Stellan Skarsgard
As David Lean once set audiences agog with the widescreen vistas of Lawrence of Arabia and the adventures of T.E. Lawrence in the desert, Denis Villeneuve takes the mantle with the second portion of his big-screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. This continuation, Dune Part Two, picks up right where Dune Part One left us, and […]
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During the opening sequence of “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, in which our mega-heroes lay siege to a compound belonging to the sinister Hydra organization in a fictitious Eastern European country, I had a vision of the film’s writer/director Joss Whedon playing maniacally with action figures in his parent’s’ basement while mouthing the characters’ frequent wisecracks at […]
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Isaac Asimov’s Zeroth Law of Robotics states: “A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” In the 2004 film very loosely based on (it actually says “suggested by,” not “based on” in the credits) Asimov’s I, Robot, we see the evolution of this Zeroth Law into something very […]
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If there’s anything negative to be said about Kenneth Branagh’s fairly straightforward adaptation of the Disney animated classic Cinderella, it’s that it was only a fairytale. Branagh breathes a beauty, elegance, and wit into this new palimpsest of the beloved European folk tale (most famously told by the Brothers Grimm), and its charm will last […]
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The more I think about Hector and the Search for Happiness, the more I find myself thinking about how good it is. On the surface, it looks like it’s only about a man in search of a catharsis or emotional reckoning, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a story about a boy learning […]
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A woman lies bruised and bloody with her eyes closed in an alley. Snow comes down on top of her, while the gutters and corrugated tin roofs deposit the runoff onto the surrounding street. All around us are the cacophonous sounds of the water dripping, various street noise, the wind, and the footsteps of folks […]
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Phase II of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). We’re in a different territory here, folks; the notion of simple sequels no longer applies. Here, we have a living, breathing universe where superheroes fly in and out of each other’s lives as fast as a turning of the worlds. Events and […]
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