Lights Camera Jackson

Movie Reviews, Entertainment News and Views from Lights Camera Jackson

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‘Black Mass’ Review

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Johnny Depp has given a lot of great performances in his career…just not lately. With his portrayal of ruthless gangster Jimmy “Whitey” Bulger in director Scott Cooper’s “Black Mass” , Depp is generating the most positive buzz since he played Sweeney Todd on screen back in 2007. Often it’s the Depp performance that either makes […]
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‘Paper Towns’ Review

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“Paper Towns” is based on the 2008 YA novel by “The Fault in Our Stars” author John Green. That book came out in 2012, and the 2014 film adaptation featured a nomination-worthy performance from Shailene Woodley – the centerpiece of an emotionally moving story about teen troubles and love. Don’t worry about having tissues handy […]
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‘Max’ Review

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Six months after their release of “American Sniper”, Warner Bros. is out with a family-friendly war-themed (of sorts) film, as a Marine service dog returns from battle and has trouble adjusting to homelife in “Max”. As the opening credits reveal, K-9s have been used in the military since WWI. Max, a Malinois Shepherd, was the […]
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‘Aloha’ Review

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“Jerry Maguire” writer/director Cameron Crowe returns to the genre that elevated him to stardom: the romantic dramedy. “Aloha” boasts one of the most impressive casts of the year, and isn’t nearly as emotionally manipulative as Crowe’s last film, 2011’s “We Bought a Zoo” with Matt Damon. But with a dialogue-heavy script that runs around in […]
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‘Tomorrowland’ Review

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The latest sci-fi adventure from “The Incredibles” director Brad Bird is Disney’s “Tomorrowland”, which is very loosely based on the theme park attraction. Outside of a brief and flat-out awful narration tactic at the start of the film, star George Clooney is missing for the first 45 minutes. His Frank Walker character is introduced to […]
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‘The Longest Ride’ Review

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“The Longest Ride” is the tenth film adapted from a novel written by romance king Nicholas Sparks. His previous movies have been called sappy, simple and full of coincidences. The same can be said for half of “The Longest Ride”, which lives-up to its title in that, for more than two hours, you basically sit […]
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‘Focus’ Review

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Will Smith hasn’t starred in a movie since 2013’s sci-fi disaster “After Earth”, a Smith family affair that also involved son Jaden as co-star and wife Jada as co-producer. Oh, and M. Night Shyamalan was the director. And…it laid an egg. If Smith believed, after reading the script for “Focus”, that this could be his […]
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‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ Review

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In 2011 Colin Firth won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in “The King’s Speech”, which included many memorable scenes. Now, four years later, Firth stars in “Kingsman: The Secret Service”, director Matthew Vaughn’s follow-up to “X-Men: First Class”. “Kingsman” does provide Firth with the opportunity to appear in, quite possibly, the most memorable […]
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‘Taken 3’ Review

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Only a few months after the original “Taken” was released in January 2009, star Liam Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson, died following a tragic skiing accident. Since then Neeson has starred in more than 20 movies, the majority of which are intense, heart-pounding action movies. He’s said that these films, such as “Clash of the Titans”, […]
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‘Unbroken’ Review

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“Unbroken” tells the true story of Olympian and WWII veteran Louis Zamperini, who survived a plane crash that put him and two fellow soldiers adrift at sea for 47 days, and then two years in the brutal conditions of Japanese prison camps. All of this was chronicled in author Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 best-selling book of […]
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