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Certain historical periods provide rich and varied soil for the cultivation of motion picture storylines. The twilight of the Roman Empire is one. The American Civil War is another. World War II marks a third. And a fourth is the Chinese "Cultu...

For his directorial debut, Idris Elba has elected to work in a genre he’s comfortable with – the crime thriller. The actor-turned-director is not, however, content merely to regurgitate bits and pieces of productions in which he has appear...

Forever remembered as the "Japanese Bond", You Only Live Twice takes 007 to the Far East for his fifth screen adventure, Sean Connery's final consecutive appearance as the top British agent (the actor returned to the role twice more: 1971's D...

Tom Hanks can act. You need look no further than this year's Saving Private Ryan for proof of that. Meg Ryan can also act. For supporting evidence, check out Prelude to a Kiss and Courage Under Fire. However, in Nora Ephron's latest romantic co...

By their nature, there is a predictable sameness to most romantic comedies. Armed with an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, filmmakers venturing into this genre rarely attempt anything daring; they are, after all, courting an audience t...

From the beginning, it's apparent that there's something "off" about Youth in Revolt. It's not that the film is fatally flawed, but the tone is uneven, the satire is blunt, the comedy rarely generates more than feeble laughs, and the lead characte...

Calling Zathura the "space version of Jumanji" wouldn't be far off. Like the 1995 film, this movie is based on a children's book by celebrated author Chris Van Allsburg in which a group of people plays an amazing board game. (Van Allsburg doesn't...

Under normal circumstances, Zoolander is the kind of movie I would recommend giving a pass to in theaters and waiting for the video release. But these are far from normal circumstances. In the wake of the World Trade Center disaster, audiences ar...

Fans of Ben Stiller’s fashion satire Zoolander will be delighted to learn that Zoolander 2 offers more of the same. Of course, there are drawbacks to this approach - those who were less-than-impressed by the 2001 comedy aren’t likely to b...

Zootopia is respectable animated fare - not nearly as good (or memorable) as the best of Disney/Pixar but significantly better than the majority of quick cash-grab offerings thrown out by studios to dominate the family film market. Although Zootopia�...