Be a Child, My Son by Andrew Collins “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and […]
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Life Abundant: The Kiwi Edition by Andrew Collins Hunt for the Wilderpeople is one of those delightfully unnecessary films. The world neither needs nor deserves a film like this indie comedy from writer and director Taika Waititi, but we are undoubtedly better off for its having been made. The film is set in the beautiful, […]
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Crazy As They May Seem by Andrew Collins The young auteur, Damien Chazelle, announced his talent to the world with a crash and a bang—literally—in the festival circuit with 2014’s Whiplash, a dark tale of a relentlessly ambitions jazz drummer and his abusive instructor at New York’s prestigious Shaffer Conservatory. The film wrung the best […]
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A Better Battle by Andrew Collins In Captain America: Civil War (directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo) Marvel has once again found a way to have its cake and eat it too, proving that there are still comic book stories that don’t need the fate of the entire world at stake to be compelling. Just […]
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Go Big or . . . Trust Me, Just Go Big! by Andrew Collins It may be best to understand the charmed brilliance of Sing Street by considering the slice of life that The Sandlot captures from 1950s America. Apply the relationship to 1980s Ireland, and you’ll end up with something like this latest effort […]
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Deepening Dreams by Andrew Collins The way Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer tell it, they pitched the idea for their freshman television show without a storyboard or written synopsis. Instead, the brothers stitched together clips out of dozens of films from the 1980s. That sounds about right. The opening scene of Stranger Things […]
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And Everything Turned Out OK by Jack H. Simons The basic story plot for all ages pits ultimate evil against flawed good with the flawed good coming out on top. The protagonist must be flawed because we are all flawed. Only Jesus Christ or an old-timey Methodist would claim sinless perfection, but the rest of […]
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A Little Rogue by Andrew Collins Here’s an interesting question: is Rogue One a true Star Wars film, or isn’t it? Differentiated from the rest of the films in the beloved space opera saga by the descriptor, “A Star Wars story,” Rogue One breaks precedent with the rest of the Star Wars series in several […]
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Internal Life by Andrew Collins Room, the much-lauded film directed by Lenny Abrahamson, defies simple categorization. Technically we could call it a drama, but while it has the necessary plot points and relational tension, the sum of its parts melds into something more like a meditation. The effect is reminiscent of something by Terrence Malick, where the […]
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‘Would That It T’were So Simple’ by Jack Simons Hail Caesar! – A movie set in 1951 – describes 24 hours in the life of a major Hollywood studio. The film that came from the mysterious Coen brothers’ universe has returned to its source without drawing many viewers, and according to Rotten Tomatoes 55 percent […]
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