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Half-baked ‘Hypnotic’ more meh than mesmerizing

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

MOVIE REVIEW“Hypnotic”Rated R. At AMC Boston Common, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.Grade: D“Hypnotic” the film is not hypnotic at all. It’s numbing, derivative and meaningless and features a surprisingly terrible performance by lead actor Ben Affleck. Nothing you see on the screen is real. Or so this is what you are repeatedly told. I believe it. Films as bad as “Hypnotic” should be collected and studied by future filmmakers like a pandemic so it doesn’t happen again.I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Affleck and his wife Jennifer Lopez have films opening on the same weekend (hers is Netflix’s “The Mother”). “Hypnotic” begins with Austin Police Detective Daniel Rourke (Affleck) losing his beloved preteen daughter Minnie aka Dominique (Hala Finley) at a park. Some detective. At the same time, a mysterious stranger played by actor William Fichtner tells a woman it is “hot as a furnace” and she strips off some of her clothes, causing a traffic accident...

Winning ‘BlackBerry’ tracks rise and fall of first smartphone

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

MOVIE REVIEW“BlackBerry”Rated R. At the AMC Boston Common and suburban theaters.Grade: B+Films such as “The Social Network” (2010), “Jobs” (2013), “Steve Jobs” (2015) and now, “BlackBerry” tell us the story about how a social network or a cellphone was created by visionaries who belong to an entirely new generation. But these films never really crack the code concerning the love affair between people and their phones (and/or their Facebook addiction). The more I see people gazing intently into their phones as they cross busy city streets the more I wonder: What have they wrought? The suitably Canadian entry “BlackBerry” is basically the BlackBerry biopic.Directed by Canadian faux-doc filmmaker Matt Johnson (“The Dirties”), who also excels playing nerdy BlackBerry co-creator Doug Fregin in the film, and written by Johnson, Canadian investigative reporter Jacquie McNish and Matthew Miller, “Blackberry” begins in the age of vintage computers and pagers. Doug and his fellow gamer and pa...

Ambrose: End of Title 42 may help with border issues

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

One of Joe Biden’s greatest failings as president of the United States has been to facilitate several times more illegal immigrants crossing the southern border than Donald Trump did. Among the consequences: thousands of migrant children pushed into unforgiving labor, border communities absolutely devastated and a recent record of 853 border-crossing migrants themselves dying from their desert treks, drowning, falling off cliffs and other accidents. Hardly least of the tragedies: 70,000 Americans killed by smuggled fentanyl.Well, look, some Biden supporters have said, the fewer restrictions the better. That goal is coming about through the lapse of Title 42 that prevented entries for fear of COVID transmission. Will a surge of additional thousands pouring our way fill the supporters with joy because the poor receiving asylum are thereby rescued even if many don’t qualify, and is the harm to Americans something to ignore?The Democrats among them might want to notice Eric Adams, the D...

Jennifer Lopez hits target dead center in ‘The Mother’

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

MOVIE REVIEW“The Mother”Rated R. On Netflix.Grade: BWell-directed by the chronically underrated Niki Caro (“Whale Rider,” “North Country,” “McFarland USA”), although generically written by Andrea Berloff (“Blood Father”), Peter Craig (“Top Gun: Maverick”) and Misha Green (“Lovecraft Country”), “The Mother,” which is just in time for Mother’s Day, is a by-the-books save-a-child thriller set in some violent world of cloak-and-dagger.Is the person identified only as the Mother (Jennifer Lopez) in the credits really the mother of the mixed-up, rebellious adolescent Zoe (Lucy Paez) who is in such danger from so many fronts? That is established beyond a doubt, and yet we are offered constant doubts. All these modern-day Sarah Connor fables are too many to keep track of anyway. In the case of “The Mother” Lopez’s assassin comes out of hiding many years after giving up the child at birth and tries to reconnect with her reluctant 12-year-old daughter (Or is she?). The kid, meanwh...

‘R.M.N.’ lays bare racial, tribal conflicts in Europe

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

MOVIE REVIEW“R.M.N.”Not Rated. In English, French, Hungarian, German, Sinhala and Romanian with subtitles. On VOD.Grade: B+Unfolding in a linguistic Tower of Babel and featuring a swirling mixture of mostly European DNA, Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or nomiee “R.M.N.” (Romanian abbreviation for “Magnetic Resonance Imaging”) kicks off with Matthias ( Marin Grigore), the film’s nearly monosyllabic, Romanian (more or less) anti-hero nearly killing a co-worker at a German meat factory with a single blow.Matthias then returns to the small, multi-ethnic village in Transylvania, where his young son Rudi (Mark Edward Blenyesi) is being turned into a sissy (according to Matthias) by his mother Ana (Macrina Barladeanu). After confronting Ana in his usual threatening manner, toxic Matthias resolves to force the boy to walk to school by himself through nearby woods, even though Rudi has been frightened by something in there.At the same time, Csilla Szabo (Judith State), Matthias&...

Editorial: States must address downside of legal weed

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

Legalizing marijuana has been touted as an economic opportunity, with an emphasis on promoting social equity and fiscal empowerment, especially for individuals affected by arrest and imprisonment for marijuana-related crimes.On the financial front, it’s worked – the weed business in Massachusetts is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.But as communities who’ve given the high sign to weed have learned, there’s a downside – one that is all but ignored as more states mull cannabis legislation and Capitol Hill lawmakers work to grease the skids..Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), coauthored the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act (CAOA), that would end the federal prohibition on cannabis.In a statement Thursday, Schumer remarked  “We were encouraged to see the SAFE Banking Act reintroduced last week after Senator Daines and Senator Merkley worked to make key improvements to the legisl...

Graham: Trump scores TKO in CNN’s town hall debate

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Donald Trump won the first debate of the 2024 presidential cycle, and it wasn’t even close.What debate, you ask? Then you didn’t watch CNN’s broadcast from the leafy confines of St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., on Wednesday night. Like the old joke about boxing matches and hockey games, Granite State Republicans came to a voter town hall, and a debate broke out.CNN touted the fact it gathered a roomful of potential GOP primary voters to help them make their choice in the 2024 race. Then the network proceeded to all but ignore them — only a half-dozen questions were taken from the crowd during the 90-minute event — and instead sent moderator Kaitlan Collins in swinging.She never had a chance.Collins kept most of the first half hour focused on two issues: Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen and his refusal to take responsibility for the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill. In a surprise to absolutely no one, except perhaps the news producers of CNN, Tru...

Dear Abby: Alcoholic’s wife is isolated & overwhelmed

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

Dear Abby: I have been married for 39 years to a kind, supportive and loving man. We are both retired. He stays fit with daily exercise, reads, keeps track of our financials and is fun to be with. However, he’s a high-functioning alcoholic. His personality bends to unsavory during most of the evening hours. He will never go to counseling, and support groups for me are not close by.He was always the breadwinner and provided a good income for our family. He was also a good father to our two sons. (I suspect that our 34-year-old son may also be an alcoholic.) Over the years, I have gone from compassionate to furious about my husband’s drinking. He often hides how much he consumes. I never know if it’s just the two to three nightly beers or the hidden bottle of wine or whiskey in the trash. I recently discovered he also has been smoking pot.I used to be a social person. We have the opportunity to travel, but it was disastrous in the past. How should a wife deal with an...

California condors confront bird flu in flight from extinction

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The California condor is facing the deadliest strain of avian influenza in U.S. history, and the outbreak could jeopardize the iconic vulture with its 10-foot (3.05-meter) wingspan decades after conservationists saved the species from extinction. But nine newly hatched chicks, covered in downy white feathers, give condor-keepers at the Los Angeles Zoo hope that the endangered population of North America’s largest soaring land birds will once again thrive after 40 years of aggressive efforts.With fewer than 350 condors in the wild — in flocks that span from the Pacific Northwest to Baja California, Mexico — the historic outbreak means ongoing breeding-in-captivity and re-wilding programs like the LA Zoo’s remain essential.Over the past year and a half, millions of birds across the U.S. have died from avian flu, including more than 430 bald eagles and some 58 million turkeys and commercial chickens that were euthanized to prevent the spread of the disease. Bir...

GOP boycott in Oregon threatens abortion, transgender bills and protesters’ own political careers

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 16:04:40 GMT

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A boycott by Republican state senators in Oregon threatens to derail dozens of bills, including on gun control and abortion rights, as a deadline looms that could also upend the protesters’ political futures. Democrats control the Statehouse in Oregon, but under the rules still need a certain number of Republicans to be present in the chambers to pass legislation.Republican and Democratic leaders in the Oregon Legislature met behind closed door for a second day Thursday to try to bridge the divide as the boycott entered its ninth straight day, with partisan bills on abortion, gender-affirming care and gun control on the line. Lawmakers with 10 unexcused absences are barred from reelection under a constitutional amendment passed overwhelmingly last November by voters weary of repeated walkouts. Several statehouses around the nation, including in Montana and Tennessee, have been ideological battlegrounds. Oregon — having pioneered marijuana decriminalization, ...