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The “so bad it’s good” tag often applied to co-called “cult classics” is as elusive a categorization as there is in cinema. Most of the time, it evolves organically from the failure of a movie. Planning campiness is more apt to result in...

Over the years, I have come to expect great things from Michael Winterbottom. I haven't loved everything he has done, but he has made some powerful movies and even his least inspired films have been watchable. So Code 46 broadsided me, provoking an...

It's not often that, when the primary thread of a movie fails, the secondary storylines are compelling enough to make the overall experience a positive one. However, that occurs with Cold Mountain, a Civil War era romance where the love affair fiz...

Watching The Color Purple, there were times when the split personality was enough to pull me out of the experience. Musical stage adaptations of serious novels can sometimes work because of the immediacy of the audience and the reality of the ...

The Conjuring represents a member of an increasingly endangered species: the R-rated horror movie that relies more on suspense and scares than blood and gore. That's not to say there are no instances of horrific, stomach-churning visuals in The Con...

The Cooler, as icy a title as you're likely to find, is about the efforts of one man to find his luck (or, to be more precise, some form of luck other than that of the bad variety). Rarely has a more pathetic individual been captured and portrayed ...

When I first heard about The Counselor, it became one of my most anticipated titles of 2013. The talent alone made it seem like a "can't miss" proposition: Ridley Scott directing; Cormac McCarthy, the man responsible for the source material of No C...

When a movie invites comparisons to the work of James Cameron and Christopher Nolan, it’s apparent that the director (in this case, Gareth Edwards) has done something very right. The Creator may rely on numerous common science fiction concepts b...

Creed III is the first Rocky movie without Rocky. Considering the imbalance created by the Stallone/Jordan dynamic in Creed II, the decision to excise the Italian Stallion from the narrative framework makes sense. The Creed movies need to move forw...

The Critic transpires during a time when critics (in this case, theater critics) wielded enormous power. A review in a daily newspaper could ruin a reputation, close a play, or elevate something from obscurity to prosperity. The film occurs in 193...