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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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What to stream: Where to find the winners from recent awards shows

It was a whirlwind long awards weekend, as the Critics Choice Awards and the Emmys chased the Golden Globes last weekend. And Oscar nomination voting closed Jan. 16, so there will be a lull in awards campaigning — at least for a week — until the nominations come out on Jan. 23. 
A&E >  Movies

Lindsay Lohan ‘disappointed’ by joke used in the new ‘Mean Girls’ movie

Many jokes from the 2004 version of "Mean Girls" now feel outdated, but at least one joke from the 2024 adaptation of the movie — based on a musical based on a movie based on a book — didn't land right with the star of the original film. Lindsay Lohan, who played Cady Heron in the original "Mean Girls," took offense with a quip that referenced a "fire crotch." The line in question happens when ...
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Movie Review: ‘The Beekeeper’ a wacky, self-aware action outing with Jason Statham

For a certain type of action movie fan, it’s the most wonderful time of the year: January pulp trashterpiece season. Last year, that slot was occupied by the lean, mean flying machine “Plane,” starring Gerard Butler; this year, it’s the off-brand “John Wick” ripoff “The Beekeeper,” starring Jason Statham and directed by David Ayer.
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Movie Review: ‘The Book of Clarence’ is Biblically inspired film that mixes faith and farce

With "The Book of Clarence," British musician-turned-filmmaker Jeymes Samuel does for the biblical sword-and-sandal epic what he did for westerns in his feature debut, "The Harder They Fall," a tongue-in-cheeky cowboy action film featuring a predominantly Black cast and a story loosely based on historical figures. The new film is a shot in the arm for a moribund genre. But as with Samuel's 2021 Netflix release, which turned the tropes of the oater on their heads, the results are entertaining, sometimes riotously so, yet also decidedly mixed.
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Movie Review: ‘Mean Girls’ is familiar but still pretty fetch

It’s been a long, strange trip for the smart, real-world ideas behind Rosalind Wiseman’s “Queen Bees and Wannabes,” the 2002 parenting book about how to deal with difficult teenage daughters that is best known as the inspiration for the hit 2004 movie “Mean Girls.” Hidden inside a comedy of cultural anthropology that was both silly and sardonic, courtesy of screenwriter Tina Fey, they’ve survived, more or less intact, through a lackluster 2011 sequel that Fey had nothing to do with and that nobody remembers: “Mean Girls 2,” on the ABC Family channel.
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Movies to look forward to in 2024

A new year brings cause for contemplation, resolutions, optimism ... and a whole new slate of movies. In the spirit of that optimism, here are a handful of upcoming releases that sound intriguing; here’s hoping all of them bring happy diversion. (Note that all dates are tentative and entirely changeable, depending on the whims of movie studios and the universe at large.)
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Movie Review: ‘All of Us Strangers’ tells of a broken heart, looking to heal, in a beautiful London-set story

“All of Us Strangers” is a lovely way to begin 2024, not because it’s especially seasonal – though one key scene takes place around Christmastime – but because it’s just so beautifully acted and tenderly observant. Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s drama made a lot of Top 10 lists for 2023. I always miss two or three such films around the holiday crunchtime. The upside, with “All of Us Strangers” in limited theatrical release, is the opportunity to start the year on a high note.
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Movie Review: ‘Freud’s Last Session’: Our time is almost up

The title character we meet at the beginning of “Freud’s Last Session” – a talky, speculative drama that imagines a meeting between avowed atheist Sigmund Freud, who invented psychoanalysis, and the Christian apologist writer C.S. Lewis, author of “The Chronicles of Narnia” – is on his last legs. He is 83 years old, forgetful and in constant pain from the oral cancer he was diagnosed with 16 years earlier.
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The 21 movies we hated in 2023 — and how to watch them, if you must

Watching a good movie is great. But writing - or reading - about a bad one can sometimes be even more fun. Here are 21 of the year's worst films: dreck that couldn't even get two stars from our critics. A few of them are still in theaters. (How is that even possible?) The rest can be streamed, if you dare.
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Movie Review: Michael Mann’s latest film is stuck in second gear with ‘Ferrari’

Ferrari starts with some ancient history: archival footage of Enzo Ferrari racing cars as a young man in the 1920s, just a few decades into the automobile age, long before he founded his eponymous automobile company. Watching him zoom around the track in grainy black and white is thrilling. But, wait a minute-how are we cutting into these closeups? Cameras were much too large in 1924 to strap to the side of a race car. And hold on-that's not Enzo. It's that most Italian of non-Italian movie stars, Adam Driver.
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Movie Review: Throwback wrestling drama ‘The Iron Claw’ blends triumph and tragedy

Early in “The Iron Claw,” a harrowing, fact-based drama inspired by the Von Erich family wrestling dynasty’s saga of triumph and tragedy, writer-director Sean Durkin uses B-movie bombast to telegraph the sorrows yet to come. Although much of this Texas-set tear-jerker unfolds against a backdrop of rivers and ranches, bathed in golden-hour light, the prologue – focused on domineering patriarch Fritz Von Erich’s career in the ring and his unhinged ambition – portrays pro wrestling’s colorful sensibility via black-and-white visuals and an unnerving score.