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Friday, November 17, 2017
Movie Reviews: Justice League, Lady Bird, The Square, Wonder, The Star
Jane, Dealt
Posted By Scott Renshaw on November 17, 2017, 10:46 AM
A long-awaited super-team-up might dominate the box office, but alternate offerings include a pair of intriguing documentaries, an animated Nativity story, and the winner of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or.
Justice League unites Batman, Wonder Woman and more in a movie that looks like it tried to take every note of criticism on its predecessors. Cannes Palme d'Or-winnerThe Square (pictured) attempts art-world satire that mostly scores cheap points at the expense of hypocritical sophisticates. Dealt profiles an acclaimed close-up magician while trying to ignore what makes his story unique: his complete blindness. The story of pioneering primate researcher Jane Goodall in Brett Morgen's Jane works best when it's just focused on long-lost archival footage.
MaryAnn Johanson notes that Wonder offers up the story of a boy with facial deformities as a tale of other people learning niceness through his distress.
Eric D. Snider finds some positive spiritual values in the timidly respectful animated Nativity story The Star.
In this week's feature review, MaryAnn Johanson praises the honesty, funny portrait of female adolescence in Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird.
Justice League unites Batman, Wonder Woman and more in a movie that looks like it tried to take every note of criticism on its predecessors. Cannes Palme d'Or-winnerThe Square (pictured) attempts art-world satire that mostly scores cheap points at the expense of hypocritical sophisticates. Dealt profiles an acclaimed close-up magician while trying to ignore what makes his story unique: his complete blindness. The story of pioneering primate researcher Jane Goodall in Brett Morgen's Jane works best when it's just focused on long-lost archival footage.
MaryAnn Johanson notes that Wonder offers up the story of a boy with facial deformities as a tale of other people learning niceness through his distress.
Eric D. Snider finds some positive spiritual values in the timidly respectful animated Nativity story The Star.
In this week's feature review, MaryAnn Johanson praises the honesty, funny portrait of female adolescence in Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird.
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