The original “Men in Black” was an inspired summer popcorn movie. As Agent J, Will Smith was fleet of foot and mouth, and Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K had a countenance like granite and a delivery like barbed wire. They clashed and complemented each other beautifully.The tricky visual effects didn’t overshadow the characters’ sublime chemistry.
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San Francisco filmmaker Philip Kaufman won the job directing the magnificent “Hemingway & Gellhorn” based on his experience with movies about lovers in times of social unrest (“The Unbearable Lightness of Being”) and writers’ tormented relationships (“Henry & June”). Not a retread, but a triumphant return to form, “Hemingway & Gellhorn” screens Sunday at the Castro Theatre and debuts Monday on HBO.Kaufman, whose last film, the underrated “Twisted,” was released eight years ago, feels lucky to have discovered cable TV.
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In some Hollywood pitch meeting, someone said “alien invasion” and “based on a popular board game” at the same time, and a green light went on faster than an exploding robot.
“Battleship” was born.
Alien invasion movies usually work based on three things: strong characters, cool aliens and a good idea. “Battleship” has boring characters, boring aliens and a couple of minor ideas stupid enough to elicit a temporary smile.
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Richard Linklater’s “Bernie” is not a typical biopic. Not devoted to facts, the comedy is deliberately and joyously rooted in gossip.
Jack Black stars as Bernie Tiede, a real man from Carthage, Texas. The mortician, singer of hymns and possible closeted homosexual was a well-loved citizen of the community. He also was convicted for murdering an 81-year-old widow in 1996.
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With a rich, luxurious stage set and props in place, director Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows” could have been one of his best movies — but it’s not.Based on the beloved cult soap opera on TV from 1966-1971, “Dark Shadows” is Burton’s deepest foray into tormented romance since “Edward Scissorhands.”In that film and others, he successfully combined cartoonish visual humor and a grand, operatic style. Yet while seemingly comfortable with opera, he balks at the notion of melodrama, diluting it with silliness.
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Lawrence Kasdan’s latest offering, “Darling Companion,” represents the end of a nine-year dry spell.Things were not always so dire.Kasdan, on the phone to promote the film, takes a moment to explain the rush of good luck that launched his career.Working in advertising, writing screenplays on the side for seven years, he finally sold “The Bodyguard,” a film that wasn’t made for decades.
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In “Sound of My Voice,” Brit Marling makes an unforgettable entrance, with blond hair spilling out from a white hood and an oxygen tank plugged into her nose.
She tops that look with a stunning declaration, playing Maggie, the leader of a cultlike organization, who may or may not be a dangerous crackpot. This psychological thriller leaves the notion open to interpretation.
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The new superhero movie “Marvel’s The Avengers” is unprecedented, with five summer blockbusters in four years setting up the characters for this super-blockbuster.
Since “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk” hinted at the idea in 2008, anticipation has been intense. And fans will not be disappointed. In many ways, “The Avengers” — written and directed by Joss Whedon, best known for the beloved cult TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly”— out-blockbusters its predecessors.
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Though presented in 3-D and likely marketed seven ways to Sunday, something at the core of “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” is willfully, defiantly and wonderfully old-fashioned.
First are the pirates, as much a part of movie history as film stock, from many adaptations of “Peter Pan” and “Treasure Island” to characters the likes of Errol Flynn in “Captain Blood” and Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
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“God gave him a spark of genius, and quenched it in misery,” a character says of Edgar Allan Poe in the new film “The Raven.”
That’s how writers and horror fans picture him: a despicable, tormented genius with inky, fidgeting fingers, scrawling out morbid masterpieces to earn a few pennies to buy spirits — or something harder — to ease the pain.
But “The Raven” is no biopic. Screenwriters Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare and director James McTeigue (“V for Vendetta”) decided to give Poe a bit of fun before he passes away on Oct. 7, 1849 in Baltimore.
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Peter Lord plays with dolls.The English animator, recently in The City to promote his wonderful, hilarious new stop-motion film “The Pirates! Band of Misfits,” carries a black case with three figures inside: a pirate captain, a monkey and a dodo bird named Polly.Lord seems particularly taken with Polly. “She’s built like a football and doesn’t have much movement, but she’s very expressive,” he says.
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Director Abel Ferrara may be the last of the mavericks. While his early movies — such as “The Driller Killer” and “Ms. 45” — screened in grindhouses on 42nd Street back when New York was dangerous, his latest, “4:44 Last Day on Earth,” is only his third film in 10 years to open in the Bay Area.
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Aside from being the best-selling author of 16 books, Nicholas Sparks has a hand in the hit movies based on his stories.Opening today, “The Lucky One” is the seventh in a string of cinematic romances that include “The Notebook,” “Dear John” and “The Last Song.” Though they haven’t received extensive critical acclaim, the financially successful movies continue to draw in passionate fans on DVD, cable and streaming.
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In Bobby and Peter Farrelly’s new movie “The Three Stooges,” opening today, Sean Hayes — Jack McFarland on the hit TV series “Will & Grace” for eight seasons — portrays Larry Fine, the balding stooge with poofy, curly clown’s hair.Jack was a lot of things — vain, flighty, self-obsessed, sex-obsessed, but not a fan of the Three Stooges. Yet the real-life Hayes, who began his career as a musician and a comedian, grew up on the three famous buffoons, Larry, Moe and Curly.
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