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BRETT MICHEL

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Devil at the Gate

Giving voice to Red Heroine
The ensemble has spent the better part of a decade composing and performing soundtracks for silent films, creating their own brand of musical alchemy.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  September 05, 2008
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars

A stiffly-animated, money-grabbing afterthought
It is Star Wars , but it's also an ad for an upcoming video game and an animated TV series debuting in October.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  August 20, 2008
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Henry Poole Is Here

An unbelievable climax that will test your faith
Hopeless Henry Poole (Luke Wilson), suffering from one of those terminal, nameless movie diseases.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  August 13, 2008
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The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2

Disjointed, sketchy, and saccharine
Like Sex and the City: The Movie, Sanaa Hamri’s continuation of the journey of a pair of jeans that magically fit four girls of disparate genes feels tailored for the small screen.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  August 05, 2008
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Bottle Shock

Bland vino
I found myself thinking, “I detect corn, laced with cheese.”
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  August 05, 2008
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Paper or plastic?

Baghead keeps itself covered
The Duplass brothers have constructed a compact meta-movie laced with knowing winks.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  July 30, 2008
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The X-Files: I Want To Believe

You’ll want to believe this movie was never made
X-Files creator Chris Carter resurrects Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, only they’re no longer special, and neither are they agents.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  July 30, 2008
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Darkness falls in the Dark Knight

Scars run deep in Christopher Nolan’s Götterdämmerung
“The night is darkest just before the dawn,” says District Attorney Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight .
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  January 12, 2009
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Love Comes Lately

Splendid and dreamlike
Singer’s fear of impotence and death remains deftly woven into the dreamlike patchwork of Schütte’s narrative.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  July 09, 2008
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Wall•E

Hopeful and engaging
The tale of a rickety old PC who wins the heart of a Mac.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  July 01, 2008
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Hancock

Comedy or existential drama?
Director Peter Berg’s latest, which suffers from a major identity crisis, could be the biggest test of Smith’s ability to open a summer “tent-pole” picture since 1999’s The Wild Wild West .
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  July 01, 2008
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Mongol

An idealized portrait of Genghis Khan
A beautifully filmed spectacle of questionable historical accuracy, where motivations are as shallow as battles are large.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  June 18, 2008
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Ghost of future past

Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow
When film actor Keir Dullea turned up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as the father of Angelina Jolie’s character in Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd ,  I was not only surprised to see him again onscreen, but amazed that he wasn’t dead.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  June 19, 2008
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Kung Fu Panda

A colorful wuxia comedy
The thin script is light on length and surprise, heavy on tike-pleasing jokes and action.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  June 04, 2008
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The Foot Fist Way

A looser, less elegant translation
A mean-spirited, scrappy tragicomedy that was shot in 19 days –– and looks it.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  June 04, 2008
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Sharing an Apple

Adapt or Die Dept.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the storied Red Sox/Yankees rivalry will tell you that Bostonians sure can hold a grudge.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  May 21, 2008
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Speed Racer

Another faulty family film
When Andy and Larry Wachowski pitched The Matrix to producer Joel Silver, they showed him the seminal anime Ghost in the Shell , claiming their ambition was to re-create it in live action.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  May 07, 2008
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Mio Fratello È Figlio Unico|My Brother Is an Only Child

Brotherly amore
“A Fascist in the family is always handy.” Unless it’s a family of leftists in a small Italian town during the turbulent “anni di piombo” (“years of lead”).
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  April 23, 2008
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Vocation or vacation?

Honoring independent cinema’s ‘tour guide’
This past Wednesday, the fifth Coolidge Award, honoring a “film artist whose work advances the spirit of original and challenging filmmaking,” was bestowed on Jeremy Thomas.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  May 01, 2008
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The Visitor

Unforgettable direction
Writer/director Tom McCarthy, expanding on the theme of unexpected friendships that propelled 2003’s The Station Agent , is a subtle artist, and that trait extends to Jenkins.
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  April 16, 2008
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Visitation rights

Hidden in plain sight
“In terms of the general public, most people I know have never seen the inside of a detention center."
By: BRETT MICHEL  |  April 16, 2008
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