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In 2002, Paul Neman made his final live-action film, The Road to Perdition. Following that performance, he retired, making only a few TV appearances. He made one exception, providing the voice of Doc Hudson in Pixar’s 2006 animated feature, C...

Is it too much to ask that a narrative film have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Apparently in the case of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, a loose adaptation of Darren Shan's Vampire Blood trilogy, the answer is "yes." Developed with...

Rarely has the question "What the hell?" been more appropriate. An uneven amalgamation of the brilliant and the preposterous, Constantine left me by turns intrigued, confused, and wary. The recipe calls for some ingredients that are compelling, o...

There's not much of a mystery about what Crank delivers. As promised, it's 85 minutes of action, with little in the way of encumbrances like dialogue and exposition, and only skeletal fragments of a narrative to keep things moving. For the most p...

On the surface, Crazy Rich Asians and Sex and the City couldn’t be more different but, if you dig deep enough into their respective DNA’s, there’s a common thread: the love of conspicuous consumption. Heard the term “First World probl...

Criminal is an action-thriller with a science fiction twist. To the extent that its purpose is to energize and involve an audience, it succeeds. The premise, however, which involves transplanting the memories of a dead man into the mind of a living o...

Death Sentence is Death Wish for the 2000s. However, in place of the slow-burn intensity of Charles Bronson, we have the guilt-riddled stylings of Kevin Bacon. It's easy enough to guess at what director James Wan was trying for with Death Sentenc...

It’s fair to ask what new things Eli Roth and Bruce Willis bring to Death Wish that the original, made in 1974 with Charles Bronson, didn’t have. The answer is: not many. Rather than using this as an opportunity to provide a deeper dive in...

The underlying premise of Devil is the kind of thing Alfred Hitchcock could have used to develop a tightly-wound, pulse-pounding suspense movie. Unfortunately, Hitchcock is dead and the two men shepherding Devil through its production are not near...

At one time, a new Brian De Palma film was something to be greeted with enthusiasm. The filmmaker, with his affinity for borrowing from the greats (Hitchcock in particular), understood how to put his own, modern spin on classic tropes. His rep...