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movie Glossary
Musician's Close-Up Rule
All quick cuts to night clubs begin with a close up of the drum being whacked. The camera then backs off the close-up of the whacking hands to reveal the full musician, the rest of the band, and finally the audience. See "Ed Wood," "Batman Forever," etc. STEVEN SOUZA, Honolulu, HI.
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Redbelt (R)
By Roger Ebert

David Mamet's "Redbelt" assembles all the elements for a great Mamet film, but they're still spread out on the shop floor. It never really pulls itself together into the convincing, focused drama it promises, yet it kept me involved right up until the final scenes, which piled on developments almost recklessly. So gifted is Mamet as a writer and director that he can fascinate us even when he's pulling rabbits out of an empty hat.

Son of Rambow (PG-13)
By Roger Ebert

The two friends in "Son of Rambow" hang out in a backyard shack that rewards close study. It's made of rough lumber, hammered together into not quite parallel lines; it's out of plumb. It could be drawn, but not easily built. Since the 11-year-old hero, Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), is himself a cartoonist and sketch artist, his inventions seem to be seeping into his life. He leads an existence that's strictly limited by his family's religious beliefs, making him a vacuum for fantasy and escapism, and when his friend Lee Carter (Will Poulter) shows him a pirated copy of "First Blood," the adventures of Rambo ignite him like fireworks whose time has come.

America the Beautiful (R)
By Roger Ebert

The documentary "America the Beautiful" is not shrill or alarmist, nor does it strain to shock us. Darryl Roberts, its director and narrator, speaks mostly in a pleasant, low-key voice. But the film is pulsing with barely suppressed rage, and by the end, I shared it. It's about a culture "saturated with the perfect," in which women are taught to seek an impossible physical ideal, and men to worship it.

Speed Racer (PG)
By Jim Emerson, editor

Evil is not a primary color. That is the point of the Wachowski brothers' video-arcade treatment of "Speed Racer," insofar as one can be determined. Blue, you can trust. Red and yellow, black and white -- they're all decent visible wavelengths. It's purple you have to watch out for.

Iron Man (PG-13)
by Jim Emerson, editor

The world needs another comic book movie like it needs another Bush administration, but if we must have one more (and the Evil Marketing Geniuses at Marvel MegaIndustries will do their utmost to ensure that we always will), "Iron Man" is a swell one to have. Not only is it a good comic book movie (smart and stupid, stirring and silly, intimate and spectacular), it's winning enough to engage even those who've never cared much for comic books or the movies they spawn. Like me.

Standard Operating Procedure (R)
By Roger Ebert

Errol Morris' "Standard Operating Procedure," based on the infamous prison torture photographs from Abu Ghraib, is completely unlike anything I was expecting from such a film -- more disturbing, analytical and morose. This is not a "political" film nor yet another screed about the Bush administration or the war in Iraq. It is driven simply, powerfully, by the desire to understand those photographs.

Last Year at Marienbad (No rating)
By Roger Ebert

How clearly I recall standing in the rain outside the Co-Ed Theater near the campus of the University of Illinois, waiting to see "Last Year at Marienbad." On those lonely sidewalks, in that endless night, how long did we wait there? And was it the first time we waited in that line, to enter the old theater with its columns, its aisles, its rows of seats -- or did we see the same film here last year?

Deception (R)
By Jim Emerson, editor

What can compare with the white-knuckle suspense of uploading a file? "Deception," that's what. This is a movie jam-packed with all the thrills of watching that little progress bar grow and grow until it fills the alloted space in the pop-up box on your computer screen.

Chapter 27 (R)
By Jim Emerson, editor

A movie like the dismal "Chapter 27" just makes you feel bad for, and about, everybody -- including the wretched souls who made the thing. It's bad enough that the creep who killed John Lennon didn't know what he was thinking when he did it. What about the people who made this movie about him?

Q. In real life, teenagers have acne. How come Hollywood expects us to believe that teenage actors and actresses without acne are realistic? And of course, teenagers in films also are often played by actors in their 20s who have perfect haircuts and expensive clothes, two other things that the majority of real-life teenagers don't usually have, do they? I think of Tom Cruise in "Risky Business," for example.
Johnny Guitar (1954)
By Roger Ebert

Nicholas Ray's "Johnny Guitar" (1954) is surely one of the most blatant psychosexual melodramas ever to disguise itself in that most commodious of genres, the Western. Consider: No money was lavished on the production. The action centers on a two-story saloon "outside town," but we never even see "town," except for a bank facade and interior set. So sparse are the settings that although the central character (Joan Crawford) plays the tavern owner and goes through a spectacular costume charge, we never see her boudoir -- she only appears on a balcony above the main floor, having presumably emerged from the sacred inner temple.
by Roger Ebert (2003)

CANNES, France -- I have seen seven movies here since my last report, and together they will not gross as much as the popcorn sales for "The Matrix Reloaded" in one good-sized state -- California, say. I moderated a panel of independent American directors Saturday, put together by the Independent Film Channel at the Variety Pavilion, and "The Matrix" loomed like a thundercloud over the table. As box office records were falling like so many clones of Agent Smith, here we were talking about retarded ice-fishermen in Wisconsin, and a Cleveland file clerk who inspired an underground comic book.

Tron (PG)
by Roger Ebert (1982)

The interior of a computer is a fine and private place, but none, I fear, do there embrace, except in "Tron," a dazzling movie from Walt Disney in which computers have been used to make themselves romantic and glamorous. Here's a technological sound-and-light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish, and fun.

By Roger Ebert

I woke up at about 3:30 a.m. and went online to see if Obama had pulled a victory out of Indiana. He had narrowed Clinton's head to two points by midnight and later added a few more votes, but the story was basically about the same: Clinton's winning margin was so small that it didn't much count, and Obama would be the likely Presidential nominee. Then I started wondering, in the vaporous midnight hours, about how you could make a movie of this primary campaign.

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on dvd
Teeth  (5/6)
Serial Mom  (5/6)
I'm Not There  (5/6)
Delirious  (5/6)
The Golden Compass  (4/29)
First Knight  (4/29)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly  (4/29)
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