Author: Roger Moore
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Salt and Pepper don’t add up to enough laughs in ‘Get Hard’
Kevin Hart finds himself shoehorned into a Will Ferrell buddy comedy in “Get Hard,” a politically incorrect romp that only rarely romps. It’s a “Trading Places” variation, with Ferrell as James, a top-dollar fund manager busted by the Feds and set to go to prison. So he turns to someone for help in acquiring survival…
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Another E.T. is out of place on Earth in Dreamworks’ ‘Home’
Starring the voices of Jim Parsons, Rihanna, Steve Martin; directed by Tim Johnson; 94 minutes; PG for mild action and some rude humor “Home” is an energetic, obvious animated comedy packed with the sort of low humor and silly laughs that drive very small children wild. It’s a lesser Dreamworks work, in other words, no…
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Smith and Robbie throw a wet blanket into ‘Focus’
Starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Rodrigo Santoro, B.D. Wong, Gerald McRaney, Adrian Martinez; directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa; 104 minutes; R for language, some sexual content and brief violence The trouble with movies about “The Big Con” is that they condition us to not believe anything we see up on screen – relationships,…
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‘Kingsman’ sends up Bond by stealing a (bad) Bond movie plot
Starring Colin Firth, Mark Hamill, Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson, Jack Davenport; directed by Matthew Vaughn; 129 minutes; R for sequences of strong violence, language and some sexual content. The Spy Who Amused Me, James Bond, has abdicated that title. That’s the gap the Mark Millar/Dave Gibbons comic “The Secret Service” leaped into, and it’s…
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‘Spongebob’ steps out of water for his latest movie
Starring Antonio Banderas and the voices of Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Mr. Lawrence, Clancy Brown; directed by Paul Tibbitt; 90 minutes; PG for mild action and rude humor Spongebob Squarepants goes where Homer Simpson and others have gone before, an animated character who steps out of his colorful 2-D world and into our 3-D one,…
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Wahlberg doesn’t quite get audience to root for him in ‘Gambler’
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Michael Kenneth Williams, Jessica Lange, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Anthony Kelley, George Kennedy; directed by Rupert Wyatt; R for language throughout, and for some sexuality/nudity; 111 minutes Mark Wahlberg takes on his most ambitious acting job ever in “The Gambler,” a gritty remake of a 1974 film that starred James Caan. And…
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Wallis, Jamie and Jay Z bring ‘Annie’ back to life
“Annie,” a musical that the decades have rendered into a punchline, is modernized, made more streetwise and brought back to life in a production backed by Jay Z and various members of the Will and Jada Pinkett Smith empire. The new “Annie” is intimate and hip, sarcastic and flip. It opens by mocking the cliched…
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‘Exodus’ is impressive, but might leave you cold
Sprawling and spectacular, brawny and bloody, Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” stabs an exclamation point onto a year peppered with religious films, one that began with the less conventional and trippier “Noah.” This is Old Testament as action epic, featuring a two-fisted, Hittite-slaying “Prince of Egypt,” a Moses selected to lead the Hebrews out…
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‘Horrible Bosses 2’ isn’t about bosses at all
Starring Jason Bateman, Chris Pine, Jason Sudeikis, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Aniston, Charlie Day, Christoph Waltz; directed by Sean Anders; 108 minutes; R for strong crude sexual content and language throughout Your enjoyment of “Horrible Bosses 2” is almost wholly dependent on your tolerance for clusters of funny actors, babbling, riffing – and in the case…
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‘Beyond the Lights’ is a romance that asks, ‘Can this celebrity be saved?’
“Beyond the Lights” is another pain-behind-the-music romance. But it’s so well-written, cast and played that we lose ourselves in the comfort food familiarity of it all. This hip-hop era “Bodyguard” has heart and soul, thanks to stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Minnie Driver and Nate Parker. Simple as it is, it simply works. Mbatha-Raw shows a totally…