Entertainment

Movie review: ‘Paint’ dabs at comedy as portrait of quirky TV artist

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A past-present temporal mashup, “Paint” from first-time feature writer-director Brit McAdams is set in a world that has stood still, or at least been slow to catch up to our present day. The film, which is set in Vermont and is said to be a sendup of pioneering TV artist Bob Ross, is a deadpan, perhaps too deadpan and not-very-funny comedy that paints a portrait (excuse me, it’s contagious) of Carl Nargle (Owen Wilson), a bearded, ‘fro-sporting, pipe-smoking star of the local Burlington, Vermont, PBS station. Carl’s show is entitled “Paint,” and on it he, OK, paints pictures, all of them of Vermont’s Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in the state.

Movie review: Affleck’s ‘Air’ entertains with assists from top-brand talent

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At the end of “Air,” director and co-star Ben Affleck, bafflingly bewigged as Nike CEO and co-founder Phil Knight, lies back on his office couch and utters a single word: “equity.” It’s a bit of a cheeky callback to something that happens even before the movie starts: the appearance of the production logo for Affleck’s new company, Artists Equity, which produced “Air,” and which seeks to shake up business as usual in Hollywood, in the same way that Nike and the Jordan family shook up business as usual in the sneaker industry.

Movie Review: A compassionate immigrant drama in ‘Tori and Lokita’

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It’s one of the great ironies of cinema that many — not all, but many — of the most seemingly arthouse filmmakers make some of the most approachable films.

Movie review: ‘Full River Red’ overflows with comedy, drama and intrigue

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Yimou Zhang, the great Fifth Generation Chinese auteur and director of “Raise the Red Lantern” (1991), “Hero” (2002), “House of Flying Daggers” (2004), “A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop” (2009) and the Matt Damon-starring (also with Pedro Pascal) “The Great Wall” (2016), sets his sights on the Song Dynasty and a patriotic poem attributed to the real-life Chinese hero General Yue Fei.

Movie review: Chang can dunk (but won’t) on ‘Chang Can Dunk’

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In a recent interview with GQ, Hong Kong star Donnie Yen noted that Caine, his character in the upcoming action blockbuster “John Wick: Chapter 4,” had originally been given a more common Chinese name. The choice bothered Yen, who lobbied successfully to have the character renamed. “Why does he always have to be called Shang or Chang?” he said in the interview. “Why do you have to be so generic?”

Movie review: ‘Operation Fortune’ is Jason Statham’s show, but Hugh Grant steals it

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Say this for “Operation Fortune,” and say this first: Hugh Grant is having a ball.

Review: Irish Oscar nominee ‘The Quiet Girl’ speaks clearly

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Though gently restrained and delicately crafted, “The Quiet Girl” has managed to make plenty of noise. Colm Bairead’s modestly scaled drama, his narrative directorial debut, is the highest-grossing Irish-language film of all time. It bested “Belfast” at the Irish Film & Television Awards. And it’s nominated for best international film at the Academy Awards, a first for Ireland.

Review: ‘Marlowe,’ with Neeson, resurrects a vintage gumshoe

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The richly hard-boiled terrain of detective Philip Marlowe has always been, to quote Raymond Chandler, “a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.”

Movie review: Rom-com ‘Your Place or Mine’ goes nowhere

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In a funnier world, Zoë Chao and Tig Notaro are starring in their own romantic comedy together. Meantime, in the real world, they’re ringers in support of Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, the ones running what we’ll charitably call “the show” in “Your Place or Mine.” No question mark on that title. None needed. It’s a flat business proposition, like the movie now streaming on Netflix.

Movie review: Tragic ‘Close’ superb tale of innocence, loss

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The Cannes award-winner “Close” from Belgian writer-director Lukas Dhont (“Girl”) is a sad tale of innocence and loss. The protagonists are 13-year-old boys who are inseparable. At school, they are teased, sometimes in an ugly manner, about being gay. This causes one of the boys, Leo (a revelatory Eden Dambrine), to push the other, Remi (the sensitive Gustav De Waele) away, resulting in tragedy.