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Monsters, Inc.
: : :The folks at Pixar can do no wrong with Monsters, Inc., the studio's fourth feature film, which stretches the computer animation format in terms of both technical complexity and emotional impact. The giant, blue-furred James P. 'Sulley' Sullivan (wonderfully voiced by John Goodman) is a scare-monster extraordinaire in the hidden world of Monstropolis, where the scaring of kids is an imperative in order to keep the entire city running. Beyond the competition to be the best at the business, Sullivan and his assistant, ...
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28 Days
: :To appreciate 28 Days, it's best to be thankful that director Betty Thomas hasn't forced Sandra Bullock into a remake of Clean and Sober. Instead Thomas has balanced her comedic sensibility (evident in Dr. Dolittle and Private Parts) with the seriousness of alcoholism and substance abuse, and she succeeds without compromising the gravity of the subject matter. Some critics have scoffed at the movie's breezy, formulaic portrait of 27-year-old boozer and pill-popper Gwen Cummings (Bullock), but this smooth-running star vehicle does for Bullock what Erin ...
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Fargo (1996)
: essential video:Leave it to the wildly inventive Coen brothers (Joel directs, Ethan produces, they both write) to concoct a fiendishly clever kidnap caper that's simultaneously a comedy of errors, a Midwestern satire, a taut suspense thriller, and a violent tale of criminal misfortune. It all begins when a hapless car salesman (played to perfection by William H. Macy) ineptly orchestrates the kidnapping of his own wife. The plan goes horribly awry in the hands of bumbling bad guys Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare (one ...
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The Big Lebowski
: essential video:After the tight plotting and quirky intensity of Fargo, this casually amusing follow-up from the prolifically inventive Coen (Ethan and Joel) brothers seems like a bit of a lark, and the result was a box-office disappointment. The good news is, The Big Lebowski is every bit a Coen movie, and its lazy plot is part of its laidback charm. After all, how many movies can claim as their hero a pot-bellied, pot-smoking loser named Jeff 'The Dude' Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) who spends most ...
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Ghost World (Dol)
:Description:Thora Birch (American Beauty) and Scarlett Johansson (Lost in Translation) 'sneak into your heart and stay there' (Rolling Stone) in this 'eerie, masterful movie' (Movieline) from the acclaimed director of Crumb. Co-starring Brad Renfro (Deuces Wild), Illeana Douglas (Stir of Echos) and Steve Buscemi (Fargo) in 'the best role of his career' (Movieline), Ghost World is a 'smartly strange comedy [that] stands out like the Taj Mahal' (Time)! While their classmates head for college, Enid (Birch) and Rebecca (Johansson) focus their energies on tormenting those ...
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Con Air
: :Con Air is proof that the slick, absurdly overblown action formula of Hollywood mega-producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (Top Gun, Days of Thunder, The Rock, Crimson Tide) lives on, even after Simpson's druggy death. (Read Charles Fleming's exposé, High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess, for more about that.) Nicolas Cage, sporting a disconcerting mane of hair, is a wrongly convicted prisoner on a transport plane with a bunch of infamously psychopathic criminals, including head creep Cyrus the Virus (John Malkovich), ...
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Escape From La
: essential video:Fifteen years after John Carpenter squandered a great idea on a mediocre movie (Escape from New York), he does it again--this time on the Left Coast. Kurt Russell is back as the terminally cynical one-eyed action hero Snake Plissken who, this time, has been coerced into saving the world in Los Angeles. It's 2013 and L.A. is now an island maximum security prison off the coast of California. Snake has 10 hours to find a doomsday weapon that's fallen into the hands of ...
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Lonesome Dove
: essential video:Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones star as Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, aging cowboys and former Texas rangers and who organize a 2,500 mile cattle drive for one last great adventure in this excellent 1989 miniseries adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel. The best friends, who steal the herd from a gang of Mexican cattle rustlers, drive their herd from Texas to Montana, battling horse thieves, angry Indian tribes, and a renegade half-breed killer named Blue Duck (Frederic Forrest) on a mission of ...
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Miller's Crossing
:Description:Leo is the benevolent Irish gangster and political boss who rules an Easter city with the help of Tom, his trusted lieutenant and counselor. But their control of the town is challenged by an over-reaching Italian underboss and his ruthless henchman. Just as this threat erupts, Leo and Tom have a falling out over the same woman. Tom, caught in the jaws of a gangland violent outcome. essential video:Arguably the best film by Joel and Ethan Coen, the 1990 Miller's Crossing stars Gabriel Byrne ...
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Heart of Midnight
:Description:Leo is the benevolent Irish gangster and political boss who rules an Easter city with the help of Tom, his trusted lieutenant and counselor. But their control of the town is challenged by an over-reaching Italian underboss and his ruthless henchman. Just as this threat erupts, Leo and Tom have a falling out over the same woman. Tom, caught in the jaws of a gangland violent outcome. essential video:Arguably the best film by Joel and Ethan Coen, the 1990 Miller's Crossing stars Gabriel Byrne ...
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