Reader's Choice: Don't let 'Dick' run your life!

Each weekend Nathaniel is looking at a movie that you, the readers, chose the previous week.

Arlene: What's the deal with that Watergate thing. Do you know anything about it?
President Nixon: No, no. No no no. Absolutely nothing. I don't know a thing. No way, Jose.

Dear readers, I struggled with finding time for Dick this week. I recall mostly loving Dick in the late 90s/early 00s even though the quality of it definitely varies. But you demanded I spend some time with Dick so I finally did this weekend. It turns out it's especially delightful in the morning.

Everything you've just read is jokey but true (literally and figuratively) and if you found it annoying, then Andrew Fleming's Dick (1999) is probably not the movie for you...

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Linkers Dozen

• MovieMaker Bruce Willis retires from acting after Aphasia diagnosis. Our heart goes out to him and his loved ones.
• World of Reel polled 150 critics (including me) on the best films of the 1970s. No surprise to see The Godfather top it even though it wasn't on my list (we could only choose 10-15 films each). Four of my selections made the top ten (Nashville, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, and Network)
• Pajiba great piece on Ryan Reynolds turning himself into a brand while becoming blander as an actor

More after the jump including Essie Davis, Chang Chen, Taron Egerton, Hugh Jackman, and the aftermath of The Slap at the Oscars... 

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Red Notice: just enough to press play

by Elisa Giudici

As early as the prologue, Red Notice sets the bar so low that you instantly know to shut up and meekly accept every absurd thing it gives you. When an adventure movie starts with Marcus Antonius gifting his future bride Queen Cleopatra with 3 Fabergé jeweled eggs around 1000 years before Gustav Fabergé himself came to the world, you know realism is not high on the list of the movie's priorities. Not a priority at all, whether in the past or the present. Five minutes later we are introduced to Dwayne Johnson's FBI criminal profiler John Hartley. Sporting a black turtleneck (and later a silk patterned scarf), the notion of The Rock being a criminal profiler is so improbable that the screenplay mounts a preemptive defense. "You don't look like one".

"I get that a lot" replies The Rock, introducing us to a parallel world in which a lot of characters are nonsensical in service of an action-comedy about art thieves and double plays.  This is the kind of movie in which the audience will likely forgive anything, provided they are offered some spectacle, a few good liners, and chemistry between glamorous supertstars. Unfortunately, Red Notice lacks almost any of these elements...

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Review: Pokemon Detective Pikachu

by Tony Ruggio

I was already in high school by the time Pokemon became a worldwide phenomenon, and I was in no mood for cute, cuddly anime animals at the moody age of sixteen. For this non-fan, however, Detective Pikachu is a minor delight filled with joy, heart, and giant Pokemon doing battle. It’s a big, bubbly kids movie that grows on you until the inevitably exhausting bombast of a cartoony third act...

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Josh Brolin Nicks Role of Cable in "Deadpool 2"

by Daniel Crooke

After ages of anticipation, Marvel Cinematic Universe fans’ long international nightmare is over: Deadpool 2 has finally cast the coveted role of Cable, the central villain for the sequel.

In one of the more noteworthy examples of franchise double duty since Swedish soap star Maud Adams seduced audiences in two separate James Bond outings (Octopussy and Live and Let Die, for those keeping score at home) Josh Brolin – Thanos, Destroyer of Realms, himself – has landed his second role as a Marvel baddie in the upcoming sequel to the surprise 2015 superhero hit. Beating out Michael Shannon and David Harbour to clinch the part, Brolin now has the distinction of not only playing the MCU’s preeminent bad guy, but the antihero’s enemy in the Deadpool offshoot as well; while they share a foundational mythology, the Deadpool films belong to Marvel Entertainment and not the Disney-owned Marvel Studios. 

As Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds put it…

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