Comedian Mo’Nique, best known for urban comedies like Phat Girlz and Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, gives such a frightening performance as Mary Jones, the Academy should just hand over the Oscar statuette to her now. Her scene towards the end when she is confronted by both Precious and Weiss for all her wicked deeds is enough to make your stomach churn.

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Aside from the lack of a true protagonist, a number of small story arcs fall a bit flat, and the film may be a bit long at over two hours. However, a hilarious cast, a few genuinely poignant moments, and a slightly silly but ultimately uplifting end save the plot from disaster. The brilliant cast and funny script make for a fine film that probably won’t enjoy the sort of release it deserves in America—which is unfortunate, since it’s exactly the kind of movie whose heart and ingenuity should trump trashy big budget disaster movies at the box office.

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Imagine a world in which the military trains soldiers not to kill enemies of the state, but to infiltrate their minds with the Jedi mind trick. A different political and military climate in which soldiers in camo sport long hair, have dance parties, and hold daisies in their hands. A military unit in which recreational drugs enhance the training, where drills include psychic exercises and the Privates’ chakras are open to the world. Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats plops the audience into this seemingly alternate universe with the admonition that “more of this is true than you would believe.”

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It’s in this last third of the film that Catalina Saavedra’s performance as Raquel carries the film to excellence. Raquel’s character could easily have devolved into caricature. Instead, Saavedra allows her to experience these newly discovered truths with equal measures of joy and regret. Often, it’s just a face – a momentary expression of the eyes and mouth – that say so much about Raquel’s life in the shadows, the years lost to servitude.

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The film falls short by arranging a regrettably thin layer of spooky occurrences beneath a thicker deposit of badly acted exposition and obnoxious characters. The couple and all secondary characters are total unknowns, which fits with the idea that audiences are privy to the lives of everyday citizens. The problem lies in the movie’s inability to create believable tension.

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Furthermore, Nair chooses to play it safe by directing an uninspiring paint-by-numbers biopic complete with voice-overs from the now dead Amelia (“We all have ocean’s to fly…”), montages to speed up time, black-white newsreel footage to add authenticity, and the flashing of newspaper headlines to show historical significance. One would think that Nair’s beautiful Bollywood films would have brought some magic touch to this very American story.

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Although studios balked at the film’s maturity, believing it might be too scary for children, it will appeal to kids and adults alike. Inside all of us there’s a child who yearns to break free, and the film’s beauty lies in its ability to portray unrefined human emotion and the vastness of the imagination. Expect Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are to ignite the minds of generations to come; spending 90 minutes inside a child’s mind has never felt so cathartic and enchanting.

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Zombieland elicits comparison to both the Brit “romzomcom” (romantic zombie comedy) and Dawn of the Dead (1978). But though it’s alternately a comedy, a romance, a gorefest, and a buddy road-trip movie, Zombieland unravels many of the threads that make up the zombie genre. A good ensemble cast (three up-and-comers and the always-humorous Harrelson), great makeup effects, and fantastic writing create a lighthearted, fun homage to the classic undead movies of yore.

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Perhaps the most ingenious part of Whitacre’s affect (and the film) is his stream-of-consciousness inner monologue. He wonders about tie patterns, spews factoids about polar bears, and wrestles with the German language as he bumbles deeper into an FBI investigation he instigated. Whitacre is the ultimate unreliable narrator—someone whose world is entirely in his head, and whose actions are simply inconsequential.

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The film is truly gorgeous to behold. Starz Animation has officially given Pixar a run for its money. Each surface is textured minutely; the film feels so real the audience could almost reach into the screen and scoop up a stitchpunk for themselves. The spooky brain monster against which the creatures must defend themselves is reminiscent of the machines in The Matrix—a glowing, glaring red eye centered in a mass of metallic tentacles. Though the voice actors are talented, the dialogue is few, far between, and unimportant to the film’s plot. This movie is eye candy.

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