When critics complain about the dumbing down of movies into franchise popcorn, what we're really doing is yearning for a terrifically engrossing, tethered-to-the-real-world drama like Michael Clayton. It's better than good; it's such a crackling and mature and accomplished movie that it just about restores your faith. This is a tale of greed, lies, and under-the-table violence — an exposé of what corporations do, and the way corporate law firms help them get away with it — yet if that all sounds familiar from a hundred other muckraking dramas, Michael Clayton makes you feel as if you've never seen any of it before.

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In the world of movies that have gone straight to DVD, In the Electric Mist was a surprise. Typically a movie of this caliber would have at least had a limited release before a DVD release. Unfortunately, the only place this one was seen prior to its DVD debut was at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2009.

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"El Mariachi" is the prequel to "Desperado". This is a low budget film and from what I understand; it cost less than $10,000 to produce. Although it lacks the big names and big money of the sequel, it clarifies and sheds light on the follow-up movie.

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When I first saw the trailer for Moonlight Mile, it raised a few red flags, but I was at least comforted by the realization that Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon, the film's stars, are usually reasonably choosy about the roles they tackle. In making that assessment, I temporarily forgot Sphere and Stepmom. Had I recalled these, it would have occurred to me that Hoffman and Sarandon are fallible when it comes to choosing their roles, and the sheer agony of sitting through Moonlight Mile would not have come as such a shock.

Moonlight Mile is the product of writer/director Brad Silberling, who has based some of the movie on his own experiences with grief. In 1989, Silberling's then-girlfriend, actress Rebecca Schaeffer ("My Sister Sam"), was murdered outside of her Hollywood home by a deranged fan. According to Silberling, when devising the screenplay for Moonlight Mile, he drew from aspects of what he and others close to Schaeffer endured in the wake of her death. It's too bad more of the gut-wrenching pain of this kind of loss didn't make it to the screen. Instead, all that's there is a choking, cloying sense of artifice.



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If you were bored by My Dinner with Andre, The Designated Mourner isn't for you. If Spalding Gray's monologues put you to sleep, prepare to snooze through The Designated Mourner. And if you think Twister is perfectly paced, give The Designated Mourner a pass. This film, a series of often-disjointed ruminations about culture and class, demands active intellectual participation, and those who prefer motion pictures to be passive events will be profoundly unappreciative of its approach.



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It's often said that if you're going to borrow, borrow from the best. And, in motion pictures, one of the best is certainly Akira Kurosawa. His The Seven Samurai was remade as John Sturges' immensely popular The Magnificent Seven. His The Hidden Fortress inspired George Lucas' epic Star Wars. And now, the premise of 1950's Rashomon has been re-worked by director Edward Zwick and screenwriter Patrick Sheane Duncan for Courage Under Fire, a powerful and intelligent examination of the consequences of guilt and responsibility, and the meaning of absolute truth.



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Al Pacino in a Mafia movie feels as natural as peanut butter with jelly. Mike Newell, the director of such popular British comedies as Enchanted April and Four Weddings and a Funeral, is another matter altogether. When you think of a director for New York- based, mob-related motion pictures, names like Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese leap to mind. Unexpectedly, however, Newell slides effortlessly into the genre, fashioning a motion picture that is simultaneously like and unlike traditional wiseguy films.


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Hurlyburly is a talky film - the entire movie is constructed around lengthy sequences of dialogue where the characters talk and talk and talk, often saying nothing. However, because the vocal rhythms are so perfect, the words are so well-chosen, and the performances are so powerful, listening to so much talk is a pleasure, not a chore. It's possible to lose oneself in Hurlyburly, precisely because nearly every line has a hypnotic quality. The action and suspense is in the words, not the deeds. We don't wait to see what the characters will do next, we wait to hear what they will say next.



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You could drive a truck through the plotholes in Directorty Harry, which wouldn't be so serious were the film not a specious, phony glorification of police and criminal brutality [from a story by Harry Julian Fink and R.M. Fink].

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Documentary Filmmaker Adrian Grenier documents his attempt to reunite with his estranged father.

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Just as the local grocery store is about to close, a group of six armed, masked people enter the building. They take the staff and remaining customers hostage and immediately shoot down one of the employees. One of the masked men named Spooky is then told to check the hostages if "he" is among them. He identifies a woman as one of "them", the woman then tries to escape but is shot down. Meanwhile, a police officer, who was also inside the store, manages to kill one of the masked men. He then calls for back-up and shoots Spooky, who hasn't managed to check on all hostages yet. The cop is then killed too.



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A chronicle of the life of Lena Baker, the first woman to be sent to the electric chair in Georgia for the murder of her employer, who forced her into sexual slavery.

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Inspired by the real-life serial Killer, B.T.K is the gruesome story of Dennis L. Rader, a murderer who systematically tortured and killed his victims for over two decades while evading the police for over 30 years. Living a seemingly normal life as a husband, father, security officer and church president, Raders unquenchable thirst for blood ultimately led him to commit the most horrific crimes imaginable. Shocking and full of suspense, B.T.K is a grisly journey into the nightmarish world of a deranged killer.

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A Taliban member who lives in Afghanistan is taken captive by the Americans after killing three American soldiers. He is transferred to Europe for interrogation but manages to escape from his captors and becomes an escaped convict on a continent he does not know.

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There were those who called him Icarus. Everyone else knew him as a divorced father working for an investment company. But they didnt know his other side-his dark side. Because Icarus was at his best when he was killing people. For years, hed worked as a sleeper agent in America-but when the Soviet Empire collapsed, he found himself in a foreign country with no one to trust. Determined to break from his dark past, he started over with a new identity. But you can only escape your past for so long. When a sudden mishap in Hong Kong blows Icarus identity, past and present collide - and the assassin realizes he is now the target. The people that want him dead will stop at nothing to get to him. And that means going after what he cares about most-his wife and daughter. Fighting for his life, Icarus is forced to face the demons of his past to protect the loved ones in his present. He must fight to save the only thing hes ever done right in his life. He needs to uncover who is after him and protect his family - before its too late.

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Harris Telemacher is the Wacky Weather presenter for a Los Angeles television station. He finds himself battling the insane conditions and people caused by the manic chaos that is Los Angeles. Striving to achieve happiness (or at least a date), he finds a helping hand from the last person he expected the city of Los Angeles itself.

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