Arts & Entertainment
Movie Reviews: Captain Phillips, Gravity, Machete Kills
Here's what movies are playing at area movie theaters in Cedar Rapids and Marion this weekend.
Movie information aggregated from moviefone.com
Run Time: 90 mins.
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Starring: Sandra Bullock , George Clooney , Ed Harris , Orto Ignatiussen , Phaldut Sharma
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
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Reviews:
Slant Magazine: Alfonso Cuarón's triumph is an invigoratingly clean, elegant display of action choreography, a La Région Centrale you can still take grandma to see. Full Review
NPR: Cuaron and his son Jonas have felt the need not just to come up with ways to keep the characters talking — there's even a mildly sneery reference to NPR at one point — but to brush in backstory and motivation, quite as if the peril of being isolated in space with a limited supply of oxygen weren't sufficient rationale for the characters' actions. Full Review
Run Time: 134min.
Director(s): Paul Greengrass
Starring: Tom Hanks , Max Martini , Catherine Keener , Michael Chernus , Corey Johnson
Reviews:
Slant Magazine: It works too hard to keep matters on an even, we're-all-more-alike-than-different keel, which is just one part of its chief problem of forcefully conveying information and intent. Full Review
New York Magazine: It’s when the Somalis spirit Phillips away in a closed lifeboat that Captain Phillips becomes a great thriller, in part because Barry Ackroyd’s camera is stuck inside with the characters and its jitters finally seem earned. Full Review
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Run Time: 107min.
Director(s): Robert Rodriguez
Starring: Danny Trejo , Mel Gibson , Michelle Rodriguez , Sofía Vergara , Jessica Alba
Reviews: Not Yet Available.
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Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2
Run Time: 95min.
Starring: Andy Samberg , Bill Hader , Anna Faris , Neil Patrick Harris , James Caan
Director(s): Cody Cameron, Kris Pearn
Sandie Angulo Chen, Moviefone: "With the original, I was too upset that it was nothing like the classic children's book I loved reading to my children to give into the clever story line. But now that I know not to expect an adaptation at all, I was able to enjoy the sequel and think parents will feel for Mr. Lockwood as he tries to help his son Flint, and let's be clear, those little food-animals are just too cute to resist." Full review.
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Run Time: 91min.
Director(s): Brad Furman
Starring: Ben Affleck , Justin Timberlake , Gemma Arterton , Anthony Mackie , Oliver Cooper
Reviews:
Variety: Runner Runner’s appeal increases dramatically whenever Affleck enters the frame. Full Review
USA Today: One of the film's biggest problems is that Richie is an unsympathetic and rather dim character. The badly drawn role does the likable Timberlake no favors. Full Review
Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!
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Run Time: 90min.
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt , Scarlett Johansson , Julianne Moore , Tony Danza , Brie Larson
Director(s): Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Reviews:
Claudia Puig, USA Today: Johansson gives one of her best performances as the bossy, gum-chewing Jersey girl determined to change Jon into her image of a romantic hero. Tony Danza and Glenne Headly are hilarious as Jon's parents. Gordon-Levitt proves he can act, write and direct with equal dexterity. Full Review
David Edelstein, New York Magazine (Vulture): The movie is a broad ethnic comedy, but there’s nothing broad about the wicked-smart way it’s executed. Full Review
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Run Time: 146 mins.
Starring: Hugh Jackman , Jake Gyllenhaal , Paul Dano , Melissa Leo , Maria Bello
Director(s): Denis Villeneuve
Reviews
The New Yorker - Prisoners, despite its gathering anxiety, has some of the pleasures of ordinary thrillers. But Villeneuve, who previously directed “Incendies,” does volatile scenes without exaggeration; parts of the movie are exceedingly violent, though the violence isn’t “fun”— it makes you wince. Full Review
The Guardian - In his first English language film, Quebeçois director Denis Villeneuve has produced a masterful thriller that is also an engrossing study of a smalltown America battered by recession, fear and the unrelenting elements. Full Review
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Run Time: 110 Mins.
Starring: Robert De Niro , Michelle Pfeiffer , Tommy Lee Jones , Dianna Agron , John D'Leo
Director: Luc Besson
Reviews:
Robert De Niro – wait for it – in the role of a mobster. Now there's an original idea. In The Family, not to be confused with De Niro's roles in GoodFellas, The Godfather: Part II, The Untouchables, Casino, Once Upon a Time in America, Analyze This, Analyze That (go on, make your list), De Niro plays Giovanni Manzoni, a mob snitch. For ratting out his own wiseguys back in Brooklyn, Giovanni is put in the witness protection program, dragging along his real family, wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), daughter Belle (Dianna Agron) and son Warren (John D'Leo). After working their way through the States, then Paris and now remote Normandy, the Manzonis are pretty fed up with their lot in life, which means living in fear that the mob will catch up with them at any time.-Rolling Stone Read more
The Family is a fish-out-of-water/buddy comedy/Mob flick. But most of all, it's a missed opportunity.
The bad pacing, humorless scenarios and repetitive gags (** out of four; rated R; opens Friday nationwide) undercut the few inspired moments, most of which hinge on the chemistry between Robert De Niro's Mob boss and Tommy Lee Jones' FBI agent. USA Today. Read More
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Run Time: 105 Mins.
Starring: Patrick Wilson , Rose Byrne , Lin Shaye , Ty Simpkins , Jocelin Donahue
Director: James Wan
Reviews
Can we just say this about director James Wan? If you like horror films and you notice he’s directed a horror film, make the investment and see it.
Wan helmed 2010′s “Insidious,” a movie that cost $1.5 million to make and went on to earn over $97 million — and it wasn’t just because of a clever marketing campaign. The guy knows how to manipulate a horror audience. And so, here we are with “Insidious: Chapter 2.” - ABCNews Full Review
With his last helping of old-fashioned ooga booga, “The Conjuring,” still scaring up business in a few hundred theaters, James Wanreturns with two more hours of seat-clenching scares in “Insidious: Chapter 2,” a modestly scaled and highly pleasurable sequel to Wan’s low-budget ($1.5 million) 2011 smash that should have genre fans begging for thirds. Indeed, with a clever coda that suggests how this franchise might easily continue even without. - Variety.com See Full Review
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Rush
Run Time: 123min.
Director(s): Ron Howard
Starring: Chris Hemsworth , Daniel Brühl , Olivia Wilde , Alexandra Maria Lara , Stephen Mangan
Reviews:
NPR: A swift-moving, character-rich biopic whose kinetic Grand Prix sequences are constantly being overshadowed by genuinely riveting scenes of ... people talking.Full Review
USA Today: Brilliantly captures the exhilaration that comes from facing death head-on. It's also an ode to joyous rivalry. Full Review
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Run Time: 119 mins.
Starring: Vin Diesel , Karl Urban , Jordi Mollà , Matt Nable , Katee Sackhoff
Director: David N. Twohy
Having been left for dead in more ways than one after the critical and commercial failure of 2004’s “The Chronicles of Riddick,” Vin Diesel’s futuristic fugitive Richard B. Riddick gets his lean, mean, R-rated mojo back for “Riddick,” an improbable but very enjoyable sequel that recaptures much of the stripped-down intensity of Diesel and director David Twohy’s franchise starter “Pitch Black.” ~ Scott Foundas, Variety See Full Review
If only audiences, like the title character in Riddick (* out of four; rated R; opens Friday nationwide), were equipped with luminescent extra-vision eyeballs. Then it might be possible to muddle through the dark and incoherent action scenes. But to the ordinary naked eye, characters and landscape look bathed in dusty milk chocolate. See Full Review
Do you plan on seeing this movie? Leave a review when you get home and tell your neighbors how it was!
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