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Ricky D’s 20 Most Anticipated Horror Films of 2014

10. Poltergeist Directed by Gil Kenan Written by David Lindsay-Abaire USA Release Date: November 14th Production recently wrapped on the Poltergeist remake with Gil Kenan (Monster House) in the director’s chair and Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) producing. Little is known as they continue to put the movie together in post-production, but we do have a few details, beginning …

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Staff List: The 30 Best Films of 2013

As with any year, some people have begun arguing that 2013 was a bad year for film, because of the expected glut of effects-heavy blockbusters that litter the multiplexes each summer, or because there was a lack of auteur-driven storytelling for the majority of the year. Though it is indeed frustrating that studios hold their …

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Staff List: The 30 Best Films of 2013

As with any year, some people have begun arguing that 2013 was a bad year for film, because of the expected glut of effects-heavy blockbusters that litter the multiplexes each summer, or because there was a lack of auteur-driven storytelling for the majority of the year. Though it is indeed frustrating that studios hold their …

Read More about Staff List: The 30 Best Films of 2013

Staff List: The 30 Best Films of 2013

As with any year, some people have begun arguing that 2013 was a bad year for film, because of the expected glut of effects-heavy blockbusters that litter the multiplexes each summer, or because there was a lack of auteur-driven storytelling for the majority of the year. Though it is indeed frustrating that studios hold their …

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Essential Viewing: The Best Documentaries of 2013 (part two)

Leviathan Directed by Lucian Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel USA, 2012 The Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab is slowly out to reshape the way you see cinema and the world. Rather than set out to document the world via a recitation of facts and experiences, they’re strapping the cameras right at the edge of life – in …

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Essential Viewing: Best Documentaries of 2013 (part one)

Documentaries have come a long way in the past 20 years, especially in the last decade. Documentary film has developed into a popular and visible form of entertainment, while having a bigger effect on society, usually addressing important issues with the goal of informing the public and pushing for social change. Ten years ago, it …

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‘Cheap Thrills’ fails to capitalize on its gruesome social commentary

How much credit does rudimentary social commentary buy a film? You may find yourself pondering that question if you can distract yourself from the barrage of indignities that not only frequent but actually make up the constituent parts of the latter half of Cheap Thrills, a social satire by-way-of cruel lark that takes the makes a case against the way capitalism ferrets out and rewards our worst impulses, and does so in the crudest, most straightforward fashion imaginable.

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Masters of Sex, Ep. 1.03: “Standard Deviation” leans into modern sensibilities

The title “Standard Deviation” more obviously refers to William Masters’s chance encounters with homosexual men, who provide his latest ethical and moral hiccups in pursuing sexuality scientifically, but it also works to demarcate the episode as being the precise point Masters of Sex decides to make a clean break from history and chart a potentially very different path for its characters. I won’t go into too many specifics for fear of potential future-series spoilers, but it’s already clear that Michelle Ashford is setting out to use Masters and Johnson as more of a loose framework to probe big ideas about societal relationships to sexuality than strict historical portraiture.

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The Bridge Ep 1.13 “The Crazy Place” finishes the intriguing, frustrating first season in fitting fashion

And with a crazy stare from Marco Ruiz, the tumultuous first season of The Bridge comes to a close. At times it was enthralling – and at many other times, frustrating: but always intriguing, even when the show was in the midst of its David Tate nosedive (which unfortunately still exists… but we’ll get to that). ‘The Crazy Place’ is all of that wrapped into one neat 43-minute episode, a series of promising and not-so-promising new directions for the second season.

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‘Oculus’ Movie Review – Revitalizes supernatural horror with an essential dose of heart and smarts

Thanks to the likes of James Wan, paranormal horror is all the rage. From Paranormal Activity to Insidious and The Conjuring, audiences are irretrievably hooked to tales of nuclear families being bloodlessly menaced by only-fleetingly-visible entities of malicious intent. What’s remarkable about Mike Flanagan’s Oculus, which follows his no-budget wonder Absentia, is how it manages to wring genuine dread from a beyond-worn subgenre simply by paying close attention to the realities of its deeply troubled characters. Oculus functions equally well as a tragic psychodrama as it does a horror film.

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‘The Double’‘Joe’ Movie Review – crams three films’ worth of ideas into 93 minutes, for better and worse

Better to have an ungainly surplus of ideas than none at all; that seems to be Richard Ayoade’s philosophy behind The Double, a wild, uneven, but never dull sci-fi black comedy that purports to tackle Dostoevsky’s novella of the same name, but is at least as interested in pilfering visual ideas from films gone by while marrying them to Ayoade’s winningly dry comic sensibility.

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‘Night Moves’ Movie Review – preserves Kelly Reichardt’s winning style despite eco-thriller plot

What separates life on the fringe of society from being outside of society entirely? It’s that line of demarcation that fascinates Kelly Reichardt, whose particularly American take on “slow cinema” collides with our own expectation of the requirements of the thriller genre in Night Moves, which cleverly cloaks its true thematic concerns in familiar story tropes.

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‘Abuse of Weakness’ Movie Review – chronicles Breillat’s real-life difficulties with unsparing honesty

How can you dramatize real-life events you were a party to, but don’t fully understand yourself? In the case of Catherine Breillat, you do your very best to communicate the depth of your own lack of comprehension. Surely one of the least vain openly autobiographical films ever made, Abuse of Weakness is repetitive and infuriating – but deliberately so, and to its complement.

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’12 Years a Slave’ Movie Review – Can’t match the intensity of McQueen’s first two features

Welcome to our “12 Years a Slave” Reviews. Review #1 12 Years a Slave Written by John Ridley Directed by Steve McQueen USA, 2013 With Hunger and Shame, Steve McQueen crafted two highly divergent, yet equally distinctive character studies of men whose respective physical existences are defined by extremity. Hunger’s Bobby Sands stays true to his political convictions in …

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Breaking Bad, Ep. 5.11: “Confessions” leaves us in the lurch in the best way possible

Some series offer neat, tidy payoffs week-to-week, making sure to leave viewers satisfied while leaving them with enough plot and/or character movement to satisfy while leaving them eager for the next piece of the bigger picture. Not so with Breaking Bad; it’s impossible to imagine anyone getting to the final moments of “Confessions” and not cursing the television gods for not granting them immediate access to next week’s “Rabid Dog.” This right here is some next-level viewer-directed cruelty of the most effective sort.

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The Bridge, Ep. 1.07: “Destino” continues tonal and stylistic growth, but can’t stem murder-mystery fatigue

There’s no shame in stealing from the greats. So when “Destino” begins to feel like a hyperkinetic Justified/Breaking Bad mashup for a few minutes during a trailer-park raid gone very wrong, it’s just the kick in the pants an hour this scattered needs. Not everything about “Destino” works, but its peaks are very encouraging.

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Breaking Bad, Ep. 5.10: “Buried” highlights the series’ long-undervalued female cast

Since the very beginning of Breaking Bad, these actresses have been tasked with the most thankless roles on one of the most celebrated dramas in TV history. In the case of Gunn, it’s a repeat performance in a sense: she had a similarly unglamorous gig as Sheriff Bullock’s beleagured-but-upstanding wife Martha. TV historians and prognosticators will be quick to extol the virtues of Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, along with Dean Norris and Bob Odenkirk (and rightfully so) but in a very real sense, Brandt and Gunn have long provided Breaking Bad with a moral dimension that would otherwise be absent.

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Breaking Bad, Ep. 5.09: “Blood Money” hits the ground running, then opts for a sprint

It’s important to keep expectations in check at all times, but especially with beloved TV series. There are so many variables at work, so many moving parts operated by so many individuals, that even with the smartest showrunners, the best writers’ room, and the most stellar cast, things can go off the rails when you’re least expecting it, often at the worst possible time. So it’s with a sense of relief that “Blood Money” opens with what might be one of the two or three cold opens the series has ever pulled off (and that’s saying something). And yet it’s the end of the episode that easily slides into the all-time Breaking Bad Holy Shit Canon.

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Breaking Bad Recap and Reaction, S05E09, “Blood Money”: And we’re back

The ever erudite Simon Howell will have a review of the midseason premiere of Breaking Bad later tonight, but until then, here’s a quick look at the most anticipated return of the year. From the opening shots of a seeming skateboard ramp to the closing ones with Walt and Hank, “Blood Money” is fully aware …

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Ranking The Films of Director Noah Baumbach

Witty, insightful and unapologetically New York, are just a few ways writer-director Noah Baumbach has been described. Born and raised in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Baumbach made his writing and directing debut with Kicking and Screaming, immediately drawing comparisons to both Woody Allen and Whit Stillman. Through his seminal film, he’s received an Academy Award nomination for …

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The Bridge, Ep. 1.01: “Pilot” showcases assets and drawbacks of FX’s latest drama

The Bridge, Season 1, Episode 1: “Pilot” Written by  Meredith Stiehm and Elwood Reid Directed by Gerardo Naranjo Airs Wednesdays at 10pm ET on FX “Pilotitis” is an umbrella term that connotes a wide variety of complaints typically leveled at pilots, from awkward bouts of exposition, to shoddy or simplistic characterization, to overplotting, but one …

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Status at the Half (TV), Part 2: Best of the Rest

As my Televerse cohost Simon Howell and I discussed in our Top 10 TV Series of 2013 (So Far), this has been a spectacular year for television, with many shows delivering remarkably consistent seasons (or half-seasons) of memorable, moving television. A number of series were in contention for our Top 10 but didn’t quite make …

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