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Dear John (PG-13)
Lasse Hallstrom's "Dear John" tells the heartbreaking story of two lovely young people who fail to find happiness together because they're trapped in an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. Their romance leads to bittersweet loss that's so softened by the sweet characters that it feels like triumph. If a Sparks story ended in happiness, the characters might be disappointed. They seem to have their noble, resigned dialogue already written. Hemingway wrote one line that could substitute for the third act of every Sparks story: "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

Fish Tank (No MPAA rating)
Andrea Arnold's piercing "Fish Tank" is the portrait of an angry, isolated 15-year-old girl who is hurtling toward a lifetime of misery. She is so hurt and lonely, we pity her. Her mother barely even sees her. The film takes place in a bleak British public housing estate, and in the streets and fields around it. There is no suggestion of a place this girl can go to find help, care or encouragement.

From Paris With Love (R)
Pauline Kael has already reviewed this movie in her book Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and it only took her the title. I could go through my usual vaudeville act about chase scenes and queasy-cams and Idiot Plots, but instead I'd like you to join me in the analysis of something that increasingly annoys me.

The Last Station (R)
Watching "The Last Station," I was reminded of the publisher Bennett Cerf's story about how he went to Europe to secure the rights to James Joyce's Ulysses.

"Nora, you have a brilliant husband," he told Joyce's wife. "You don't have to live with the bloody fool," she responded.

Edge of Darkness (R)
Can we think of Mel Gibson simply as an action hero? A star whose personal baggage doesn't upstage his performances? I find that I can. He has made deplorable statements in recent years, which may be attributed to a kind of fanatic lunacy that can perhaps be diagnosed as a disease. The fact remains that in "Edge of Darkness" he remains a likable man with a natural screen presence.

The Chaser (No MPAA rating)
"The Chaser" is an expert serial-killer film from South Korea and a poster child for what a well-made thriller looked like in the classic days. Its principal chase scene involves a foot race through the deserted narrow nighttime streets of Seoul. No exploding cars. The climax is the result of everything that has gone before. Not an extended fight scene. This is drama, and it is interesting. Action for its own sake is boring.

The Third Man
"The Third Man" plays a week-long engagement on a double bill with Carol Reed's "Odd Man Out" (1947) at the Music Box.

Has there ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed's "The Third Man"? The score was performed on a zither by Anton Karas, who was playing in a Vienna beerhouse one night when Reed heard him. The sound is jaunty but without joy, like whistling in the dark. It sets the tone; the action begins like an undergraduate lark and then reveals vicious undertones.

35 Shots of Rum (No MPAA rating)
Here is a movie about four people who have known one another for a long time, and how their relationships shift in a way that was slow in the preparation. The film makes us care for them, and so our attention is held. I've seen films where superheroes shift alliances, and I only yawned. What matters is not the scope of a story, it's the depth.

Tooth Fairy (PG)
In the pantheon of such legends as Santa Claus and the Bogeyman, the Tooth Fairy ranks down in the minor leagues, I'd say, with Jack Frost and the Easter Bunny. There is a scene in "Tooth Fairy" when the hero is screamed at by his girlfriend for even beginning to suggest to her 6-year-old that the tooth fairy doesn't exist, but surely this is a trauma a child can survive. Don't kids simply humor their parents to get the dollar?

Extraordinary Measures (PG)
"Extraordinary Measures" is an ordinary film with ordinary characters in a story too big for it. Life has been reduced to a Lifetime movie. The story, based on fact, is compelling: Two sick children have no more than a year to live when their father determines to seek out a maverick scientist who may have a cure. This is "Lorenzo's Oil" with a different disease, Pompe disease, although it fudges the facts to create a better story.

Gigante (No MPAA rating)
We are all voyeurs, although some people fondly describe themselves as "people watchers." Going to the movies is, at some level, pure voyeurism -- if they involve people, that is. Transformers don't count. I admire films that consist only or in large part of watching. "Vertigo" is the classic example, and "The Lives of Others" was voyeurism by eavesdropping.

Q. Does it makes any sense to you the fanfare made over "Avatar" dethroning "Titanic" as all time box office champ considering no inflation adjustment was done and there is a 10 year period between the release of both movies? Then again the "Titanic" record only stands if you consider the box office receipts from other movies such as "Gone With the Wind"  are considered also in non-adjusted dollars.
The Perfect Storm of this year's Oscars nominations was upgraded to category 5 early Tuesday with the 9-9 tie between "The Hurt Locker" and "Avatar." One of the least costly nominees and the most expensive film of all time were directed by once-married Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron, and although they say they wish each other well, there's little doubt who Movie City has the crush on.

Complete list of 82nd Annual Academy Award nominations, announced Tuesday morning, February 2, 2010:

The Hairdresser's Husband (No MPAA rating) (1990)
The hairdressing shop is their ocean liner, their lives are a cruise around the world. They will sail the Nile, kiss in the shadows of the Great Pyramids, see the sun set on every earthly paradise, and it will always be exactly like this. Perfect. "The Hairdresser's Husband" (1990) tells the story of two romantics besotted with love, living in a French hairdressing salon, she reading magazines on her perch by the widow, he working crosswords on the red leather bench, the sunlight flooding in. The yellows, blues, tropical colors. The exotic music he dances to. Occasionally at some unheard signal their eyes meet and they smile in shared bliss.
Strange Days (R)
We know we want it. We want to see through other people's eyes, have their experiences, stand in their shoes. That's the unspoken promise of the movies, and as the unsettling prospect of computer-generated virtual reality creeps closer, it is possible that millions now living will know exactly what it feels like to be somebody else.
If all the year-end and decade-end lists (even though we realize the decade isn't actually over until 2011) have left you dizzied and depleted, take heart! Perhaps you've missed out on some of the more invigorating, far-sighted list-based ventures. Over at Some Came Running, for example, Glenn Kenny conducted an ingenious and fascinating project, going back and taking a look at the late Manny Farber's Best Films of 1951. Meanwhile, at The Crop Duster, Robert Horton is engaged in surveying the year's best -- in non-chronological order -- from, oh, about 1919 or so, to the present, posting a new list every Sunday. What fantastic delights are to be found in these itemized accounts...

What It Takes to Win the Best Picture Oscar

The Muriel Awards: I See You

Pee-wee gets an iPad (from Steve Jobs)

Cherry Bomb! The Sundance Swag Fest

BREAKING: Generic News Story

Name That Director!

The Haneke MacGuffin: What is the mystery?

Irreversible: Will he see it or will he pass?

What do we mean by the "worst" movies of 2009?

What is hidden in Caché?

That's Jeremy Renner in the bomb suit



> > > >

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The Opening Shots Project Index

Oh, no. No. No. This cannot be. They're tearing down 22 Jermyn Street in London. The whole block is going. Bates' Hat Shop, Trumper's the Barber, Getti the Italian restaurant, the Jermyn Street Theater, Sergio's Cafe, the lot. Jermyn Street was my street in London. My neighborhood.

There, on a corner near the Lower Regent Street end, I found a time capsule within which the eccentricity and charm of an earlier time was still preserved. It was called the Eyrie Mansion. When I stayed there I considered myself to be living there. I always wanted to live in London, and this was the closest I ever got.

I saw my final film of Sundance 2010 here in Chicago. It was my best Sundance experience, and I want to tell you why. The film was "Jack Goes Boating," the directorial debut of Philip Seymour Hoffman. It played here in the Music Box, as part of the "Sundance USA" outreach program, which has enlisted eight art theaters around the country to play Sundance entries while the festival is still underway.

He is a viper, a parasite, a stalker, a vermin. He is also, I have decided, a national treasure. Ron Galella, the best known of all paparazzi, lost a lawsuit to Jackie Kennedy Onassis and five teeth to Marlon Brando, but he also captured many of the iconic photographs of his era. At 77, he is still active, making the drive from his New Jersey home and his pet bunny rabbits through the Lincoln Tunnel to Manhattan, the prime grazing land of his prey.

Hello, I'm Omar Moore. I was born and raised in London, where I grew up before moving to New York City with my parents. After branching out in the Big Apple on my own for a number of years, I moved west to San Francisco. I love America and its promise. We all need to do our small part to make this great country even better for all. Where a film is concerned, it is never "only a movie." Images mean something. They have unyielding power and influence, whether in "Birth of A Nation", "Un Chien Andalou", "Night Of The Hunter", "Killer Of Sheep", "Persona", "Psycho", "A Clockwork Orange", "Blazing Saddles", "Straw Dogs", "Soul Man", "Chameleon Street", "Do The Right Thing", "Bamboozled" or "Irreversible". A filmmaker generally doesn't put images in a film if they are meaningless.

The source for our love of movies is different in each and every one of us. It may date back to our childhood, it may be about a particular film we saw under certain circumstances in our lives. Mine clearly come from one specific genre: the Disaster Film.

I realize they may have never been the most meaningful or profound of all, but they were certainly the one kids my age were discussing in school patios in the early '70s.

thumbs
Linked here are reviews in recent months for which I wrote either 4 star or 3.5 star reviews. What does Two Thumbs Up mean in this context? It signifies that I believe these films are worth going out of your way to see, or that you might rent them, add them to your Netflix, Blockbuster or TiVo queues, or if they are telecast record them.

Gathered here in one convenient place are my recent reviews that awarded films Zero Stars, One-half Star, One Star, and One-and-a-half Stars. These are, generally speaking to be avoided. Sometimes I hear from readers who confess they are in the mood to watch a really bad movie on some form of video. If you are sincere, be sure to know what you're getting: A really bad movie.

in theaters
on dvd
Zombieland  (2/2)
New York, I Love You  (2/2)
The House of the Devil  (2/2)
Amelia  (2/2)
Adam  (2/2)
Whip It  (1/26)
This Is It  (1/26)
Surrogates  (1/26)
Paris, Texas  (1/26)
Little Ashes  (1/26)
Couples Retreat  (2/9)
I Hate Valentine's Day  (2/9)
A Serious Man  (2/9)
Black Dynamite  (2/16)
Hunger  (2/16)
Revanche  (2/16)
The Box  (2/23)
The Damned United  (2/23)
Everybody's Fine  (2/23)
Flame and Citron  (2/23)
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