The light green accents scattered throughout Carmike Cinemas’s Ovation Cinema Grill 9 in Holly Springs suggest, ever so subtly, the vintage Art Deco motif of the early twentieth century’s golden age of movie houses. It’s the last bit of nostalgia you’re likely to detect in western Wake County’s newest cinema, the latest addition to the […]
Neil Morris
Posted inFilm & Television
Movie Review: The Birth of a Nation Overturns the Conventions and Apologies of White Hollywood
The Birth of a Nation★★★ ½ Opening Friday, October 7, 2016The Birth of a Nation is a Biblical odyssey in reverse, with New Testament love and forgiveness gradually yielding to Old Testament wrath and vengeance. Any Christ allegory applied to slave rebellion leader Nat Turner is transfigured into an allegory of righteous warriors like Judah, […]
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Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven Not Even a Five
The Magnificent Seven ★★ 1/2 Now Playing The only thing intriguing about The Magnificent Seven is its sledgehammer-subtle symbolism. A black man rides into town and, aided by his garrulous Irish sidekick, assembles a multicultural coalition to beat back the evils of twisted capitalism, embodied by a corrupt industrialist who wants to take over through […]
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Movie Review: Who Thought the Director of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Needed a Crack at Ben-Hur?
Ben-Hur★★ Now playing It speaks volumes that the latest film version of Ben-Hur more resembles the movie-within-a-movie in the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar! than the famed 1959 Oscar-winning adaptation directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston. After all, Wyler won three Academy Awards over his illustrious career. Timur Bekmambetov, the director of this big-screen […]
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Movie Review: Neo-Western Hell or High Water Douses Black and White Hats in Texas Dust Until Everything Turns Gray
Hell or High Water ★★★★ Opening Friday, August 19, 2016 At its core, Hell or High Water is a traditional Western movie featuring cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. The “outlaws” are introduced as wild-eyed, bank-robbing brothers in the vein of Frank and Jesse James. The aw-shucks lawman has a Native American sidekick. There […]
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Movie Review: When Good Actors Meet Weirdly Developed Characters, You Get Florence Foster Jenkins
Florence Foster Jenkins ★★ ½ Now playing It gives director Stephen Frears undue credit to describe Florence Foster Jenkins as an exquisite reproof of audience voyeurism. Led along by a procession of reaction shots and comedic framing, the biopic invites us to chortle at a real-life heiress’s legendarily cacophonous crooning. But it hits a sour […]
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Movie Review: Though Flawed, Suicide Squad Brings Much-Needed Depth and Levity to the DC Extended Universe
Suicide Squad ★★★ Now playing The high ideals of the Bush-era War on Terror included plunging our hands into the filth of rendition and “enhanced interrogation techniques,” usually carried out by foreign contractors at black sites outside the United States’ jurisdiction. Today, the U.S. is part of an uneasy confederation of foes with the shared […]
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Bad Moms Remixes The Change-Up and The Hangover for Women. You’re Welcome?
BAD MOMS Opening Friday, July 29 With a laser sight on its target audience, Bad Moms provides a communal, cathartic night out for the Magic Mike crowd. It’s a chance to live vicariously through world-weary women who cast off their maternal shackles and let their fun flags fly. Realism doesn’t matter when viewers are looking […]
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Movie Review: For Better and Worse, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping Is a Feature-Length Lonely Island Video
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping★★ ½ Opening Friday, June 3, 2016 The satirical targets of Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping aren’t just the vapid pop music industry and the boy bands that inevitably splinter when the marketplace lures their key members to solo stardom. The more self-referential sendup is of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and […]
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Movie Reviews: The Nice Guys, The Meddler, and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
The Nice Guys ★★★ ½ The Meddler ★★★ Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising ★ Opening Friday, May 20, 2016 Hollywood in the 1970s is not just the seamy backdrop for The Nice Guys. It’s the uproarious foreground of the buddy action comedy, which smartly borrows from its genre forerunners—an homage giddily reflected in a funhouse mirror. […]