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A White Christmas For a Black Sheep

There's a chill in the air and the leaves have finally begun to change, but the surest sign of the impending holiday season is the exploitative children's fare we've come to expect in the months...

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Sister Soldiers On the Homefront

The affection that the director Noah Baumbach feels for his characters often surpasses the affectations he burdens them with. His best films make audiences care about tightly wound, self-involved...

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When You Wish Upon a Skyscraper

Most fantasies don't have the stamina to withstand the demands of the real world, but Disney's new film "Enchanted" defies expectations by creating a sweet fairy tale for the modern era. Starting in...

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Building a Hero To Tear Him Down

Translating unspoken thoughts to the screen is a difficult task, one that Andrew Wagner's new film, "Starting Out in the Evening," attempts with the best of intentions. But like the thesis that is...

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Blown Up in Translation

The new Japanese action film "Midnight Eagle" has a certain artistry, but its distaste for the bounds of believability is astounding. Underdeveloped action films, it seems, know no language barrier....

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The Problem Child

The predicament of unwed teenage mothers is not supposed to fill the populace with warm, fuzzy feelings. But first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody has written a new role model for teenage girls — one who...

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Those Aren't the Voices of Reason

The perennial staying power of high, squeaky voices singing along to popular music is astounding. Alvin and the Chipmunks have been singing helium-voiced odes to Top 40 songs for nearly 50 years....

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Mother of the Bridesmaids

Katherine Heigl may have been the sleeper hit of 2007. The buxom blonde managed to position herself as a model young spinster by helping Hollywood to avoid the unpleasantness of having to watch an...

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Someone Wake Up Woody Allen

The entirety of Woody Allen's new film "Cassandra's Dream" is spent in dire anticipation of the fate that will befall his two main characters. The relentless monotony of the film's inevitable...

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Making Picks for Draft Day

The specter of involuntary military service strikes fear in the hearts of men across our country — but mostly upper-middle-class white men between the ages of 18 and 35. And filmmakers. The actual...

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Stay Warm, or Look Good Trying

PARK CITY, Utah – It stands to reason that even the most style-conscious among us would put fashion on the back-burner when the mercury dips well below the freezing mark. But when you're guaranteed to...

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Romania and a Hard Place

Communism in practice takes the first half of its slogan — "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" — to the vicious extreme. Cristian Mungiu's new film "4 Months, 3 Weeks...

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Docs Lift the Light & the Heavy

PARK CITY, Utah — The competition to get noticed at Sundance can be steep. Taking on a big topic, or a big name, can provide much-needed attention, but with the documentaries on offer here this year,...

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This Development Can't Get Itself Arrested

With the writers' strike stretching on and little to watch on television other than reality programming and game shows, a new network show with an ensemble cast of familiar faces offers hope for a...

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He'll Never Have Paris

In the grand tradition of female makeover films, from "She's Out of Control" to "The Princess Diaries," Tom Putnam's "The Hottie and the Nottie" stars a perfectly adorable girl in the role of the...

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Maybe Too Much Information

Just in time for Valentine's Day comes a film about the restorative powers of divorce. "Definitely, Maybe," from the producers of "Love, Actually" and "Notting Hill," steals a comma splice from one of...

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Different Ties for Different Binds

Thoughtful and beautifully executed, Brazil's entry for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation," tells the story of a young boy exiled from his own life....

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Money, Fate & the Root of Evil

The now familiar vocabulary of concentration camps on movie screens comes with so much baggage that it can stifle a film before it has even begun. But "The Counterfeiters," this year's Austrian...

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The Duchess of Look But Don't Touch

Jacques Rivette's new film, "The Duchess of Langeais," is an exercise in delayed gratification that may entice the director's fans, but will leave a few viewers sleeping in their seats when it opens...

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Ferrell Pleases The Court

If the trailer for "Semi-Pro" leaves you with that odd feeling of familiarity, it's not your fault. With all the overgrown children that Will Ferrell has brought to the big screen, at this point it can...

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What's in a Nose?

The premise of a poor little rich girl who is cursed with a pig nose until one of her own can truly love her has the potential to ignite a successful feature film, especially when the film stars...

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They Once Were Lost, But Now Are Found

Sending six blind Tibetan teenagers up Mount Everest seems more like a perverse form of torture than the premise for a documentary. But Lucy Walker's "Blindsight," which opens today at IFC Center,...

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Movies in Brief

Watching your dad drunk-drive himself to death can be such a bummer. But not if it supplies you with enough rage to fight your way to the top of the high-school food chain! "Never Back Down" combines...

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Penn Raises The Stakes on Comedy

With all of the famous (and almost famous) faces in Zak Penn's film "The Grand," which opens Friday at City Cinemas Village East, it's a bit hard to distinguish his improvisational documentary from an...

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On the Road, With a Translator

"My Blueberry Nights" is a road movie that keenly displays Wong Kar Wai's aptitude for relationship drama and showcasing the female form, but the Chinese director's American debut often makes the...

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Was That a ... ?

If Judd Apatow is an evangelist spreading the gospel of nonsexual nudity on-screen, then his minions may well inherit the earth. Last year, the comedic guru vowed to offer a visible penis in every new...

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Don't Act So Broken Up

If Jason Segel hadn't written "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" himself, it would be easy to assume that he had made some extremely compromising promises on the casting couch to win his role in the film....

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Hunt's Debut Behind the Camera Finds Uneasy Laughs

Helen Hunt's new film, much like its star and director, is a slow burn. The story of a lonely woman confronted with the betrayal of her husband, her mother, and her God, "Then She Found Me" flirts with...

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At Tribeca, Growing Up Is Hard To Do

As the Tribeca Film Festival winds down its seventh edition this weekend, Robert De Niro's pet project, which is sandwiched between international programs at Sundance and Cannes, continues to feel its...

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Movies in Brief: 'Made of Honor'

Patrick Dempsey may have re-established his heartthrob status as Doctor McDreamy on NBC's "Grey's Anatomy," but his sex appeal still isn't getting him quality film roles. That fact is made painfully...

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Movie Brief: 'Viva'

For those who were hoping that the more embarrassing elements of the sexual revolution were slowly fading into oblivion, Anna Biller is here to make sure that doesn't happen. The director and star of...

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Coming To America To Stay

"Sangre de Mi Sangre" is a film bent on desperation. As it follows the parallel journeys of two Mexican teenagers who smuggle themselves to New York, the film's relentless focus on the adversities...

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Sex on TV Isn't What It Used To Be

As the continued presence of tour buses parked throughout the West Village and lines outside Magnolia Bakery prove, it's hard to ignore the effects of HBO's "Sex and the City" on Manhattan, even four...

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'Savage Grace,' Cultivating the Root of All Evil

Despite its admiration of all the things that money can buy, Tom Kalin's new film "Savage Grace" is especially preoccupied with the things it cannot. Based on the true story of one of the most...

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Movies in Brief: 'Take Out'

Following in the footsteps of Lars von Trier and the Dogme 95 tradition of austerity, "Take Out" is a bare-bones account of a day in the life of an illegal Chinese immigrant. And though Sean Baker's...

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What Just Happened?

If the road to movie hell is paved with good intentions, M. Night Shyamalan is getting pretty close to his destination. The well-compensated writer-director's new eco-thriller, "The Happening," takes...

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Putting a Face on the Franchise

Teaching little girls about the Great Depression as a means of selling them stuff seems an odd approach to storytelling, but that is the premise of the new film "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl," which...

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Movies in Brief: Expired

If anyone can earn sympathy for the plight of the meter maid, it's Samantha Morton. In "Expired," which opens Friday at the Angelika Film Center, Ms. Morton stars as Claire, an introverted but sweet...

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Pleasing the Court in 'Gunnin' for That #1 Spot'

Outsize talent in basketball can get a high school senior many things — piles of free sneakers, college scholarships, and now, a Beastie Boys movie. Adam Yauch, aka MCA, took a year off from recording...

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'Very Young Girls': New York's Children Left Behind

It's difficult to fathom that a sex act between an adolescent girl and a grown man would land the child in jail, but it happens every day on the streets of New York. Much time and effort is spent...

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'August': The Boys of Summer Take a Chilly Fall

There is something extremely maladroit about films set in Manhattan that center on really sweet automobiles. The majority of New Yorkers view the irrelevance of cars in their city as a bonus rather...

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'Frozen River': Living Life on Thin Ice

Melissa Leo owns "Frozen River." The film dwells in that uncomfortable place where long bets are about to go bad, and Ms. Leo's unrelenting focus carries the viewer through it all, her determination...

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'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2': Growing Up and Out of Those Jeans

Surrounded as it is by teenage entertainments caught up in increasingly mature pursuits, the "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" franchise, with its more mature, self-affirming focus, has a...

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'Elegy': Lust, Love, and Everything in Between

Isabel Coixet's "Elegy" posits what happens when a proud and self-defined womanizer finds himself falling in love for the first time. Nicholas Meyer's adaptation of Philip Roth's novel "The Dying...

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Movies in Brief: 'The Little Red Truck'

The new documentary "The Little Red Truck" does not lack in enthusiasm, heart, or compassion. But Rob Whitehair's film, essentially a 102-minute endorsement of community theater, has a problem with...

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Movies in Brief: 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers'

Mr. Shi (Henry O), the lead character in Wayne Wang's new film, "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," suffers from the occasional translation problem. Visiting America from China, he interacts with...

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Portraits on the Walls of City Hall

The foreign dignitaries who are convening at the United Nations this week will certainly be the subjects of many photographs, but in the 19th century, honored guests were entered into New York City...

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'Save Me': Nothing a Little Praying Can't Fix

When a film about an ex-gay Christian ministry begins with drug-addled homosexual sex, it's pretty clear where it's going to end up. Robert Cary's redemption tale "Save Me," which opens in the city on...

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An Unspeakable Act: 'Hounddog'

Known colloquially as "The Dakota Fanning Rape Movie" since its premiere at last year's Sundance Film Festival, Deborah Kampmeier's "Hounddog" arrives in theaters Friday after a long distribution...

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The People's House

Gracie Mansion has seen its share of ups and downs. The site of the mayor's official residence has been bombed, foreclosed on, and used as an ice cream parlor. Mayor Bloomberg has never lived in the...

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