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It appears that Marvel has given up trying to broaden the tent. Although Thor: Ragnarok, the third film to focus on the exploits of the titular Norse God, boasts a lighter tone, when the flippancy is stripped away, it’s the same-ole-same-ole...

Thunderbolts*, Marvel’s entry into the early summer box office sweepstakes, is a comic book film of a different sort. While most of the expected tropes are present – big battles, costly action sequences, a threat to life on this planet – tho...

Following the disastrous Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (my selection for the worst film of 1994), it's a safe bet that Gus Van Sant's next move had to be a proverbial "step in the right direction." In fact, with the biting satire To Die For, the dir...

Top Gun: Maverick is one of those rare breeds: a sequel that’s better than the original. Due in part to the passage of 36 years in between installments, the second film arrives with a less glossy, more serious approach. Cold war rah-rah machismo...

As much heralded, "edgy" movies go, Transamerica fails to live up to expectations. The final 30 minutes are interesting, funny, and affecting, but that segment represents less than a third of the running time. To get to the parts of the film that...

In all fairness, I think I might have enjoyed this film if I was nine years old. As a much older man, however, “enjoyment” is far from what I experienced while enduring the two-hour slog of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. “Boredom” and �...

In 2014, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son missed the #1 spot on my annual Top 10 list by a whisker (it was one of three films that year to which I awarded four stars). A few years later, his Shoplifters topped the l...

Spoilers! Nothing is explicitly revealed but something is implied. For about a half-hour, Tully is damn near brilliant. An incisive, relentless takedown of the myth of new parenting, Diablo Cody’s screenplay highlights the incessant crying, ...

Up in the Air is a wonderful little film (the word "little" being relative, of course). It was the best thing I saw at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, and it stand up as well away from the peculiar atmosphere of the festival as it di...