review

COME WHAT MAY film review

– By Cate Marquis – COME WHAT MAY shines spotlight on French civilians displaced by WWII Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars   In an unusual take on the World War II movie, French director Christian Carion focuses on a group of French villagers attempting to flee on the eve of the German invasion,…

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MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN film review

– By Cate Marquis – Tim Burton takes a fresh creative direction with MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN Rating: 4 out of 5 stars   Tim Burton’s MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN is the director’s freshest and most original film in years, while still being entirely within the director’s wheelhouse of quirky, colorful,…

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MAGNIFICENT SEVEN film review

– By Mark Glass – Remake of a Cowboy Classic – Seven, si; Magnificent, no Rating: 2 out of 5 stars   Why re-tool a classic? It’s almost impossible to duplicate, much less top, the progenitor. More likely, one might attract new fans from a later generation. This one misfires on a couple of key…

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STORKS film review

– By Cate Marquis – STORKS delivers laughs for kids and parents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars   STORKS takes the old myth of storks delivering babies as a starting point for an animated action/adventure comedy, where the storks have gone corporate and gotten out of the baby delivery business. Now, storks deliver merchandise…

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MISS SHARON JONES film review

– By Cate Marquis – MISS SHARON JONES has it all Rating: 5 out of 5 stars   You may not have heard of soul singer Sharon Jones but you may have heard her catchy, bluesy tune “100 Days, 100 Nights” this past summer. The tune was used on a TV commercial and if your…

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SNOWDEN film review

– By Cate Marquis – Oliver Stone’s SNOWDEN skims surface of controversy Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars   Depending on your point-of-view, Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor. When whistle-blower Snowden leaked documents to the public, through the Guardian newspaper, that exposed the United States government’s massive surveillance and data collection…

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THE HOLLARS film review

– By Cate Marquis- Fine cast and focus on comedy lifts Krasinski’s THE HOLLARS   John Krasinski stars in and directs a first-rate cast in the family comedy THE HOLLARS. The film’s premise is familiar stuff, a man forced by a circumstances to return to his home town to deal with his goofy family, but…

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COMPLETE UNKNOWN film review

– By Cate Marquis – Rachel Weisz and Michael Shannon explore the risks and rewards of shifting identities in COMPLETE UNKNOWN   A woman (Rachel Weisz) who keeps re-inventing herself – as an ER nurse, a free-spirit in Seattle, a magician’s assistant in China – turns up at a birthday party with Clyde (Michael Chernus)…

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MORGAN film review

– By Cate Marquis – MORGAN promises high-tech thrills but delivers only old-fashioned cheesy horror   In the sci-fi thriller MORGAN, Kate Mara plays a corporate troubleshooter, Lee Weathers, who is sent to investigate what is going on at a research facility working on an bio-engineering project after a terrible accident. The project, which centers…

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THE 9TH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX film review

– By Cate Marquis – THE 9TH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX strives for mystery but is just a confusing mess   The fantasy drama THE 9TH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX is a mystery about an accident-prone young boy, Louis Drax (Aiden Longworth) who has survived a series of near-fatal accidents, eight of them. The last…

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