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Watching The Debt, I was reminded of how entertaining a well-executed Cold War thriller can be. Although elements of this movie, based on the 2007 Israeli film Ha-Hov, have a kinship to Steven Spielberg's Munich, the overall thrust is more in line ...

Christmas movies like this are enough to turn one into a Grinch or at least make one wish that the filmmakers would get a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future. Why it is so hard to make a decent Christmas comedy? Not every movie has to be on ...

Despite the “based on a true story” label, Deepwater Horizon is structured not so much as a fictionalized chronicle of actual events as it is an old-fashioned disaster movie. Although the genre has recently been overrun by apocalyptic sce...

Destroyer could earn Nicole Kidman some consideration for an Oscar nomination and the gritty neo-noir storyline about obsession, guilt, and betrayal is worthwhile for those who appreciate the genre, but the movie seems destined to be lost in t...

Showing great restraint and refusing to demonize the closed community in which the story transpires, director Sebastian Lelio has tackled the age-old tale of forbidden love and its implications for those who fight for freedom and choice while ...

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, a re-make of the 1973 made-for-TV movie of the same name, is a haunted house movie whose success lies in the careful manner freshman director Troy Nixey steeps everything in a surfeit of atmosphere. It overflows. It suf...

I have done my best to avoid spoilers and, although I’d love to get into specifics about what’s wrong with the movie, such an approach would require revealing plot twists. So, although I won’t go that far, some of the “comparison” movies...

Dracula Untold purports to relate the origin of how the world's most famous vampire became the creature we all know and fear. Unfortunately, Gary Shore's film suffers from narrative issues and problems of execution. Some of these are likely beyond ...

What propels filmmakers to make a sequel to a 20-year old film? Is it nostalgia for the brand of comedy that characterized the original? Is it desperation on everyone's part to revive flagging careers? Or is it Hollywood's acceptance that recogniz...