Josh Bell
Story Archive
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Garry Marshall ruins another special occasion with 'Mother’s Day'
Wednesday, April 27, 2016 To joke about future installments at this point would only be courting disaster.
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Musicians fight neo-Nazis in the intense thriller 'Green Room'
Wednesday, April 27, 2016 There's culture clash and camaraderie in the hard rock underground.
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Looking for the joy of moviegoing at CinemaCon
Wednesday, April 20, 2016 There are always quirky new products at the trade show, like the card game Movie Buff.
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'The Huntsman: Winter’s War' makes for a pointless sequel
Wednesday, April 20, 2016 How do you make a Snow White movie without Snow White?
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'Miles Ahead' adds unnecessary fiction to the life of Miles Davis
Wednesday, April 20, 2016 Anyone not already familiar with his work will learn virtually nothing about one of jazz’s most important figures.
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'Elvis & Nixon' struggles with its thin premise
Wednesday, April 20, 2016 The story behind a famous photo of the two men was perhaps better left to mystery.
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Disney cashes in again with a new 'Jungle Book'
Wednesday, April 13, 2016 With so much CGI, "live-action" is a stretch.
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Entertaining documentary ‘City of Gold’ is a bit too enamored of its subject
Wednesday, April 13, 2016 Revered food critic Jonathan Gold makes unfamiliar cuisine vivid and exciting, but Gabbert fails to do the same for her film’s subject.
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'The Night Manager' delivers slick, engrossing espionage
Wednesday, April 13, 2016 The six-part miniseries adapts renowned spy novelist John le Carré’s 1993 novel.
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Is 'Time Traveling Bong' really a show?
Wednesday, April 13, 2016 Is it better than Hot Tub Time Machine?
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Noise
Ellie Goulding splits the difference between simplicity and spectacle
Sunday, April 10, 2016 Her enthusiasm was endearing enough to compensate for the night’s sometimes bland performance.
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Noise
Classic members of Guns N’ Roses come together for a memorable performance
Saturday, April 9, 2016 The GNR reunion may be imperfect, but the band’s performance Friday night at T-Mobile Arena was immensely satisfying.
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Noise
Talking music, fashion and writing with Susan Holmes-McKagan, wife of Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan
Thursday, April 7, 2016 The whole family will be on tour this summer with GNR, who play T-Mobile Arena this weekend.
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Film review: 'Midnight Special'
Wednesday, April 6, 2016 It starts out like a Hollywood sci-fi thriller but at its heart, it's a story about the love of parents for their son.
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Melissa McCarthy flounders in clumsy comedy 'The Boss'
Wednesday, April 6, 2016 McCarthy plays a business mogul who gets convicted of insider trading and spends five months in a posh prison.
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Ponderous drama ‘Demolition’ is overly impressed with its own importance
Wednesday, April 6, 2016 Somewhere buried under a pile of clumsy narrative devices is a promising character study.
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Noise
Martina McBride, Chris Stapleton highlight this year's Party for a Cause fest
Tuesday, April 5, 2016 ACM marked its return to Vegas by upgrading the event to a full-on three-day country festival that could easily stand on its own.
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'Eye in the Sky' explores a contrived moral dilemma
Wednesday, March 30, 2016 The military thriller aims to be a complex examination of the moral consequences of drone warfare.
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Boy bands and zombies collide in 'Dead 7'
Wednesday, March 30, 2016 Members of the Backstreet Boys, ’N Sync, 98 Degrees and O-Town star in Syfy’s post-apocalyptic zombie Western.
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'Rush Hour' gets lost in translation from film to TV
Wednesday, March 30, 2016 The film franchise's audiences showed up to see a martial-arts master and a charismatic comedian, not for the forgettable mystery storylines.
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Belated sequel ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2’ serves up a stale feast
Thursday, March 24, 2016 Another tired brand extension with no reason to exist other than to exploit its audience’s nostalgia and goodwill.
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Hero worship: Who's played the best Batman and Superman?
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 Do you long for the days of Michael Keaton and Christopher Reeve?
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Superheroes clash noisily but nobody wins in 'Batman v Superman'
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 No one in the movie, ostensible hero or ostensible villain, is particularly sympathetic or interesting.
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TV review: Love and theft mix in lively drama 'The Catch'
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 It’s much breezier and more lighthearted than Shonda Rhimes’ other shows (Grey's Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder).
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Entertainment
Lightsaber combat and a celebrity (geek) sighting: Highlights from Wizard World Comic Con
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 At Wizard World, everyone’s a geek.
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Film review: 'Hello, My Name Is Doris'
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 A lonely older woman (played by Sally Field) awkwardly crushes on her much younger co-worker (New Girl’s Max Greenfield) in this part cringe comedy, part melancholy meditation on aging.
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'Allegiant' wastes its premise and its stars
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 Unfortunately, the third Divergent won't win your allegiance.
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Gymnastics comedy 'The Bronze' celebrates a washed-up Olympian
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 Not even Sundance is immune to predictable Hollywood-style comedies.
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Breaking down the premiere of the latest Las Vegas-set ‘Real World’
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 Subtitled Go Big or Go Home, cast members must complete challenges or risk being eliminated and replaced with new housemates.
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Forget the marketing: ‘10 Cloverfield Lane’ sets its own course
Thursday, March 10, 2016 Watching Lane with half your attention devoted to spotting connections to another movie would be the wrong way to go.
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Will Arnett drifts through life in Netflix's 'Flaked'
Wednesday, March 9, 2016 Weak jokes and even weaker drama.
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Secretive spinoff '10 Cloverfield Lane' has a lot to live up to
Wednesday, March 9, 2016 Cloverfield was a monster movie with plenty of encounters with the monster, plus some indelible images and a capable cast.
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Disney’s 'Zootopia' presents an entertaining menagerie
Wednesday, March 2, 2016 A winning, gorgeously animated story about anthropomorphic animals living in relative harmony in a bustling metropolis.
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'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot' finds humor in war
Wednesday, March 2, 2016 Though comically stylized, WTF, starring Tina Fey, feels genuine.
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Noise
Album review: Loretta Lynn's 'Full Circle'
Wednesday, March 2, 2016 The country legend sounds relaxed on laid-back versions of her own past hits.
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Noise
Heavy metal lifers Iron Maiden soldier on with enthusiasm
Monday, Feb. 29, 2016 The show successfully walked the line between darkness and cheesiness, just as Maiden has been doing for the past four decades.
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‘Gods of Egypt’ turns mythology into blockbuster nonsense
Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016 A cacophony of garish special effects and loud, blustery action.
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Beyond Best Picture: Five lower-profile Oscar nominees worth watching
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016 Did you see Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies?
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It's agony of defeat for 'Eddie the Eagle'
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016 The real story must not have been interesting enough because the filmmakers turned an underdog sports story into a sappy, contrived comedy.
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'Triple 9' starts with a bang but struggles to follow up
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016 The opening sequence recalls Michael Mann’s crime epic Heat and then ...
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Netflix panders to nostalgia with the awful 'Fuller House'
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016 They’ve successfully recaptured all of the terribleness of Full House, while updating it with new terribleness marketed at a self-aware, pseudo-ironic audience of millennials.
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Religious drama ‘Risen’ fails to illuminate or inspire
Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016 Director and co-writer Kevin Reynolds manages to take the story of Jesus’ resurrection and turn it into CSI: Jerusalem.
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This year’s Dam Short Film Festival felt stronger than ever
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016 An overabundance of quality is a good problem to have.
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'Son of Saul' finds renewed power in historical tragedy
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016 Filmmaker László Nemes manages to make the horrors of the Holocaust immediate and visceral again with the haunting Oscar-nominated drama.
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Film review: 'Race'
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016 Biopics don’t come much more conventional than this.
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Short takes: This week’s movie listings
Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016 Everything in theaters this week, plus special screenings and movie reviews.
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‘How to Be Single’ overloads on rom-com clichés
Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016 Only Rebel Wilson really gets to show off her talents here, even if she’s just riffing on characters she’s played before.
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Stephen King miniseries '11.22.63' waits too long to get to the point
Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016 The result still feels like something ABC might have aired in 1997.
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Foul-mouthed mercenary Deadpool takes aim at superhero movies
Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016 Ryan Reynolds' passion project is a faithful adaption.