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Mike Leigh has always been known as a creator of exceptional, insightful character studies. Often, his films do little more than trace activities in the life of a person or persons over a several-day period. However, whereas comedies such as Life...

Next represents Nicolas Cage's second superhero movie in the space of two months. However, where Ghost Rider was based on a comic book, Next takes its inspiration from a Philip K. Dick story. The result is not unlike what we have come to expect o...

You know there's a problem when the most interesting character in a film called Oliver Twist is a supporting woman named Nancy. Technically sound and surprisingly faithful to its source material, Roman Polanski's version of Oliver Twist comes acro...

Oliver Twist has never been one of my favorite Dickens novels, so perhaps that’s part of the reason why I’m lukewarm about Oliver!, the stage musical-turned-Oscar-winning motion picture adaptation of the book. It’s an uneven film with a...

Steel, once a bulwark of American industrial might, was transformed over a short span of decades from a thriving commercial enterprise into a fossilized shell of its glory days. Once an engine of prosperity and a provider of reliable employment, it...

While watching The Outfit, a new film from director Graham Moore, I was reminded of the classic Sleuth – not in terms of specific plot points but in the way the film employs misdirection to increase the level of suspense, and also in the use of ...

As long as there will be movies, new adaptations of beloved classics will follow. The important aspect for every director to remember is to find a unique angle – a change in tone, a different slant to the narrative, a shift in setting, etc. ...

Most of us living in the United States have never heard of “Peterloo” so Mike Leigh’s recreation of the events leading up to the infamous August 16, 1819 massacre represents a history lesson as well as an effectively crafted (albeit too ...

It is fair to argue that, at least in the case of Rampart, Woody Harrelson is better than the material in which he appears. A cop story loosely based on real-life events, Rampart is cursed with a meandering script that mines overworked tunnels and ...

The middle segment of the Red Riding trilogy, Red Riding: 1980, represents the best of the three films - a taut, bleak perspective of the power of pervasive corruption. By the end of this movie, it becomes clear that the rot within the Yorkshire p...