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The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master" is fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air. It has rich material and isn't clear what it thinks about it. It has two performances of Oscar caliber, but do they connect? Its title character is transparentl...

Special Supplement,Art & Life Desk

Requiem For A Dream

Alcoholics or drug addicts feel wrong when they don't feel right. Eventually they feel very wrong, and must feel right, and at that point their lives spiral down into some sort of final chapter--recovery if they're lucky, hopelessness and death if they're not.What is fascinating about &q...

All Section,Art & Glamour

The Royal Tenenbaums

The Tenenbaums occupy a big house in a kind of dreamy New York. It has enough rooms for each to hide and nurture a personality incompatible with the others. Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), the patriarch, left home abruptly some years before and has been living in a hotel, on credit, ever since. Ther...

All Section,Art & Glamour

Infernal Affairs

Infernal Affairs’ is about a cop who is actually a gangster, and a gangster who is actually a cop. Early scenes show them being put into deep cover: A young gangster is assigned by a crime boss to enter the police academy, and a young academy graduate is spun off from the force and assigned to...

All Section,Art & Glamour

Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame’ is the culmination of a decade of blockbuster filmmaking, the result of years of work from thousands of people. It is designed to be the blockbuster of all the blockbusters, a movie with a dozen subplots colliding, and familiar faces from over 20 other movies. It’s rea...