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A fantasia of Almodóvar’s trademark hang-ups that nonetheless surpasses his previous outings in scope, structure, and heart, the movie is a marvelous, noir-inspired meditation on love, sex, and identity that pulses with florid passion. It may be the best film of the year. Almodóvar’s narrative is a marvel of temporal-shifting beauty, seamlessly moving back and […]

Without paying close attention, one could wander into The Banger Sisters expecting a warm and fuzzy friendship yarn delivered by an Oscar-caliber trio of Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, and Geoffrey Rush. You’d be half right. The cast shows up, but the film substitutes “warm and fuzzy” with vulgar dialogue and gratuitously sexual escapades. This is

Often considered the best animated film ever and the only one to ever be nominated for Best Picture on a return viewing years later, Beauty and the Beast doesn’t seem to be quite the masterpiece we once thought. Dig through the cacophany, though, and you will indeed find one of the better animated experiences of

Tim Burton’s first two Batman films were all about this nerd auteur playing with a gigantic train set, so even though the stories were threadbare and superficial, at least Burton brought a highly stylized pop Gothic look. Jack Nicholson hammed it up nicely as the Joker and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman was an unforgettably sexy femme

The year was 1992 and the movie was Batman Returns. It marked the end of the Batman franchise as a series of good movies. It was, friends, the last great Batman. Gotham was dark and so was the script. Darkly comic, darkly romantic, and darkly dramatic. This tale told of Michael Keaton as Batman in

Batman’s reins have been turned over from director Tim Burton (now producing) to Joel Schumacher, from lead Michael Keaton to Val Kilmer, and from an old, baroque Gotham to a heavily stylized, kiddie pop city. A lot can be said for the idea that the setting of a picture thoroughly controls its tone. What we

Another month and yet another comic book adaptation. At least that’s the way it probably feels to the casual cinemagoer when regarding Thor. But look a little closer at this film and there are a number of interesting details. Kenneth Branagh is the most important: it’s his first feature directorial role in four years, and

13 Assassins is a remake, of Eiichi Kudo’s original “Jûsan-nin no shikaku”, by director Takeshi Miike (Ichi the Killer). The tale is based in historic fact, although the official version of events differs somewhat from the film. The age is just 23 years before the end of the Shogun era. Edo is the capital. The

Using clichés as crutches, writer-director Massimiliano Bruno has taken a very safe route with his latest film, Escort in Love (Nessuno mi può giudicare) (2011). No shipping into unchartered waters for Bruno who, with co-writer Edoardo Falcone, contrives a scenario in which as 33 year old woman used to opulence and bossing her caricaturised migrant

For the love of things that go bump in the night, a trifecta of spooky home videos has now been assembled with the arrival of a third Paranormal Activity instalment. A former teenager in love with films like Poltergeist (1982) and The Entity (1982), I’m now predisposed, it seems, to looking favourably upon films about