When Downton Abbey premieres its anxiously anticipated fifth season on Sunday, Jan. 4, at 9:00 p.m. on UNC-TV, fans will revel in the lives and loves of the Earl of Grantham and his extended family—and the de facto family of servants with whom their lives are closely intertwined. But an important part of the show’s […]
Laura Boyes
Posted inCulture
Movie review: Bollywood action-adventure classic Sholay
Sholay ★★★★ 7 p.m. tonight at The Cary Since the demise of the late, lamented Galaxy Cinema, several theaters have stepped up to satisfy the significant local audience for South Asian films. None has taken a more interesting route than The Cary Theater (122 E. Chatham Street), a downtown gem that has been putting classic […]
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Film review: Veronica Mars
Veronica Mars★★★ The story of the Kickstarter campaign that propelled Veronica Mars into movie theaters is hardly a secret. Over 91,000 “Marshmallows,” as the TV-show-turned-movie’s dedicated fans call themselves, chipped in for the chance to see their favorite character and her besties once more. Those fans turned out in force on Saturday at AMC Southpoint […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Meryl Streep and company chew the scenery of August: Osage County
August: Osage County Opens Friday August: Osage County, playwright Tracy Letts’ supercharged family drama, careens onto the screen with an A-list cast in high gear. When a family patriarch (Sam Shepard) goes AWOL, his pill-popping wife (Meryl Streep) summons her daughters home to the ground zero of nuclear family dysfunction. The movie, which Letts adapted […]
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Saving Mr. Banks is both a celebration and an explication of the dark magic of Mary Poppins
Saving Mr. Banks Opens Friday Mary Poppins is a decidedly odd children’s film. You may remember the bubbly songs, Julie Andrews’ relentless cheeriness and Dick Van Dyke’s horrendous Cockney accent, but do you remember how long it is? (139 minutes!) Or, how disturbingly dysfunctional the Banks family appears? And how old Mr. and Mrs. Banks […]
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Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing is a treat for fans of Buffy and Shakespeare alike
Much Ado About Nothing Opens Friday Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare’s romantic battle of wits, is the template for pretty much every Hollywood romcom: The feuding lovers, supportive pals and sabotaging frenemies are instantly recognizable. Joss Whedon’s vanity project/summer tent-pole detox, filmed in black and white, in his own Santa Monica house over the course […]
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Les Misérables reaches the screen in an extravagant visualization
Les MisérablesOpens Tuesday The wildly popular musical Les Misérables, first produced in English in 1985, reaches the screen in an extravagant visualization directed by Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech). Like Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina it seeks to reinvent the intimate epic, while taking an opposite tack. Where Wright took a realistic plotan adulterous affairand superimposed […]
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Aging gracefully in The Guilt Trip
The Guilt Trip opens Wednesday (see times below) Our rating: Like a 2010s version of a John Hughes movie, The Guilt Trip explores confining family bonds with knowing humor. Andy Brewster (Seth Rogen) is an organic chemistry nerd who spent his own cash to manufacture cartons of his FDA-approved green cleaning solution. Embarking across the […]
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Anna Karenina catches her train
Anna Karenina opens Friday (see times below) Our rating: Joe Wright’s visualization of Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel about adulterous passion is audacious: Set largely in a theater and deploying archaic 19th-century stagecraft, the actors, and their characters, navigate elegant artifice. The eye is never bored looking at the beautifully imagined sets by Sarah Greenwood, and […]
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Life of Pi is a touching fable
Life of Pi opens Friday (see times below) Our rating: Pi Patel lives with his family in Pondicherry, India, where they own a zoo. Financial woes force them to sell their menagerie in North America, and they set out together on a long sea voyage. A storm savages the vessel and strands Pi in a […]