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TV Review - Underground
Aldis Hodge (left) and Jurnee Smollett-BellI was immediately taken out of the narrative when anachronistic music is played on the soundtrack. The series opens with a Kanye West song. The second episode...
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TV Review - Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Season 2
The first season of this Netflix original comedy was great because it told a compelling story over 13 episodes. It didn't meander the way that 30 Rock meandered. That show, also written and co-created...
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DVD Review - Sisters
This movie feels as if it were an excuse for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to spend time on screen together and perhaps hang out in Florida for a couple of months. It almost sinks to the level of a Happy...
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DVD Review - The Lady in the Van
This is the kind of story that would be interesting to tell at a dinner or cocktail party, but, as told, it doesn't seem like enough to fill a two-hour film. It could have been enough, but deep digging...
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DVD Review - Hidden Away (A escondidas)
Writer-director Mikel Rueda has flashbacks that don't feel like flashbacks. You don't know you're even watching a flashback until a scene or action is repeated on screen. Rueda does circles without the...
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Movie Review - Hush (2016)
The Strangers (2008) was the last horror film I tolerated with as little depth as this one, which in essence is just a cheap knock-off of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978). It attempts a similar...
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Movie Review - Midnight Special
This film feels like Safety Not Guaranteed or similar Sundance festival titles that will use a science-fiction hook for what ends up as a low-budget, road trip movie. This film could also be considered...
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TV Review - Rush Hour (2016)
The movie of the same name was essentially built around Jackie Chan who was actually born and raised in Hong Kong and who is a highly-skilled, martial artist with great, comedic styling. English is not...
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TV Review - Game of Silence
It takes waiting until Episode 3 before this series does anything that hooks me or makes me want to continue watching. Most shows that are great do so by the end of the first hour. Some shows, if...
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Movie Review - Miles Ahead
Miles Davis has the same birthday as me. He was born on May 26. He died when I was only 11, but he was 65. He was a Jazz musician and composer. He was mainly a trumpet player, but he is widely...
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Movie Review - A Hologram for the King
Tom Hanks stars as Alan Clay, a businessman from Boston, a salesman in fact who is working for an IT company that is developing a holographic, telecommunications system. Apparently, the king of Saudi...
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DVD Review - Flight 7500
Some might recognize director Takashi Shimizu as the director of the Japanese horror film The Grudge (2004). If anyone likes his sensibilities or aesthetics, then you might find resonance in this...
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DVD Review - That's Not Us
There have been several films, mostly independent films about a group of people who vacation for a weekend in some kind of summer home and who then have to deal with problems or issues in their...
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Brian Sheppard on 'Beautiful Something'
Actor Brian Sheppard stars in his first feature as lead. He plays struggling poet "Brian" in the gay romance Beautiful Something. He spoke by phone on April 13 from New York about how he arrived at...
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Movie Review - Captain America: Civil War
The obvious comparison is to Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, which came out a month and a half ago. This movie has the same, basic premise. Two super heroes go toe-to-toe due to ideological...
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Movie Review - Jane Got a Gun
From the way this movie was positioned, it was set up to be in the vein of great westerns like High Noon (1952) or 3:10 to Yuma (2007). Except, it wouldn't center around a man. It would instead center...
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Movie Review - Fifty Shades of Black
Marlon Wayans made a name for himself with Scary Movie (2000), a spoof of horror films like Scream (1996), done in the vein of Mel Brooks and the Zucker brothers. He was coming off a successful TV...
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Movie Review - The Choice (2016)
This is the 11th adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel and it might stand for a while as the worst of those adaptations. The year isn't over yet and it might be released overseas, but so far its box...
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TV Review - Saints & Sinners
Bounce TV is a digital, television network, which launched in September 2011. It caters to African-American audiences. Some of the affiliates who carry the network include WUSA in Washington, WMAR in...
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Movie Review - Money Monster
Jodie Foster co-starred in Spike Lee's Inside Man, a thriller involving a hostage situation in lower Manhattan that involved large, financial institutions, indicting Wall Street or those of that world....
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