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By Matt Brunson

UP
***1/2
DIRECTED BY Pete Docter
STARS Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer

Ranking Pixar’s feature-length gems in order is akin to ranking the 10 best Beatles singles or the five best martini cocktails — to each his or her emphatic own — so let’s just say that the studio’s 10th effort, Up, won’t be leaving viewers feeling down. It’s merely one more winner for an outfit that refuses to compromise its high level of quality, to say nothing of its artistic integrity.

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By Matt Brunson

DRAG ME TO HELL
***
DIRECTED BY Sam Raimi
STARS Alison Lohman, Justin Long

The face of horror in modern cinema is, sad to say, torture porn, where sadism is exhibited with alarming regularity (most notably by the filmmakers) and imagination is only employed when the scripter conjures up gruesome new ways for characters to die. Because of this lamentable trend, it’s an effortless task to sing the praises of Drag Me to Hell, a funhouse freak show that’s more interested in delivering old-fashioned chills (it’s even rated PG-13 rather than the expected R) than in wallowing in misogyny, masochism and mutilation. The story is so thin that the entire screenplay could have been written on a bubble gum wrapper, yet the end result is so delirious in its desire to delight that moviegoers willing to be jerked around won’t mind.

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