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Ozon's Cat-and-Mouse 'In the House'
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Surprises in 'Gatsby' (Review)
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Two Other Gatsbys, Two Better Nicks
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Mira Nair's 'Reluctant Fundamentalist'
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Watch Obama & Conan's Comedy at WHCD
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Affleck in Malick's 'To the Wonder'
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Ricky Gervais' Hilarious, Awful Music Video ...
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Danny Boyle's 'Trance'
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Ryan Gosling in "Place Beyond the Pines"
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Brandon Cronenberg's 'Antiviral'
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Black Comedy 'It's a Disaster'
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Brilliant Melissa McCarthy on SNL (Video ...
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'Room 237,' Kubrick & Malkovich
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Colbert Asks Franco: Are You A Fraud?
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Justin Timberlake's Latest SNL (Video)
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Watch Ricky Gervais in 'The Office Revisited' ...
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'Downton Abbey' Kills Off You-Know-Who
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'Downton' Does 'Breaking Bad' (Video)
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James Franco's Risk-Free 'Oz'
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'Downton Sixbey': Lady Hedith's Answer
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Smart Middle East Doc 'The Gatekeepers'
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'Downton Abbey' Season 3 Review
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Bad Title,Good 'Silver Linings Playbook'
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Foxx,Washington On 'Django' & Race (Vide ...
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Keira Knightley's Chilly 'Anna K.'
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'Skyfall': An Older, Better-Written Bond
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A Boy and His Tiger: 'Life of Pi'
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Brad Pitt, SNL on Chanel:Which Is Real?
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SNL's Lost Bond Girls
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Hugh Laurie,Catherine Keener on 'Oranges ...
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'The Master': Egotists and Cultists
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Jimmy Fallon Sings 'Romney & Bain'
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Fincher, Others in 'Side By Side' Extras
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Watch "Andrew Sarris: Critic in Focus"
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Amy Poehler on Sex, Music (Video)
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Fallon Does "Downton Sixbey, Part 2"
Video Interviews
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Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington on 'Django' and the N-Word -
Hugh Laurie and Catherine Keener -
Christoph Waltz on 'Django Unchained' -
Amy Poehler on Sex, Music, Comedy -
Whit Stillman On Damsels in DIstress -
Colin Firth On "Tinker, Tailor" -
Sundance Panel: The Power of Story -
Liam Neeson On Money and "The Grey" -
Gary Oldman On "Tinker, Tailor" -
Ralph Fiennes on Coriolanus -
Ed Burns and Caitlin FitzGerald: Newlyweds -
Jessica Chastain Talks About "Take Shelter" -
Ewan McGregor On "Beginners"
Video Clips
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SNL's Unaired, Bieber-Free Senate Sketch -
Tina Fey & Amy Poehler's Golden Globes Opener -
Anne Hathaway, SNL Do 'Homeland' -
Daniel Craig and SNL's Lost Bond Girls -
Christie, Bloomberg and Jersey Hand Gestures -
Jimmy Fallon Sings "Romney and Bain" -
Fallon, Ferrell Dance in Tight Pants -
Steve Carell Plugs Fake Books with Jon Stewart -
Jimmy Fallon Does Downton Abbey -
Edgy Obama At WH Correspondents Dinner -
Keanu Reeves' New Doc (Trailer) -
Daniel Radcliffe As Casey Anthony's Dog
Monthly Archives
Caryn James
'The Master' Review: Egotists and the Cultists Who Love Them
- By Caryn James
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- September 22, 2012 9:00 AM
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- 2 Comments
With its expansive 70 mm images, The Master almost pounces on you as it announces its epic scope and ambition – even though the impressive vistas of the sea don’t have anything to do with the heart of the film. In its intelligent, chilly essence, Paul Thomas Anderson’s film is an intense, eye-to-eye war between two different yet interdependent psyches. Philip Seymour Hoffman is magnificent as the charming, voracious, monomaniacal charlatan who needs worshippers the way he needs air, a man so much The Master that his name, Lancaster Dodd, isn’t mentioned for most of the film. Joaquin Phoenix is nearly as effective as the jittery, off-putting Freddie Quell, a GI back from World War II, belligerent yet so unconsciously needy he is swooped into Dodd’s cultish vortex almost without realizing what’s happening.
Herzog's "Into The Abyss": Crime, Punishment, Humanity
- By Caryn James
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- November 2, 2011 1:00 AM
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- 0 Comments
Werner Herzog never makes thing easy on himself. Sitting on the other side of a glass partition talking to a convicted killer in Into the Abyss becomes the tough-minded moral equivalent of the physical challenges in his earlier films, like trudging through the jungle or across Antarctica. “I don’t have to like you,” Herzog tells Michael Perry, and this murderer who has found Jesus looks a little stunned.
Dennis Farina as "Joe May" and Other Gangsters We Love
- By Caryn James
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- October 31, 2011 3:00 AM
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- 0 Comments
There are gangsters we love for their badness, and others – more poignant, more affecting – who take soul-changing action at the last minute, redeeming their earlier crimes. In Joe Maggio’s sharply-drawn The Last Rites of Joe May, Dennis Farina gives a stirring yet unsentimental performance as an aging, mob-connected Chicago crook who makes one of those heroic final gestures. (“Last” is right there in the title; you can’t be too surprised at the finality).
"The Rum Diary": Johnny Depp Plays His Old Friend Hunter Thompson
- By Caryn James
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- October 24, 2011 1:00 AM
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- 0 Comments
One thing (among thousands) you can say about Johnny Depp: he’s loyal to his friends, to the point of veneration. He was the driving force behind Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary, rescuing the never-finished 1959 novel from the author’s basement while researching his role as Thompson himself in Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
NYFF Review: Paradise Lost 3 and Its Serpent's Tail of Media
- By Caryn James
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- October 10, 2011 12:30 PM
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- 0 Comments
The legal bargain that freed the West Memphis 3 after 18 years in prison is Lewis Carroll by way of Orwell. They proclaimed their innocence in court while pleading guilty to the murders they were accused of – a trick that prevents them from suing the state of Arkansas. (And what a suit that would have been.)
Nick Broomfield’s Portrait of Sarah Palin, Mean Girl
- By Caryn James
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- October 1, 2011 9:57 AM
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- 0 Comments
If you’d paid no attention to political news in the past three years and had never seen Roger and Me, maybe Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill’s Sarah Palin: You Betcha! might seem fresh. As it is, this slight, sometimes amusing documentary is familiar in too many ways, from yesterday’s facts to the film’s Michael Moore-ish structure, which has Broomfield chasing after a Palin interview from Alaska to Arizona and points in between.
"'Moneyball" Review: Brad Pitt, Please Stop Spitting; Otherwise Love Your Film
- By Caryn James
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- September 24, 2011 1:30 AM
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- 3 Comments
Every now and then while watching Moneyball, two words would pop into my mind: “Stop spitting!” Brad Pitt spits into a paper cup, players spit on the field – less than in real baseball, but enough.
Review: Ryan Gosling in the Psycho-Action Thriller "Drive"
- By Caryn James
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- September 16, 2011 4:09 AM
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- 0 Comments
Drive would be a completely different, more ordinary film without Ryan Gosling. Watch him saunter across a parking lot in a blood-splattered jacket – not his blood, but his responsibility – his impassive face and his calm, coiled body saying everything there is to say. He’s a guy who does what he needs to do, and doesn’t talk or agonize about it.
Cough, Cough! Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Matt Damon in Soderbegh's Plagued "Contagion"
- By Caryn James
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- September 9, 2011 12:51 PM
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- 2 Comments
I guess it never hurts to be reminded to cover your mouth when you cough, but Steven Soderbergh’s plague-thriller Contagion should have been so much more than a star-filled health warning.
The Generic Faces of War: Review, “Where Soldiers Come From”
- By Caryn James
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- September 8, 2011 1:00 AM
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- 0 Comments
Every soldier is obviously unique and special - to their families and friends at least – but as subjects for documentaries, some are more generic than others. In Heather Courtney’s no-frills Where Soldiers Come From, the very average-ness of the men she follows into war and back becomes the point.
