Favorite films

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Recent reviews

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  The Lost City 2022

  ★★½ Watched by Terry McCarty 27 May 2022

  Sandra Bullock/Channing Tatum escapist comedy/adventure which inadvertently shows how difficult it can be to craft crowd-pleasing entertainment these days.  Brad Pitt, Oscar Nunez (accompanied by goat) and Daniel Radcliffe do what they can to keep this faux-Jay Roach film amiable enough in spite of moments of strenuous extended sorta-improv.

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  Men 2022

  ★★★½ Watched by Terry McCarty 25 May 2022

  Alex Garland begins where ANNIHILATION ended, but this time the stylized symbolism is better integrated into the narrative.  Jessie Buckley plays the widow subjected to various forms of male blaming/shaming/gaslighting; a must-see for her performance.

Popular reviews

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  Hitsville: The Making of Motown 2019

  ★★★ Watched by Terry McCarty 25 Aug 2019

  Essentially Berry Gordy conducting his wake (with present tense and archival interviews from collaborators) while he’s still around to enjoy it.  Some great performance footage, but the Berry-centric approach means that classic Motown music is kept on the margins while endless backslapping about the near-infallibility of the company’s assembly line of development/competition/promotion consumes much of the running time.

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  What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael 2018

  ★★½ Watched by Terry McCarty 26 May 2020

  Once-over-lightly account of film critic Pauline Kael’s life and career hits the high/low points and contextualizes her influence upon a long-ago period where movies could be debated and ecstatic/contrarian takes would capture the attention of the general public (see also Andrew Sarris, Stanley Kauffmann, Judith Crist).  Skids through the Paramount Pictures sojourn (presumably to avoid offending Warren Beatty), avoids Kael’s over-loyalty to favored directors by elevating subpar work (her review of Sam Peckinpah’s CONVOY) and glancingly acknowledges (mostly through David…