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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest 2006
Gore Verbinski was aiming high when he conceived and mapped out both the sequel and the grand design for the subsequent 'Pirates' saga with 'Dead Man's Chest'. The movie is clearly taking 'The Empire Strikes Back' as its exemplar, positioned as it is as the middle bridging chapter of a wider trilogy. The tonal and structural riffs on 'Empire' are a!most admirably blatant - it turns its universe considerably bleaker, it gives the callow young central hero complex parental revelations…
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Gran Turismo 2023
Your own opinion of 'Gran Turismo' is likely to depend on whether you choose to place your critical emphasis on what you're hearing, or on what you're actually seeing.
If it's the former, then boy oh boy, good luck wrangling with a screenplay that's constructed almost entirely out of first-base redemption arcs, it's-not-your-fault tragic personal lows, and seen-it-all-before underdog melodrama. The absolute best you can say for most of the dialogue is that it's boilerplate or rote, and at worst…
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Big Daddy 1999
There's an interview that's well worth seeking out between Paul Thomas Anderson and the much-missed Roger Ebert. In it, Anderson mounts a spirited defence of Adam Sandler and his comedy filmography to a sceptical and disbelieving Ebert. 'If I'm feeling down and need cheering up on a Saturday night, I'm gonna put on an Adam Sandler movie' starts Anderson. "That wouldn't cheer me up', sniffs Ebert. Anderson goes on to draw a parallel between the sheer sense of joy and…
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Oppenheimer 2023
Christopher Nolan is, as we all know, fond of non-linear modes of storytelling, but, apart from 'Oppenheimer's many other accomplishments, with this movie he's also achieved his most audacious chronology-bending result to date - 'Oppenheimer' has now retrospectively made 'Tenet' into a much better film. Previously 'Tenet' felt rote and secondhand, like a wannabe trying to make their folk-image of a 'Christopher Nolan Movie' rather than it simply being a Christopher Nolan movie. But now, 'Tenet' looks like a fascinating…
