Mad Max: Fury Road★★★★ Opening Friday In Greek mythology, the Furies were goddesses of justice and vengeance, particularly for crimes against the natural order. Mad Max: Fury Road takes cues from this feminist allegory while delivering—in spades—the sheer havoc the title also suggests. Director George Miller paints an immersive post-apocalyptic epoch where societal structure has […]
Neil Morris
Posted inFilm & Television
Ex Machina is a smart, provocative new entry in the booming A.I. sci-fi genre
EX MACHINA Opening Friday A striking yet seemingly throwaway moment in EX MACHINA occurs when Nathan (Oscar Isaac), a reclusive tech tycoon, joins a mute girl Friday named Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno) for an impromptu dance routine set to Oliver Cheatham’s R&B hit “Get Down Saturday Night.” The lone observer of this pas de deux is […]
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Full Frame (Saturday): It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you
Update: After this post, (T)ERROR won The Reva and David Logan Grand Jury Award, sharing the prize, for the first time in Full Frame history, with another film, Kings of Nowhere. See the full list of award-winners, which were announced yesterday, here. Audiences mainlining three full days of this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival […]
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Full Frame: Cue the queues at the festival’s bountiful Friday
After wading into the relatively shallow Thursday pool of opening-day films, the 18th Full Frame Documentary Festival dove headlong into its perennially plentiful Friday fare. Amid a sea of food tents and converted hotel ballrooms, it was time for the full panoply of passholders to navigate the lines winding like tributaries through the festival’s four-block […]
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Movie review: Furious 7 and the rise of the action-movie machines
Furious 7 ★★ ½ Opening Friday There’s a cringeworthy moment in Furious 7 when it appears that Paul Walker’s final scene in the star-making action series will be of him trying to revive a car crash victim. (Walker, who played Brian O’Connor in The Fast and the Furious and its many sequels, died in a […]
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Television: Twice Born follows challenging parental journey of Raleigh couple and others
Fetal surgery is barely 30 years old, with the first in utero intervention taking place in 1981. While breakthroughs in stem cell and gene therapy might some day make fetal surgery obsolete, today it remains a cutting-edge, highly sophisticated surgical procedure reserved for the most complex birth defects. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is among […]
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Ron Rash’s fine, N.C.-set novel Serena turns into a spectacular misfire of a film
SERENA Opening Friday Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence’s coronation as Gen Y’s Bogie and Bacall runs into a spectacular snafu in the North Carolina-set feature SERENA, based on Ron Rash’s novel. The film ventured through development hell to video-on-demand before its muted theatrical release. George Pemberton (Cooper) watches Serena Shaw (Lawrence) ride equestrian for mere […]
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Contemporary Russian corruption tangles with timeless human struggles in Leviathan
Leviathan Now playing Portraits of Lenin, Brezhnev and Gorbachev are hauled out for target practice in a decaying Russian fishing village along the Barents Sea coast. “Got anyone more current?” asks Kolya (Aleksei Serebryakov), an irascible but hard-working dimwit who operates an auto repair shop next to his home on the outskirts of town. “It’s […]
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Movie review: Julianne Moore gives a raw, singular performance in unevenly written Still Alice
Still Alice ★★★ Now playingJulianne Moore’s portrait of the effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease has already earned the actress her fifth Oscar nomination, which is likely to be her first win later this month. The gradations of her decline are the relentless focus of Still Alice, a heartrending film that balances poignancy and melodrama with […]
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An in-progress documentary about a Raleigh teacher gets swept up in a protest movement
An accurate portrait of an educator would land somewhere between the extremes of Dead Poets Society and Bad Teacher. Robert Phillips and Jay Korreck hope to illuminate that middle range with Teacher of the Year, their in-progress documentary about Angie Scioli, a teacher at Leesville Road High School in Raleigh. What started as a spotlight […]