This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.
Origins stories are supposed to be of such momentous mythological dynamism that they explain everything that radiates from them — characters’ histories, personalities and even guiding motivations. They are our roadmap to everything that comes after. Our [...]

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1/2
This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.
You know you’re not expecting much from a movie when you and your fellow critics are taking bets beforehand on how many minutes into the film Matthew McConaughey will remove his shirt. It’s good to know [...]

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This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies . To read this review at its original source, click here .
When we first meet Kate (Kelly Macdonald), she is nursing a lavender shiner. It doesn’t take us long to figure out that her abusive husband (Bobby Cannavale) is responsible, a [...]

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This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies . To read this review at its original source, click here .
Is Anybody There? is one of those unlikely friendship movies. It might even be described as a February-December romance — without the romance. Unapologetically heartfelt and sentimental, the character-driven study [...]

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This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.
Half narrative, half experimental film, The Soloist uses jump cut editing, a lurid sound palette and unsettling imagery to make a convincing case for how mental illness must feel. But then, it spins 180 degrees around to [...]

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This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.
Part Midnight Cowboy , part Rocky , the preposterous and bizarre Fighting reminded me of when I used to be a judge for a local student film festival. Occasionally we’d get an entry that was so bad [...]

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This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies . To read this review at its original source, click here .
A homeless man is shot to death in a dark Georgetown alley. Miles away, a beautiful, young congressional staffer dies beneath the screeching wheels of a speeding subway train. Are [...]

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This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.
Last week, the formulaic Hannah Montana: The Movie turned out to be surprisingly well-made and undeniably effective. This week the equally formulaic 17 Again scores yet another three-pointer for cookie-cuter movies everywhere. What’s going on around here?

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The election of Barack Obama may have gone a long way in advancing civil rights, but racism is still very much alive and well in America, as American Violet so plainly shows. The film doesn’t try to dazzle us with histrionics or clobber us over the head with liberal conceit. It simply uses a single [...]

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1/2
This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.
Walking out of Observe and Report, I was torn between categorical loathing and perverse admiration. Sure, the movie contains some truly bizzaro, funny moments, but at what cost? To find them, one must sift through some of [...]

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