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Here's one important rule about film criticism and review writing: the harder you have to think to find something noteworthy or laudable about a motion picture, the less likely it is to get a recommendation. So, although there are some things to ...

It’s not surprising that Angel Has Fallen exists. The first film in the series, Olympus Has Fallen, performed well enough ($100M domestic; $170M worldwide) to justify a sequel. London Has Fallen opened three years later to a less enthusiasti...

Going into Anora, I wasn’t sure what to expect but it certainly wasn’t a screwball comedy. Yet, following an explosively erotic, wild twist on the Pretty Woman cliché, writer/director Sean Baker guides his movie into an extended period of...

With most big-budget science fiction movies ignoring intelligence in the unhealthy pursuit of orgiastic special effects, the realm of the idea-based sci-fi film has been co-opted by low-budget indies. In that vein, along comes Anti Matter, the...

Are You Here is a character-based drama from writer/director Matthew Weiner, who is perhaps best known as the creative force behind Mad Men (he was also a writer and producer for The Sopranos). The film focuses on interpersonal relationships: frien...

Stylish, smartly edited, and bursting with energy, the trailer for Argylle is fantastic. That’s about the only thing related to this movie the superlative could be used to describe. The actual production is a polar opposite: overlong, tediou...

To give director John Stockwell and screenwriter Matt Savelloni, at least Armed Response isn’t the generic shoot-’em-up I was expecting. There are some legitimately intriguing ideas explored in the film and, familiar though the concept of ...

"To dream the impossible dream… This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far… To reach the unreachable star." Perhaps no sentiment better expresses what The Astronaut Farmer conveys than those lyrics by Jo...

If the recent spate of bio-pics of musical stars imparts one lesson, it’s this: artists should be remembered for their work not for the Hollywood-ized retellings of their lives. Back to Black is the latest endeavor by the motion picture industry...

The Batman, a reboot of DC comics’ most popular character, brings the franchise back into the shadows successfully embraced by Christopher Nolan’s phenomenally popular take but without the fetishism of the Burton/Schumacher years or the excess...