September 23, 2011 ABDUCTION feels so much like an adaptation of a young adult novel that it’s surprising to see that the script is an original (okay, according to the production notes, it’s based on an un-screen-credited idea by executive producer Jeremy Bell) by Shawn Christensen. Indeed, Christensen turns the original premise, and the title, into something of a red herring. There’s a sense of familiarity about the film, but it’s […]Read On »

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Movie Review: MONEYBALL

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN 09/24/2011

MONEYBALL movie poster | ©2011 Sony Pictures

Stars: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright Writers: Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, story by Stan Chervin, based on the book by Michael Lewis Director: Bennett Miller Distributor: Columbia Pictures Release Date: September 23, 2011 To describe MONEYBALL accurately is to run the risk of making it sound like a number of things that it is not – dry, insular, too cerebral for the masses. Instead, it is about baseball in the way that THE SOCIAL NETWORK was about Facebook. Baseball is MONEYBALL’s universe, but the film actually makes the topic so universal that even people who […]Read On »

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BRIDESMAIDS is one of the Blu-ray and DVD picks this week

By PETER BROWN 09/22/2011

BRIDESMAIDS | © 2011 Universal Home Entertainment

Your time is short. We know this. So in order to expedite your buying and Netflix decision making, we provide you with a list of the cool and not-so-cool titles coming out for movies, television and everything in-between. So put your feet up, grab some popcorn and check out this week’s selections. Movies: BRIDESMAIDS – Now, I would not go as far as to say that BRIDESMAIDS is a chick flick. It is in a lot of ways. But it is also a pretty funny comedy. Kristen Wiig is good in the lead role but I gotta be honest gets […]Read On »

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Movie Review: STRAW DOGS

By RACHEL REITSLEFF 09/18/2011

STRAW DOGS movie poster | ©2011 Screen Gems

Stars: James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgard, James Woods, Dominic Purcell, Laz Alonso, Willa Holland, Walton Goggins, Drew Powell, Rhys Coiro, Billy Lush Writer: Rod Lurie, based on the screenplay by David Zelag Goodman and Sam Peckinpah, based on the novel THE SIEGE AT TRENCHER’S FARM by Gordon Williams Director: Rod Lurie Distributor: Screen Gems Release Date: September 16, 2011 In 1971, director/co-screenwriter Sam Peckinpah made a heavily controversial splash with STRAW DOGS, an adaptation of the Gordon Williams novel THE SIEGE AT TRENCHER’S FARM. Dustin Hoffman starred as an American academician who moves to a rural village in England […]Read On »

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Movie Review: DRIVE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN

DRIVE movie poster | ©2011 Film District

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, Oscar Isaac, Albert Brooks Writer: Hossein Amini, based on the book by James Sallis Director: Nicolas Winding Refn Distributor: FilmDistrict Release Date: September 16, 2011 DRIVE gets off to a promising start, introducing us to our Driver protagonist (Ryan Gosling), a movie car stunt expert by day, a getaway driver by night and an occasional mechanic at a Valley garage when he’s not doing either of his more hazardous professions. We meet the Driver as he’s giving his rules to two robbers who manage not to screw things up […]Read On »

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Movie Review: THE DEBT

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN 09/11/2011

THE DEBT movie poster | ©2011 Focus Features

Rating: R Stars: Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, Ciaran Hinds, Jessica Chastain, Marton Czokas, Sam Worthington, Jesper Christensen, Romi Aboulafia Writers: Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan, based on the Israeli film HA-HOV written by Assaf Bernstein & Ido Rosenblum Director: John Madden Distributor: Focus Features/Miramax Release Date: September 2, 2011 Based on the 2007 Israeli film HA-HOV, THE DEBT moves fluidly between two timelines over thirty years apart. In 1997, Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren) and her ex-husband Stephan Gold (Tom Wilkinson) are jointly proud of their daughter Sarah (Romi Aboulafia), who has written a book about their heroic […]Read On »

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Movie Review: WARRIOR

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN

Rating: PG-13 Stars: Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Morrison, Frank Grillo, Kevin Dunn Writers: Gavin O’Connor & Anthony Tambakis & Cliff Dorfman, story by Gavin O’Connor & Cliff Dorfman Director: Gavin O’Connor Distributor: Lionsgate Release Date: September 9, 2011 A movie about two brothers who haven’t seen each other for years, the younger not speaking to the elder and both estranged from their father, who both wind up competing out of financial necessity in the same worldwide mixed martial arts worldwide championship match sounds like it’s going to have its share of clichés and melodrama. WARRIOR does in […]Read On »

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Movie Review: CONTAGION

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN 09/09/2011

CONTAGION movie poster | ©2011 Warner Bros.

Rating: PG-13 Stars: Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Jennifer Ehle, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Sanaa Lathan, Bryan Cranston, Enrico Colantoni, Anna Jacoby-Heron Writer: Scott Z. Burns Director: Steven Soderbergh Distributor: Warner Bros. Release Date: September 16, 2011 If there is a worldwide pandemic of a fatal disease, odds are good that it will play out fairly like what we see in CONTAGION. Director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns have made a film that plays like a curious hybrid of a CNN special report and a zombie movie – minus the walking dead, of course, but […]Read On »

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Movie Review: SHARK NIGHT 3D

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN 09/05/2011

Rating: PG-13 Stars: Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Chris Carmack, Katherine McPhee, Chris Zylka, Alyssa Diaz, Joel David Moore, Sinqua Walls, Donal Logue, Joshua Leonard Writers: Will Hayes and Jesse Studenberg Director: David R. Ellis Distributor: Rogue Release Date: September 2, 2011 First, a word about the title of SHARK NIGHT 3D. The movie is not necessarily in 3D. It is showing at a number of locations in the less pricey regular format. There are a few shots (mostly of bits of timber and objects flying through the air post-explosion) where it’s plain to see they’re designed for 3D, but on […]Read On »

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