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Australia

Years in the making and only days off the editing table, Baz Luhrmann’s Australia is an epic about his native land that runs for two hours and 40 minutes, not counting eight minutes of end credits (which you’ll have to sit through if for some reason you want to hear the overproduced Elton John song buried there).



Four Christmases

One of the things I like best about Turner Classic Movies is the plentitude of movies that fit no one’s definition of “classic,” unless you mean that as a euphemism for “old.” I don’t mean bad movies, but simply the satisfying ones Hollywood used to grind out on an assembly line to keep the theaters filled week after week. I especially enjoy the comedies, most of which have at least a few familiar faces and no ambition other than to provide a few laughs before you forget about them.



One Day You'll Understand

Victor (Hippolyte Giradot), the troubled, even tormented Parisian hero in Amos Gitai’s One Day You’ll Understand, spends much of his time and energies over the course of the film trying to understand the obscured experiences of his family during the Second World War German occupation of France. His mother Rivka (Jeanne Moreau), the only surviving family member of that period, never broaches the subject and, for reasons the film never makes explicit, avoids answering questions about it. But Victor, in middle age and for his own reasons, has become intent on finding answers.



The Alphabet Killer

The Alphabet Killer is an effective horror film masquerading as a police thriller, based on a series of unsolved serial killer murders that occurred in Rochester between 1970 and 1973. Director Rob Schmidt and star Eliza Dushku previously collaborated on the backwoods cannibal film Wrong Turn. They’ve set their sights considerably higher here, and have succeeded for the most part.



Synecdoche, New York

I first saw this, the directorial debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation) a few months ago at the Toronto Film Festival. For me, it was one of the few must-sees of the event. I saw it again a few weeks ago at a local press screening. And I’ve been dreading writing about it ever since.





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