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Looper (2012)
Hunted by your future, haunted by your past.
Filmmaker(s): Rian Johnson

In the year 2044, time travel has not yet been invented but in 30 years it will have been. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target into the past where a looper, a hired gun, like Joe is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good until the day the mob decides to close the loop, sending back Joe's future self for assassination.

Annoyingly Trustworthy Monkey Time is all we must encounter; all else is urges. Narrative is built on this simple principle, usually with time forcing the cadence and agents with fate embodying the urges. So when time enters the story as a citizen, we have the...
Published May 13, 2022
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Vantage Point (2008)
8 strangers. 8 points of view. 1 truth.
Filmmaker(s): Pete Travis

The attempted assassination of the American president is told and re-told from several different perspectives.

Unbraided Gosh what a seductive idea. Gosh what a spasm of waste. The problem is that clever ideas were borrowed and spliced together with no annealing. So we have this business of recorded movies and the movie we watch overlap. The movies within are by...
Published May 13, 2022
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Exorcist: the Beginning (2004)
Go back to where the horror began.
Filmmaker(s): Renny Harlin

Years before Father Merrin helped save Regan MacNeil’s soul, he first encounters the demon Pazuzu in East Africa.

The Phantom Devil You know, the very best film experiences are sometimes the ones that are the hardest work. If you don’t work at this one, you’ll be stuck at the John Carpenter level. But if you do… Consider it this way. Some movies are...
Published May 13, 2022
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The Illusionist (2006)
Nothing is what it seems
Filmmaker(s): Neil Burger

With his eye on a lovely aristocrat, a gifted illusionist named Eisenheim uses his powers to win her away from her betrothed, a crown prince. But Eisenheim's scheme creates tumult within the monarchy and ignites the suspicion of a dogged inspector.

Flight Club We know what’s coming with this and we even know how. At least I think most viewers will. It is a con movie, but with more explicit folding. In the usual con genre, there is a mark who is fooled along with us...
Published May 13, 2022
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21 Grams (2003)
How much does life weigh?

Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought together by a terrible accident that changes their lives.

Every Hair on your Head One of the key things a storyteller needs to decide is the tense of the story. Is it something that happened in the past, is happening now or will/could happen? Each of these bestows riches on a film and we...
Published May 13, 2022
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Exit to Eden (1994)
To crack this case, these two cops will have to flash more than their badges.
Filmmaker(s): Garry Marshall

Photographer Elliot Slater has inadvertently snapped the only existing photos of elusive jewel thief Omar. When Elliot leaves for a private vacation on an S&M island, he is followed by Omar; Omar's partner, Nina; and police officers Fred and Sheila. Unaware of the number of people chasing him, Elliot enjoys his stay at the resort, and finds himself falling in love with head dominatrix Lisa.

Whipped I am particularly attracted to odd genre-crossing experiments that fail. When they work, the reasons why are too tied to the mysteries of perception to tease out. Like explanations of the economy, they are all speculations bound to be bogus. But failures are easier...
Published May 13, 2022
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Go (1999)
Life begins at 3am.
Filmmaker(s): Doug Liman

Grocery store clerk Simon occasionally sells drugs from his cash register at work, so when soap opera actors Adam and Zack come looking for Ecstasy on a quiet Christmas Eve, they are surprised to find Ronna covering his shift. Desperate for money, Ronna decides to become an impromptu drug dealer, unaware that Adam and Zack are secretly working for obsessed narcotics officer Burke.

Unbearable Lightness of Going Critics and commentors have beaten to death the Pulp Fiction’ comparisons. Yes, this has parallel stories, time folding (but not the time shuffling of Pulp’), black and white shuffling, guns drugs and ironic violence, diner scenes and a hip perspective. But...
Published May 13, 2022
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Snake Eyes (1998)
Believe everything except your eyes.
Filmmaker(s): Brian De Palma

All bets are off when shady homicide cop Rick Santoro witnesses a murder during a boxing match. It's up to him and lifelong friend, Naval intelligence agent Kevin Dunne to uncover the conspiracy behind the killing. At every turn, Santoro makes increasingly shocking discoveries that even he can't turn a blind eye to.

The Eye That Lies This is a wonderful experience. Never mind that the acting is poor and the story weak — that was never the point. This film was made because DePalma knows how to make his camera dance and wanted to make a film...
Published May 13, 2022
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War Games (1983)
Is it a game, or is it real?
Filmmaker(s): John Badham

High School student David Lightman has a talent for hacking. But while trying to hack into a computer system to play unreleased video games, he unwittingly taps into the Defense Department's war computer and initiates a confrontation of global proportions. Together with his girlfriend and a wizardly computer genius, David must race against time to outwit his opponent and prevent a nuclear Armageddon.

Winken and Blinken There is less reason to see this now than when it was made, except for the lesson that is more clear here than in current filmdom: how do you cinematically convey concepts that don’t fit our fairly limited vocabulary? The lesson here...
Published May 13, 2022
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The Sinister Monk (1965)
Filmmaker(s): Harald Reinl

A hooded serial killer finds a novel way to murder his victims--he lashes them to death with a whip. The police try to track him down before any more murders occur.

4 Conspiracies In the heyday of mystery writing, we had Sayers, Christie, Chesterton and a dozen others who were artists of narrative curves. The game was to create a world, but us in it and only later let us know how wrong we were. And...
Published May 13, 2022
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