“The Adjustment Bureau” — the new Philip K. Dick-inspired thriller about an otherworldly crew of mystery men who mean to ensure that God’s master plan unfolds just as intended — brought at least one of its stars to tears. And no, it wasn’t Matt Damon, who absorbs a surprise shot to the gut from his on-screen love interest, played by Emily Blunt.
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Director Gore Verbinski of "Pirates of the Caribbean" fame makes his first foray into animated features with "Rango."
He has come up with not only his best film to date, but also one of the best animated films of recent years. Opening Friday, it’s fast and funny, and with characters so freaky and lopsided, it happily demands a second viewing.
Johnny Depp voices the lead character, a chameleon with thespian tendencies who finds himself playing gunslinger in a drought-ridden town.
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By:
David Germain
02/27/11 12:47 PM
King George the stutterer seems primed to reign at Sunday night's Academy Awards, unless there's a palace coup by that asocial billionaire who created Facebook."The King's Speech," dramatizing British monarch George VI's struggle to vanquish a crippling stammer, leads the 83rd annual Oscars with 12 nominations and is favored to win best picture.Yet "The Social Network," chronicling Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's fierce legal battles over the spoils of his creation, remains a serious candidate for the Oscar crown.
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Have we got a film festival for you. Make that three dozen. Depending on how you count, there are at least that many festivals each year in San Francisco — and whether you’re gay, Jewish, Asian-American, an environmentalist or a silent-film buff, at least one was developed with you in mind.
The City by the Bay is also a city before the screen: It’s the No. 2 specialty-film market in the country, and the home of more small-scale film presenters and festival curators than you’re likely to find anywhere else.
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It’s hard to hate a Farrelly brothers comedy. The directors responsible for “Dumb & Dumber,” “Kingpin” and “There’s Something About Mary” know how to amuse, however childishly, and their latest farce, “Hall Pass,” would like to live down to their amiable standard.Where the movie goes wrong is in assuming that we will tolerate Rick and Fred (Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis, respectively), as two incompetent husbands whose professed desire to stray leads them to seek a “Pass” — a weeklong furlough from their vows of fidelity — which proves a reach exceeding their grasp.
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Darkness smites Detroit, in the form of a mammoth blackout and creepy shadows that steal the bodies and souls of nearly all in town.
Only a few survive, and they struggle and scramble to remain in the light and thus stay alive. That’s the promising premise of the ultimately fizzling “Vanishing on 7th Street,” a horror thriller in which stylish landscapes and nifty creep-out tactics can’t offset the problem of an inadequate story.
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Brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly realize that a “Hall Pass” — a mutually accepted break from the vows of monogamous marriage — might have disastrous results in real life.
But as the basis for their new comedy, starring Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis as suburban husbands with wandering eyes but a laughable lack of game, it seemed originally to be just another boys-night-out frolic.
Then, as they do with all their movies (including “There’s Something About Mary” and “Stuck on You”), they showed a preliminary script to their wives. They are thankful they did.
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Bearing witness is powerful. It carries history. It forces memory. Each witness, however, may have a different experience, a different point of view. Documentarians find the witnesses and from their voices extract the threads that, woven together, tell a story.Opening Friday for a week’s run at the Castro Theatre — in a benefit for Shanti Project and Project Inform, featuring special guest Rufus Wainwright — “We Were Here,” a new documentary by David Weissman, tells a resonant story, particularly for anyone who has lived in San Francisco for the past 30 years.
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A movie starring Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen is looking for extras to portray Spanish soldiers. Beau Bonneau Casting is seeking men 18 to 40 years old who are Spanish-looking with fair to medium complexions, dark hair and eyes and lean physiques for March 11, March 14 and March 15. For more information call (415) 346-2278 or visit beaubonneaucasting.com.
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“Kaboom” is the latest concoction from the beaker of Gregg Araki, the free spirit known for making films about restless youth, free-flowing sex, and big- and small-picture calamity. In this new comedy, he takes viewers into the beds and heads of some horny post-millennial college students. It’s a feverishly vibrant but dramatically uneven rush of doomsday tripping and campus carnality.
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