Dann Gire
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Mel Gibson plays gun-toting corporate Santa in tone-deaf comedy 'Fatman'Nov 12, 2020 5:00 am - “Fatman” - ★ ½ Heavy on the realism. Light on the magical. Virtually nonexistent on the fun. My guess would be that writers/directors Ian Nelms and Eshom Nelms wan...
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Diane Lane, Kevin Costner offer gripping performances in 'Let Him Go'Nov 05, 2020 5:00 am - “Let Him Go” - ★ ★ ½ A range war rages in Thomas Bezucha's Western-inspired revenge tale “Let Him Go,” sort of an AARP variation on John Ford's classic “The Search...
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Inventive time-travel thriller 'Synchronic' compromised by conventionsOct 23, 2020 6:00 am - “Synchronic” - ★ ★ ★ Most people might drop “Synchronic” into the time-travel genre, but it has more in common with the first “Star Wars” trilogy than it does “Loo...
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'Treasure trove' of tapes helped filmmaker create John Belushi documentaryOct 14, 2020 5:30 am - Most biographical documentaries merely inform us about their subjects. Then there's R.J. Cutler's “Belushi,” a biographical doc that in 108 fleet minutes achieves someth...
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De Niro squanders his movie legacy in juvenile family comedy 'The War With Grandpa'Oct 09, 2020 1:00 am - “The War With Grandpa” - ★ ★ Inconceivable. Yep, that's the word. During the 1970s and 1980s, it would have been inconceivable that Robert De Niro, the most incend...
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When movie audiences return, will theaters still be there in the suburbs?Oct 08, 2020 5:15 am - The question that haunts me most about our endangered local movie theaters is this: What if by the time audiences finally return, there aren't any theaters to return to?...
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Lovably quirky father-daughter dynamic drives comedy 'On the Rocks'Oct 01, 2020 6:00 am - “On the Rocks” - ★ ★ ★ “Don't you act normal around any woman?” an exasperated Laura asks her scoundrel senior citizen father, Felix. No, he doesn't. He can't. Fel...
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'Curse of Audrey Earnshaw' drenches coming-of-rage horror tale in dreadOct 01, 2020 6:00 am - “The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw” - ★ ★ ★ Atmospheric horror tales such as Thomas Robert Lee's “The Curse of Audrey Earnshaw” give us the willies by pushing us into a...
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'Dreaming Grand Avenue' takes odd, imaginative detours in Chicago-set dramaSep 24, 2020 6:00 am - “Dreaming Grand Avenue” - ★ ★ ★ Hugh Schulze's literally poetic “Dreaming Grand Avenue” skirts across genres with the reliable grace of an el train hitting every s...
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13 overlooked horror films to check out before HalloweenSep 21, 2020 6:00 am - Every year around this time, the nation's top film critics should gather together for a giant Zoom meeting to hash out a list of the 13 most overlooked scary movies for ...