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6/6/2013
20 Feet from Stardom
Starring Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger
Opens June 14
*****
There may be better documentaries released in 2013, but there will be none more rousing than Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet From Stardom. Neville—a music freak whose other docs include Johnny Cash’s America and Search and Destroy: Iggy & the Stooges’ Raw Power—offers us the history of background singers and, in a way, the last 50 years of popular music as well. He opens the film with Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”—with its infamous line “and the colored girls go ... doo ...
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5/24/2013
The Kings of Summer
Starring Nick Robinson, Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally
Opens May 31
****
Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ feature debut The Kings of Summer could be this summer's box office sleeper. This unassuming yet beautifully rendered story of three boys’ coming-of-age in the span of a few short months is a teen film that wrings comedy (and, occasionally, pathos) from precise observance instead of broad gestures. There’s no spring break, very little bodily fluids (except the necessary, non-gratuitous kind) and no overexposed flesh for titillation. Instead, Vogt-Roberts—with much help from Chris Galletta’s sharp, compact script—introduces us to three boys—Joe Toy (Robinson), ...
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5/9/2013
I Do
Starring David W. Ross, Maurice Compte, Alicia Witt, Jamie-Lynn Sigler
Opens May 31 (theatres and VOD)
** I Do, written by and starring David W. Ross as a gay Brit losing his U.S. immigration status, is a strange hodgepodge of a movie. This full-length feature debut has much to recommend it—at least during its first half—from Ross’s anchored performance as Jack Edwards, who loses his brother Peter (Grant Edwards) in the first few minutes after being told that Peter’s wife Mya (Witt) is expecting, to the young Jessica Tyler Brown who plays his 7-year-old niece when ...
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4/19/2013
Fame High
Opens May 17
**
The director of OT: our town, Scott Hamilton Kennedy, returns to the realm of high school arts, following four students at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts over a 16-month period. Freshman Zak Astor, a pianist, was pushed into music by a father who hopes his son’s potential career will get them out of a dangerous, poverty-ridden neighborhood. The parents of senior Grace Song, a Korean-American ballet dancer, support her art with a couple of caveats, including a ban on dating. Senior Brittany Hayes, a singer/songwriter, secretly ditches her ...
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4/11/2013
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay
Opens April 17
****
By no means a traditional biopic, directors Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein’s documentary sees magician, author and raconteur Ricky Jay share many of the names and routines that influenced him. Tracing Jay’s earliest years as a child magician appearing with his grandfather, Max Katz, through his years as a guest on popular nighttime talk shows (in one fun ‘70s clip, he flim-flams comedian/friend Steve Martin in a game of Three-Card Monte on The Dinah Shore Show) to more recent live engagements heavy on card trickery, Deceptive ...
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3/29/2013
Evil Dead Starring Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor PucciOpens April 5****Escaping the usual perils of remaking a horror classic—namely, creating a perfunctory copy of the original—director/co-writer Fede Alvarez has both gore and surprises galore in store for Evil Dead fans (and virgins). This souped-up, blood-drenched update has Mia (Levy) going cold turkey in a cabin in the woods, accompanied by her estranged brother David (Fernandez), his girlfriend and two close friends. The demonic possession plot provides a nice metaphor for addiction, though gore hounds will argue the narrative is just an excuse to show some really ...
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3/7/2013
Come Out And PlayStarring Eben Moss-Bachrach, Vinessa Shaw, Daniel Giménez CachoOpens March 22*
A senseless, vapid and thoroughly inferior remake of a 1976 Spanish cult horror film considered one of the finest examples of the "killer kid" genre (Who Can Kill A Child?), this film begins as an American couple, Francis (Moss-Bachrach) and the very much pregnant Beth (Shaw), are on vacation in Mexico. Determined to check out a tiny, quaint island, they rent a tiny boat and, once arrived, find what appears to be a recently deserted town—aside from some small, peculiar-acting children. Soon enough, they discover ...
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2/21/2013
The ABCs of Death Opens Feb. 28A primer for psychos, The ABCs of Death is an inventive assembly of international short films about killing. The titles appear after each film and eschew obvious names like “A is for Ax” or “B is for Bludgeon.” “W is for WTF” is a literally head-spinning—both in the surrealistic and decapitated sense—meta-movie, and the sidesplitting (as in hysterically funny, not gory) short representing the letter “F” may be the omnibus’ best entry. Other highlights include the “L” entry, about a man who can escape death if he wins a peculiar contest, and the ...
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1/25/2013
Clandestine Childhood Starring Teo Gutierrez Moreno, Violeta Palukas, Cristina BanegasOpens Feb. 8Taking the point of view of children of activists in Argentina during the Dirty War era, Clandestine Childhood has Juan (Moreno) trying to find his place in the world under difficult conditions. Renamed Ernesto by his activist parents, Juan enters fifth grade and also learns about the secret hiding place in the house, where money and guns are kept, and what to do when trouble comes knocking (which, of course, it will). Juan tries to find normalcy at school, falling in love with Maria (Palukas), the sister ...
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1/9/2013
John Dies at the End Starring Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul GiamattiOpens Jan. 25Sure to be a cult film, John Dies at the End opens with a loopy story involving an axe, a beheading and the possibility of solving a riddle that reveals the secrets of the universe—“provided you don't go mad in the attempt.” Cut to Dave Wong (the very Caucasian Williamson) telling Arnie (Giamatti), a reporter, about spiritual exorcisms and the side effects of Soy Sauce, a potent drug he and his friend John (Mayes) have injected. Cue a girl who turns into snakes, a door ...
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