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All Quiet on the Western Front is the definitive World War I motion picture, the best of a surprisingly small class of movies. Despite being overshadowed in history by the conflict of the late 1930s and early 1940s, The Great War was the subject o...

Like Frankenstein and Hamlet, Anna Karenina is a literary touchstone that filmmakers return to on a regular basis. The first filmed version of the book was a 1910 German silent which has long since been lost to the ages. It was released shortly bef...

Joe Wright's interpretation of Ian McEwan's Atonement proves that, when it comes to literary adaptations, he understands what he's doing. Wright’s previous feature was Pride and Prejudice, a significantly happier production than this one (althoug...

The only thing as bad as bad comedy is bad action. Bad Boys II has plenty of both. In fact, those two things are all it has, unless you count the small helping of bad drama. When it comes to this movie, the word "bad" initially seems highly appr...

It takes a mediocre movie like Before I Fall to illustrate how brilliant Harold Ramis’ Groundhog Day is. Founded on the same premise, the movies show the variances that can result from different approaches. Groundhog Day uses comedy and wit to buff...

Bottoms exists somewhere in between a satire and an homage to John Hughes-style teen rom-coms, reimagined for today’s LGBQT+ friendly audiences. When it works, which is quite often, it does so for the same reason that Hughes’ best-known offeri...

The Boxtrolls represents the best animated movie to reach theater screens since The Lego Movie exploded on the scene in February. A British-flavored, 3-D stop motion affair, The Boxtrolls channels more than a little Monty Python in telling its Tarz...

The usual function of the "revenge flick" is to allow the viewer to vicariously experience the brutal pleasure of executing that "dish best served cold." It's a basic case of good versus evil, with the former striking back against the latter. The...

When you’re a kid, you have your favorite toys. You play with them regularly and rigorously until, eventually and inevitably, you grow tired of them and move on. Then, if they’re good toys, someone else will pick them up and use them. Same...

Spoiler Alert: This review contains spoilers related to a plot point that occurs late in the film. You have been warned. Thematically, The Clouds of Sils Maria is a close cousin to Birdman, although the former is weaker in both narrative thrust an...