Review: “Hello I Must Be Going”

The bulk of films about white, upper-middle-class, suburban malaise in America–most notably Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty”–are paradoxical in that they explore internalized suffering through externalized, emotive storytelling, wherein even a blank stare comes charged with the assumption of dramatic suffering taking place underneath it. This is a form borrowed from the Douglas Sirk melodramas of

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Review: “Compliance”

“Compliance” is an intentionally maddening, excruciatingly tense thriller that posits a notion I can’t totally agree with. Its story, which sees the morality of ordinary, law-abiding citizens wither under the instruction of a purported authority figure, suggests that nearly anyone is susceptible to following vile, outrageous orders if only they’re told to. Certainly, this is

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Review: “Sleepwalk with Me”

Mike Birbiglia’s “Sleepwalk with Me” is structured like a standard narrative feature, but that’s just a thin veil covering what it actually is: a personal essay. Anyone familiar with Birbiglia’s popular stand-up act knows that he has trouble avoiding the titular behavior of the film–he slumbers in a sleeping-bag zipped up to his neck, wearing

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Weekend Box Office: Platform releases “The Master” and “Arbitrage” steal the show as blockbusters fizzle

“Resident Evil: Retribution” and Disney’s 3-D retrofit of “Finding Nemo” were the new wide releases this weekend, but with underwhelming box office numbers–the former performed nearly 20 percent worse than its immediate predecessor and the latter came in well under industry tracking, more in line with “Beauty and the Beast 3-D” than “The Lion King

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Review: “The Imposter”

A typical documentary seeks to uncover truths about a given subject, be it the war in Iraq, a renegade graffiti artist, or the status of the American education system. “The Imposter” does exactly this, but not in the way that the viewer first expects. Director Bart Layton takes a traditional mystery premise and turns it

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