Drama
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Chicago Duo Drama Make Relationship Anxiety Sound Seductively Danceable on ‘Hit My Line’
A standout from the electro-soul group's new EP, "Hit My Line" nails the emotional intricacies of an imbalanced relationship. See why it's a Song You Need to Know
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Promised Land
Known as the anti-fracking movie by people who aren't paying attention, Promised Land is actually a potent and powerful look at how the stressed economy is stressing farm communities across America. Matt Damon stars as a corporate suit offering the promise of big bucks to farmers in exchange for rights to drill for natural gas […]
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Les Misérables
No one expects gutsy filmmaking in a musical. But that's just what King's Speech Oscar winner Tom Hooper delivers in Les Misérables. The massive 1980s stage smash is adapted from Victor Hugo's even more massive 1862 novel spun around the 1832 Paris student uprising. There's no spoken dialogue! Everyone sings! All the time! For nearly […]
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Zero Dark Thirty
Hang on tight. The knockout punch of the movie season is being delivered by Zero Dark Thirty. You're in for a hell of a ride with this high-voltage thriller that digs with shocking gravity into the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden. Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal top their Oscar-winning work in The […]
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Jack Reacher
You can join the bitch squad and complain that five-foot-seven Tom Cruise has no business playing Jack Reacher, the six-five, 250-pound bruiser of an ex-military cop who walks tall and carries a big grudge against authority in Lee Child's novels (17 to date). Or you can let the physical stuff go and admit that Cruise […]
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On the Road
A dash of Tarantino might have juiced up Walter Salles’ wrongheadedly well-mannered take on Jack Kerouac’s 1957 Beat Generation landmark. Kerouac’s semi-autobiographical novel comes to the screen looking good but feeling shallow. Kerouac, here called Sal Paradise and played by Sam Riley, hits the road with his pals to find a non-conformist America spiked by […]
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The Impossible
Prepare to be shaken by this true story of a family that stays together when everything is stacked against them. By that I mean the Indian Ocean tsunami that wreaked havoc on Thailand in 2004. British exec Henry Bennett (Ewan McGregor) and his doctor wife, Maria (Naomi Watts), had brought their three sons there for […]
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Not Fade Away
You expect a hot dose of bada-bing, what with David Chase, creator of HBO's groundbreaking crime drama The Sopranos, making his feature debut as a writer-director. Instead, Chase offers a gritty, graceful salute to rock & roll. Like Douglas (John Magaro), his film's protagonist, Chase grew up in suburban New Jersey in the 1960s playing […]
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Killing Them Softly
Brad Pitt is on a roll – Moneyball, The Tree of Life, Inglourious Basterds, Burn After Reading. He’s a movie star with real acting chops, on full display in Killing Them Softly. Pitt plays Cogan, a hit man brought in to clean up the mess when two idiots, Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn), […]
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Anna Karenina
It could have weighed a ton. That can happen when you film an 1877 classic by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. But thanks to director Joe Wright, Anna Karenina lifts off into the wild blue of his imagination. The surging romantic tragedy of a woman who dies for love is still there in Tom Stoppard’s screenplay. […]
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