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Movie review: 'Dinner for Schmucks'

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 3:00am EDT

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Not even Steve Carell and Paul Rudd can save this story of misunderstanding and humiliation from being distinctly unfunny.

Not even Steve Carell and Paul Rudd can save this story of misunderstanding and humiliation from being distinctly unfunny.

Movie review: 'Charlie St. Cloud'

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 3:00am EDT

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Zac Efron shows promise as an actor. But director Burr Steers fails to fully embrace the film's weepy potential.

Zac Efron shows promise as an actor. But director Burr Steers fails to fully embrace the film's weepy potential.

Movie review: 'Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel'

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 3:00am EDT

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Nowadays, the name Hugh Hefner likely evokes the image of an elderly man in silk pajamas, flanked by a bevy of ridiculously young beauties partying at his Beverly Hills mansion.

Nowadays, the name Hugh Hefner likely evokes the image of an elderly man in silk pajamas, flanked by a bevy of ridiculously young beauties partying at his Beverly Hills mansion. But, as the entertaining documentary "Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel" proves, the founder of the Playboy empire has been not only a wildly successful purveyor of hedonism but also an influential defender of human rights and moral freedoms.

Movie review: 'Countdown to Zero'

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 3:00am EDT

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The documentary is both a thorough look at the many ways the world's 23,000 nuclear weapons endanger us and a desperate plea to cut that total to zero.

"Countdown to Zero" opens with an image that terrifies us, though we can't necessarily say why. By the time this unsettling documentary is over, we know the reason and we are even more frightened.

Movie Review: 'Get Low'

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 3:00am EDT

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Robert Duvall gives one of his best performances portraying a loner who decides to attend his own funeral.

There's one in nearly every good folk yarn or fairy tale: the mysterious oldster living alone in the woods. In the case of the fact-based and transporting "Get Low," he's a loner who, in an unlikely instance of self-promotion, comes to be known as the Mysterious Hermit of Caleb County, and he's played with unerring understatement by Robert Duvall in one of his finest performances.

Movie review: 'Life During Wartime'

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 3:00am EDT

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Todd Solondz recasts his 'Happiness' characters, but the results are still hilarious, uncomfortable and insightful.

Todd Solondz is a shock jock of a filmmaker, a writer-director who always keeps a glass of cold water for throwing at the audience handy. Which almost but not quite prepares you for "Life During Wartime," his latest sharp-edged comic tragedy about families, forgiveness and the unsettling ironies that can threaten to unravel even an ordinary life.

Capsule Movie Reviews: 'The Concert' and 'Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel'

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 3:00am EDT

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Also: 'The Dry Land' and 'Spoken Word'

"The Concert" moves from rowdy, broad comedy to shameless heart-tugging, but Romanian writer-director Radu Mihaileanu keeps this French production flowing buoyantly, skittering past all manner of improbabilities.

Movie review: 'Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno'

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 3:00am EDT

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The great French director's film about obsessive madness never was completed. Fifty years later, now we know why.

Failed films make dynamic documentary subjects. "The Epic That Never Was" brilliantly detailed why the Charles Laughton "I, Claudius" never materialized, and "Lost in La Mancha" did the same for Terry Gilliam's "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote." Now you can add another film to that exceptional list: " Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno."