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REAL OR NOT: DEEPWATER HORIZON

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews Uncategorized
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It’s difficult to know how to respond to Deepwater Horizon. As a disaster movie, it follows all the tenets of the genre and gives us the excitement and heroism we expect. But as a real-life story that involves people who actually died, it’s difficult to separate Hollywood moviemaking from docudrama. Filmmaker Paul Greengrass has pulled this off amazingly well in such films as Bloody Sunday and United 93, in part by using little-known actors. On the other hand Clint Eastwood just made this work in Sully by casting Hollywood’s best-loved star, Tom Hanks, as a celebrated real-life hero. We’ve seen Mark Wahlberg play this kind of part before and he does it well. He and director Peter Berg collaborated successfully on Lone Survivor, another true-life saga.…

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TIM BURTON IS RIGHT AT HOME WITH MISS PEREGRINE

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews Uncategorized
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If there were ever a property tailor-made for director Tim Burton, it’s Ransom Riggs’ best-selling novel Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. The author (a lifelong Burton fan) was inspired to write his dark fable after he began collecting antique photos of people, some of whom one might have encountered at “freak shows” in years gone by. By opening the story in the present-day and time-traveling to 1943, screenwriter Jane Goldman enables a contemporary audience to identify with the film’s teenage-misfit hero before he journeys back to another era. Jake (Asa Butterfield) is devastated by the loss of his beloved grandfather (Terence Stamp) who fought in World War II. Seeking both solace and resolution, he persuades his father to accompany him to the mysterious place in…

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A WORLD OF DISCOVERY AT FANTASTIC FEST

Blogs Events Exclusive Festivals Leonard Maltin Television Uncategorized
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If you didn’t know better you might think that an event called Fantastic Fest simply shows horror, sci-if and fantasy films, attracting a crowd of geeky genre fans. What makes this annual gathering in Austin, Texas so special is that it defies expectations on every level. For one thing, it offers a wide array of contemporary cinema and television from around the globe. As a member of this year’s comedy jury (along with Matt Manfredi and Alejandro Brugues) I saw films from Germany, Ireland, Australia, Japan, and The Netherlands and got to hear talented young filmmakers discuss their work. Some of them will go on to take their place on the world stage, and I won’t forget that I first saw them at Fantastic Fest.…

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TV Review: Stranger Things (2016)

Contributors Television TV
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[By Greg Ehrbar] A lot has already been said about the Duffer Brothers’ sci-fi hit Stranger Things—connecting its ’80s setting to such films as Goonies, Stand By Me and E.T.—and its addictive, what-is-that-sinister-organization-up-to plot line. Unless I missed something, there’s a helping of ’70s pop culture in there, too, especially the two Disney popcorn favorites, Escape to and Return to Witch Mountain (spoiler alert: there’s a moment that suggests the flying RV). Stranger Things is rare in that it’s television that almost the whole family can watch together—in our family’s case, with plenty of pauses for discussions, remarks and chuckles over the Johnny Bravo-like hairdo of “The Cool Guy” (who co-stars in the series’ only bedroom scene). Among all the slime, blood and pus, there’s…

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THE LESS-THAN-MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
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If you’ve never seen a Western before, Hollywood’s latest effort to revive the genre may divert and even entertain you. After all, Denzel Washington is good, as always, Chris Pratt has some funny lines, and all the superficial ingredients you’d expect are in place, from quick-draw action to swinging saloon doors. But you don’t have to know the 1960 movie with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen or its source, Akira Kurosawa’s breathtaking The Seven Samurai, to know that something is missing. The characters aren’t well-drawn. The politically correct presence of a heroic Mexican, a Native American, and an assertive woman add little to the proceedings. And the movie never effectively sells the story point that made the earlier films so compelling: why a bunch of…

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HOLLYWOOD SPEAKS FRENCH: UNDISCOVERED RADIO DISCS

Featured Journal Leonard Maltin
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The history of movies and radio repeatedly intertwine, as I discovered when I wrote my book The Great American Broadcast. At no time was this more apparent than the 1940s, when all of Hollywood worked together to support the war effort. Now, performer and musicologist Michael Feinstein has come upon a cache of transcription discs that open a new chapter in this underappreciated facet of show-business. As he writes, “The other day I was going through transcription discs that belonged to a man named Gerald Kean who worked in radio, for years with Norman Corwin, and found about 30 shows he produced in French with Hollywood stars such as Cary Grant, Dinah Shore, Gene Tierney, Marsha Hunt, etc. I can’t find anything about them online.…

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OLIVER STONE’S SNOWDEN: TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

Film In Theaters Leonard Maltin Movie Reviews
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Does the world still need a primer on Edward Snowden? If the answer is yes, then Oliver Stone has performed a service by dramatizing the events that turned a patriotic young man into a disillusioned whistle-blower and, some say, a traitor. If you’re already familiar with this notorious figure Snowden won’t shed any particular light on the subject. And if you’ve seen Laura Poitras’ Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour (2014) you’ve already experienced the most exciting part of the story, when he spills the beans to a pair of reporters and a documentarian in a Hong Kong hotel. Being there as Snowden reveals what he knows about U.S. government surveillance of its own citizens is almost indescribably gripping and immediate.   Joseph Gordon-Levitt is well-cast as the…

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