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Despite being blessed with well-designed period sets and top-tier acting, this collaboration between Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes and director Michael Engler fails to take flight. I’m not one who normally issues demerits for a slow p...

Chasing Mavericks feels like two completely different movies that have been mashed together. The first, a derivative and unsatisfying coming-of-age story about a Santa Cruz boy and his adopted father figure, seems uncharacteristically weak for the ...

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is fantasy-lite. With its PG rating and aversion to anything shocking or overly grotesque, it's the bastard stepchild of The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. A dull, meandering storyline an...

Circle of Friends is the motion picture equivalent of a dime store romance novel. It has all the requisite elements -- it's a period piece (the bulk of the story takes place in the late 1950s); boasts women with heaving bosoms and a young, virile ...

Is it too much to ask that a narrative film have a beginning, a middle, and an end? Apparently in the case of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, a loose adaptation of Darren Shan's Vampire Blood trilogy, the answer is "yes." Developed with...

Gabe Walker (Sylvester Stallone) is a member of a mountain climbing rescue team. When one of his operations goes wrong and the girlfriend of his best friend, Hal Tucker (Michael Rooker), is killed, Gabe blames himself and leaves. Eight months lat...

Cloverfield is to the monster movie as The Blair Witch Project was to the ghost story. This movie is going to divide audiences. There are those who will be unable to endure nearly 90 minutes of constantly moving hand-held camerawork. Some will e...

In terms of content, if not style, Coal Miner’s Daughter would fit with the spate of musician-related biopics that have dotted the recent landscape. And, although central figure Loretta Lynn (Sissy Specek) never had the same kind of Billboard To...

You know an animated film is doing something right when it brings tears to the eyes. Coco may not represent Disney/Pixar at its pinnacle but it’s close enough to the top to warrant consideration as the best computer-drawn film of 2017. Of cou...

Over the years, I have come to expect great things from Michael Winterbottom. I haven't loved everything he has done, but he has made some powerful movies and even his least inspired films have been watchable. So Code 46 broadsided me, provoking an...