Movie Reviews Only
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2.5/4 | 95% | Between the World and Me (2020) |
Beautifully done, but ultimately overdone. The book is better. - Newsday
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| Posted Nov 18, 2020
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4/4 | 70% | Driving While Black (2018) |
Essential viewing. - Newsday
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| Posted Oct 13, 2020
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A- | 68% | The Sunset Limited (2011) |
Grim, but a chance to see two magnificent actors at the peak of their powers. - Newsday
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| Posted Aug 6, 2020
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B+ | 70% | The Girl (2012) |
Film lovers will -- possibly against their better judgment -- love Jones' "Hitch." - Newsday
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| Posted Aug 4, 2020
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3/4 | 96% | John Lewis: Good Trouble (2020) |
Engaging portrait of the Civil Rights icon. - Newsday
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| Posted Jul 2, 2020
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A | 61% | Cinema Verite (2011) |
Not a dull or wasted moment, and Lane may have just turned in the one of the best performances of her career. - Newsday
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| Posted Jun 3, 2020
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B- | 49% | Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012) |
Stellar production, famous leads. What's missing? Heart. - Newsday
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| Posted Jun 1, 2020
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87% | Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations (2020) |
As a guide through this hellscape, Goldberg is calm, rational, humane. At least someone is. Someone has to be. - Newsday
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| Posted May 22, 2020
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3/4 | 92% | Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (2019) |
Davis is demystified and deconstructed in this corrective - and excellent - portrait. - Newsday
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| Posted Feb 24, 2020
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2/4 | 47% | The Chaperone (2019) |
If "The Chaperone" accomplishes anything, that will be to send viewers scrambling to Google to learn more about this extraordinary woman. - Newsday
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| Posted Nov 22, 2019
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4/4 | 91% | El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019) |
Massively enjoyable wrap to the Jesse Pinkman story, and better still, the right one. - Newsday
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| Posted Oct 11, 2019
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45% | Camp Rock (2008) |
This is a hit and has been carefully crafted by Disney to become one. - Newsday
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| Posted Sep 11, 2019
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86% | Wanda Sykes: I'ma Be Me (2009) |
You're not about to hear here for the first time that Wanda Sykes is an immensely gifted stand-up who controls and commands and slays both stage and audience like a bantamweight dominatrix. - Newsday
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| Posted Aug 2, 2019
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C+ | 90% | Amy Schumer: Live From the Apollo (2015) |
Fans should be pleased. As usual, everyone else will be appalled. - Newsday
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| Posted Jul 31, 2019
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95% | Louis C.K.: 2017 (2017) |
The usual C.K. show - fresh, funny, smart, bleak, offensive, entertaining - with one minor demerit, for an overlong finish. - Newsday
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| Posted Jul 16, 2019
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3/4 | 84% | Aziz Ansari: Right Now (2019) |
Risky show, risky strategy and both pay off. - Newsday
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| Posted Jul 10, 2019
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50% | Amy Schumer: The Leather Special (2017) |
Too much of the carnal Amy, not enough of the smart, cultural critic Amy. - Newsday
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| Posted Jul 9, 2019
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3.5/4 | 100% | The Cold Blue (2019) |
Fine tribute film to a Wyler semi-classic and the men of the Eighth Air Force. - Newsday
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| Posted Jun 5, 2019
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3/4 | 98% | Deadwood: The Movie (2019) |
Just when Al threatens to become irremediably softened - a New Age man for a New Age Deadwood - he gets the one line that proves otherwise. Fans have waited 13 years for this line. It's almost worth the wait. - Newsday
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| Posted May 29, 2019
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100% | Ken Burns: The Civil War (2015) |
Burns, his brother Ric and longtime writer and collaborator, Geoffrey C. Ward, accomplished exactly what Burns had always intended -- a visceral, deeply felt film on a long-distant war that lived on in hearts and minds. - Newsday
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| Posted May 24, 2019
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88% | Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear's 'All in the Family' and 'The Jeffersons' (2019) |
Of the two live episodes, "The Jeffersons" was easily the better, and also made the unexpected case that it was possibly the better series all along. - Newsday
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| Posted May 23, 2019
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3.5/4 | 100% | The Last Survivors (2019) |
Short on perspective, but long on one essential message -- never forget. - Newsday
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| Posted Apr 29, 2019
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2.5/4 | 62% | Native Son (2019) |
An especially thoughtful film - that's already a given - but an unexpectedly inert one. - Newsday
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| Posted Apr 3, 2019
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4/4 | 78% | The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019) |
It's so high-gloss -- so weirdly hypnotic -- that neither Gibney nor "The Inventor" can get to the real human behind the image. A shortcoming of the film? Sure, but the only one. - Newsday
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| Posted Mar 21, 2019
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2.5/4 | 79% | Amy Schumer Growing (2019) |
Mostly solid material that yokes the old Schumer with the new. - Newsday
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| Posted Mar 19, 2019
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3.5/4 | 100% | Sammy Davis, Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me (2017) |
A fascinating tribute to the consummate performer, this doc also sets the record straight on his politics and civil rights record. - Newsday
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| Posted Feb 18, 2019
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3.5/4 | 78% | Watergate (2019) |
Ferguson's "Watergate" in fact is a marvel of obsession, full of endless details...and enough footage to swamp even the wonkiest of Watergate junkies. - Newsday
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| Posted Feb 18, 2019
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3/4 | 92% | Ellen DeGeneres: Relatable (2018) |
Irony wins and Ellen rules. Fury has had nothing to do with DeGeneres' triumph or enduring appeal. - Newsday
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| Posted Dec 18, 2018
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3.5/4 | No Score Yet |
Superb, but not for the casual viewer. - Newsday
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| Posted Oct 30, 2018
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2/4 | 83% | My Dinner with Hervé (2018) |
Dinklage turns in a fine performance, but his passion project is otherwise a standard-issue biopic. - Newsday
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| Posted Oct 18, 2018
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99% | The Tale (2018) |
Jenny's reluctance to stare down the horror gives "The Tale" an ineluctable psychological power. - Newsday
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| Posted Aug 23, 2018
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3/4 | 100% | If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd (2018) |
Excellent portrait of a legendary band that gets to the heart of why it's endured -- that tragedy notwithstanding. - Newsday
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| Posted Aug 15, 2018
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3/4 | 67% | Freaky Friday (2018) |
A colorful Friday with the Disney touch, while Zuehlsdorff and Blickenstaff shine. - Newsday
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| Posted Aug 8, 2018
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2.5/4 | 94% | Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (2018) |
Come Inside My Mind valiantly tries to penetrate the silence. - Newsday
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| Posted Jul 16, 2018
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2/4 | 33% | Fahrenheit 451 (2018) |
Flat, slow and turgid, no one - neither Jordan nor Shannon - can stir this gluepot. - Newsday
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| Posted May 15, 2018
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3.5/4 | No Score Yet |
A luminous adaptation, with Hawke as one more memorable "Jo" in a long and glorious line of them. - Newsday
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| Posted May 9, 2018
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2.5/4 | No Score Yet | Kevin James: Never Don't Give Up (2018) |
Amusing, fast, inoffensive -- for the most part. - Newsday
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| Posted Apr 24, 2018
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3.5/4 | 70% | Paterno (2018) |
Brilliant as ever, [Al] Pacino is the master trickster who manages to both demonize and humanize Paterno. - Newsday
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| Posted Apr 19, 2018
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No Score Yet | GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II (2017) |
Moving, vivid, important. - Newsday
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| Posted Apr 9, 2018
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3.5/4 | 100% | Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert (2018) |
Alice Cooper as Herod blew the roof off the Armory. Or was it perhaps that atomic tangerine lamé suit that did all the destruction? In any event, poor Armory. - Newsday
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| Posted Apr 1, 2018
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3.5/4 | No Score Yet | Hope & Fury: MLK, the Movement and the Media (2018) |
Some fleeting segues to the Black Lives Matter movement feel obligatory and woefully incomplete -- but they don't derail this otherwise excellent program. - Newsday
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| Posted Mar 25, 2018
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3/4 | 100% | Chris Rock: Tamborine (2018) |
There's a new world order out there. Looks like Chris Rock -- yes, Rock -- got the memo, too. - Newsday
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| Posted Feb 14, 2018
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2.5/4 | 89% | May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers (2017) |
But what "May It Last" never adequately explores is where that desolation and pain came from. The result is a celebration, without much in the way of revelation. - Newsday
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| Posted Jan 29, 2018
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2/4 | No Score Yet | I Am Sam Kinison (2017) |
With friends, family and admirers all lined up here, they attest to a good man who was deeply troubled. What they can't quite get to is who exactly that man was. He briefly comes into focus, then recedes. - Newsday
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| Posted Dec 17, 2017
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2.5/4 | 94% | The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee (2017) |
Warm, genial portrait of a great editor, but not much else. - Newsday
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| Posted Dec 5, 2017
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3/4 | 90% | The Problem with Apu (2017) |
A congenial and persuasive argument for why Apu must go. - Newsday
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| Posted Nov 20, 2017
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3.5/4 | 100% | Baltimore Rising (2017) |
Excellent you-are-there film that takes viewers -- and Baltimore -- from despair to hope. - Newsday
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| Posted Nov 19, 2017
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3/4 | No Score Yet | Beyond a Year in Space (2017) |
Brisk informative overview of Kelly's life back on the ground, but leaves a few questions unanswered, including this one: How long before that first trip to Mars? - Newsday
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| Posted Nov 14, 2017
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3/4 | 95% | Jerry Before Seinfeld (2017) |
Seinfeld-before-"Seinfeld" fans will especially enjoy this congenial, familiar hour special. - Newsday
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| Posted Sep 18, 2017
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B+ | 72% | To the Bone (2017) |
The performances are mostly excellent, Collins' above all. - Newsday
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| Posted Jul 17, 2017
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