Universal Archives - From | The | Balcony

The Girl on the Train (2016)

Bill Clark — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 14:49:47 +0000

Following in the footsteps of 2014’s Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train is another grocery store potboiler turned into a sleek, albeit only moderately involving, thriller. Like Gone Girl, its story is exceedingly ludicrous but a crackling final half hour and fantastic performance from Emily Blunt save a first… Continue reading

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Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)

Bill Clark — Thu, 19 May 2016 17:30:58 +0000

2014’s Neighbors was a pleasant surprise. It was raunchy and edgy without ever being mean-spirited or unpleasant. Not an easy task for a movie-going public that continually wants to see the bar raised on how far comedies are willing to go. As popular as the film was, it seems highly… Continue reading

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Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Bill Clark — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 15:32:47 +0000

Of all the troubling things about the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! – and there are plenty to choose from – the most problematic is that it’s barely a movie at all, but rather a serious of loosely stitched together sketches of wildly varying quality. Known for some of the most creative and… Continue reading

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Sisters (2015)

Bill Clark — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 13:47:11 +0000

It’s a testament to Amy Poehler and Tina Fey that Sisters is as consistently funny as it is. One can only cringe at the number of ways this film would have gone haywire in lesser hands. But it doesn’t, and the movie hits more than it misses as Poehler and… Continue reading

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Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)

Bill Clark — Fri, 15 May 2015 13:54:45 +0000

The charming and pleasant Pitch Perfect was one of 2012’s biggest surprise hits. You know what “surprise hit” means in Hollywood speak? Sequel! And here we are with Pitch Perfect 2, a bigger and flashier film than its predecessor – and in many ways better. Whereas the original took a… Continue reading

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Unfriended (2015)

Bill Clark — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 19:40:01 +0000

As universal fears go, public humiliation is near the top of the list. In the quaint old days, when something embarrassing happened to you, it was usually only witnessed by a few people and forgotten relatively quickly. Not anymore in our age of social media, instant camera access, and countless outlets… Continue reading

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Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

Bill Clark — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 21:01:45 +0000

Fifty Shades of Grey may be the first film in history made specifically for the purposes of hate-watching. Adapted from E.L. James’s unbelievably popular novel (at its height it sold two copies every second), it can be said in absolute terms that whatever lusting and fantasizing readers of the book… Continue reading

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Blackhat (2015)

Bill Clark — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 18:30:14 +0000

The ongoing struggle to make cyber crime an exciting time at the movies continues with Michael Mann’s Blackhat, a ridiculous, stone-faced mish-mash of genre stereotypes and endless exposition. We’ve come to expect much more from Mann, an accomplished director whose Heat (1995) remains one of the première crime films ever… Continue reading

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Unbroken (2014)

Bill Clark — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 18:17:33 +0000

“If you can take it, you can make it.” Those were the words spoken by Louis Zamperini’s brother as he prepared to train as an Olympic runner in Unbroken. Little did he know that over the next few years those words would take on more meaning than ever. The film… Continue reading

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Dumb and Dumber To (2014)

Bill Clark — Thu, 13 Nov 2014 21:03:54 +0000

It’s been twenty years since Dumb and Dumber landed in theaters and went on to become a comedy classic. That a sequel wasn’t made in the 1990’s defies logic by today’s standards, when turning even a small profit sends studio execs into daydreams of a franchise. Dumb and Dumber To… Continue reading

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