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Biopics

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Review: Coco Before Chanel

Bio-pic doesn't quite wear well enough
Based on the book by Edmonde Charles-Roux, Anne Fontaine's soaper of a bio-pic traces the fashion icon's life before the perfume and the bouclé suits.
By ALICIA POTTER  |  September 30, 2009
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Interview: Jamie Foxx

Jamie Foxx on acting, singing, comedy, and controversy
"Until you get a chance to define another side of your career, people will always say, 'You're doing it as a hobby.' "
By BEN WESTHOFF  |  August 11, 2009
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Review: Séraphine

Provost paints a true tortured artist
The old chestnut about suffering for one's art finds new life in Martin Provost's wrenching bio-pic of Séraphine Louis, the "Modern Primitive," as critic Wilhelm Uhde insisted on calling her.
By PETER KEOUGH  |  July 28, 2009
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Review: Pedro

An inspiring life reduced to sound bites, clichés, and hugs
There's no other reason to see the film.
By PETER KEOUGH  |  April 28, 2009
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Review: Bronson

Tom Hardy is mesmerizing
From Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn comes a fantasy bio-pic of Britain's notorious Charlie Bronson, a larger-than-life character who, after swiping his identity from Charles Bronson transformed from bare-knuckle prizefighter into "Britain's most violent prisoner."
By SHAULA CLARK  |  April 15, 2009
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Review: Notorious

Romanticized, but well executed
To its fault and its credit, George Tillman Jr.'s bio-pic offers a life story that fans of late MC extraordinaire Chris Wallace, a/k/a Biggie Smalls, a/k/a the Notorious B.I.G., have known for years.
By CHRIS FARAONE  |  January 13, 2009
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Review: Che

History lesson
An ambitious, whole-hog, four-hour-plus bio-pic of Che Guevara, c'mon.
By MICHAEL ATKINSON  |  January 13, 2009
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Breakfast With Scot

Chaste, and lacking wit
Laurie Lind’s fuses Three Men and a Baby, La Vie en Rose , and every other gay rom-com ever made.  
By PETER KEOUGH  |  October 21, 2008
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What We Do Is Secret

Exposition trumps atmosphere
That staple of the musical bio-pic — a close-up of dope bubbling on a spoon — punctuates Rodger Grossman’s account of the short life of Darby Crash.
By BETSY SHERMAN  |  August 20, 2008
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Jill Aigrot

Words of Love | LML Music
There’s no CD booklet, and in her acknowledgments, Aigrot thanks Olivier Gahan . Tant pis .
By JEFFREY GANTZ  |  March 04, 2008
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The Boston Phoenix–Alumni Film Critics’ Poll

Our first-ever round-up of the past year’s best movies, with a little help from our friends
It’s true, the Boston Phoenix has never won an Oscar.
By PHOENIX STAFF  |  February 13, 2008
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Are we grading on a curve?

Peter Keough’s Oscar Scorecard
It’s a solid B, which isn’t bad considering the vagaries of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.
By PHOENIX STAFF  |  January 23, 2008
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The Oscars go to Hell

The Devil knows what the nominations will be for this year’s Oscars
Maybe it’s just as well if the writers’ strike forces a cancellation of the Oscars show.
By PETER KEOUGH  |  January 18, 2008
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Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Easy jokes? Absolutely
Stupid? Sure, but laced with a strange sense of logic.
By BRETT MICHEL  |  December 19, 2007
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Silver linings on a dark screen

Film: 2007 in review
The best films of 2007 hold their own when it comes to despair, evil, and treachery.
By PETER KEOUGH  |  December 18, 2007
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Auteur land?

‘Film Culture’ in 2007
Granted, Sweeney Todd is a grim, violent, misanthropic musical.
By GERALD PEARY  |  December 17, 2007
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Covering Dylan

From Newport to I’m Not There
Dylan is his own cover band.
By CHARLES TAYLOR  |  November 20, 2007
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The unnamable

Todd Haynes’s not-Dylan movie
If Bob Dylan were a real movie director, I’m Not There is probably the movie he’d make about his own life
By JON GARELICK  |  November 20, 2007
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He’s here!

Todd Haynes talks about his Dylan movie
I’m Not There is an apt name for a bio-pic with six Bob Dylans, none of them the real one.
By ROB NELSON  |  November 20, 2007
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War zones

Fall films face terror at home and abroad
The party’s over. Time for the lessons to begin.
By PETER KEOUGH  |  September 12, 2007
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Con but not forgotten

The Hoax pushes Hughes goods
The traditional Hollywood bio-pic reduces a famous life to a couple of platitudes, a two-hour narrative, a big-name star, and a few Oscars.
By PETER KEOUGH  |  April 03, 2007
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Amazing Grace

Polite under fire
Michael Apted’s stirring if conventional bio-pic of 18th-century British abolitionist William Wilberforce offers rum, funneled into anti-slavery PM William Pitt the Younger, and sugar, in the form of the hero’s adoring wife, Barbara.
By JUSTINE ELIAS  |  February 21, 2007
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Wasted again

Factory Girl isn’t the bio-pic Edie deserves
Who was Edie Sedgwick? Was she a muse who inspired some notable work by Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan or just a footnote in their careers? Did she have any talent or accomplishments of her own? Why, in short, does she deserve a bio-pic? Watch the trailer for Factory Girl (QuickTime)
By GARY SUSMAN  |  February 07, 2007
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Factory guy

Images of Andy on the big screen
“If you want to know all about Andy Warhol,” Andy Warhol is quoted on the US Post Office stamp commemorating him in 2002, “just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” Wasted again: Factory Girl isn’t the bio-pic Edie deserves. By Gary Susman
By PETER KEOUGH  |  February 07, 2007
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Bunny girl

Renée Zellweger’s Miss Potter doesn’t peter out
A film about one of the world’s bestselling children’s books and the ballsy British woman behind it marks the stirring return of Babe director Chris Noonan. Watch the trailer for Miss Potter (QuickTime)
By ALICIA POTTER  |  January 03, 2007
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Fake Fur

Steven Shainberg makes over Diane Arbus
It had to happen, sooner or later: a bio-pic of Diane Arbus, photographer goddess of the alternate America, doyenne of the somber freakout, selfless voyager into the unorthodox. Watch the trailer for Fur (QuickTime)
By MICHAEL ATKINSON  |  November 15, 2006
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Trudell

A fascinating blueprint of the mind of a free-thinker
One small line from Native American poet and activist John Trudell’s 17,000-page FBI file flashes on screen in Heather Rae’s biographical film: “He’s extremely eloquent . . . therefore extremely dangerous.”
By TED DROZDOWSKI  |  March 14, 2006
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Hollywood gives Bush the finger

Why lefty films look good for Oscar
Except for a few agitators like Sean Penn and Barbra Streisand, people in Hollywood prefer to play down their liberal bent.
By PETER KEOUGH  |  January 26, 2006
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Hollywood gives Bush the finger - side

Our film editor's predictions
Our film editor's predictions
By PETER KEOUGH  |  January 25, 2006

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