Abby Olcese

The filmmakers didn’t set out to make a bad film. Yet despite the best efforts of everyone involved, The Book of Henry falls far short of the goal.

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The Red Turtle feels less like a movie, and more like an 80 minute piece of art. Every scene is stunning to look at, and the experience of watching it is both calming and moving.

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Little Men is a poignant reminder that the changes in the places we live often come at a cost to someone else.

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Happy Christmas, a product of the low-budget, realism-oriented mumblecore movement, is anything but. It’s a small, thoughtful comedy that’s more concerned with believable characters and relationships than it is with highly-scripted dialogue or memorable set pieces.

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Magic in the Moonlight is not terrible, but it’s far from Woody Allen‘s best. This is Allen playing it safe, with material that’s familiar both in the setting, and the theme.

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In the movie, John Cusack plays Emerson Kent, an emotionally broken-down CIA black ops agent who’s been assigned a shift babysitting numbers-station broadcaster Katherine (Malin Akerman), who is somehow a sought-after cryptography expert, despite having dropped out of college.

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Graceland, the second feature from director Ron Morales, features a story that isn’t necessarily new to American audiences, but it’s set in a place that is. Morales’ kidnapping thriller unfolds in the Philippines

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The Central Park Five is a documentary (appearing on PBS tonight) about five young men wrongly accused of rape and assault in New York in 1989. It’s a story that will make you disappointed in humanity and righteously angry at those responsible for incarcerating the wrong people.

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In It’s a Disaster, writer-director Todd Berger presents a situation most of us would consider a personal potential catastrophe in our heart of hearts, and turns it into an actual disaster movie.

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Kansas City FilmFest 2013 starts tomorrow at the Alamo Drafthouse Mainstreet , and here’s a review of one of the festival’s films, a romcom called ‘One Small Hitch.’

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The very compelling documentary ‘The Gatekeepers’ opens in Kansas City this weekend. Here’s a review of ‘The Gatekeepers’ from the recent True/False Festival!

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True/False 2013: Leviathan is the most metal documentary you will ever watch about commercial fishing. Winter Go Away! is an impressive array of journalism and good filmmaking.

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Thursday is True/False Film Fest’s official opening, but Friday is when Columbia, Missouri’s surprising gem of a festival really gets the party kicked into high gear.

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Ben Wheatley’s overlooked movie ‘Down Terrace’ is basically a surprisingly funny mumblecore movie with a focus on guns and murders instead of self-indulgent whining and indie-pop music. The film feels real without ever feeling boring, or sacrificing the hardness of the story for mushy feelings.

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‘The Disappearance of Alice Creed’ joins the ranks of films like ‘Layer Cake’ and ‘A Simple Plan’ as a movie that successfully mixes entertainment and a lesson on the consequences of greedy desperation.

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