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It has become a time-honored tradition that stars of Saturday Night Live, upon graduating from the no-longer-funny late night show, elect to spread their wings and strive for cinematic greatness. With a few notable exceptions, most have crashed an...

"We're gonna be too big for Hamburg. We're gonna be too big for Liverpool. We're gonna be too big for our own bloody good." - John Lennon, Backbeat Oliver Stone probably loves this film. Not only is Backbeat a story from "his" era, the ear...

48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, and Lethal Weapon were all, to some extent, reasonably entertaining action films. The unavoidable result of their success has been a long string of sequels and rip-offs. The latest is Bad Boys, an overlong sample ...

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...

Bad Teacher takes a delicious premise and leaves a sour aftertaste. Despite the promise of something nasty and cutting, the film turns out to be as edgy as a dull razor with limp "raunchy" comedy and an unwillingness to push envelopes. The concept ...

There was a time back in the 1990s when everyone wanted to be Tarantino. As we learned at the time, however, there’s only one Tarantino and all the attempts to mimic his style and approach felt like third generation VHS dubs. Now, some 25 ye...

The Ballad of Jack and Rose is a low-key character study about a father and daughter whose idyllic lifestyle is interrupted by the arrival of three newcomers. Not much happens in this film beyond the evolution of the characters and their relationshi...

The Bank Job is a heist movie in the classic tradition - it details every aspect of the caper, from its genesis to its aftermath. The fact that there's political intrigue and espionage swirling around the edges only makes it more fascinating. Dir...

Barb Wire has the cleavage of a Russ Meyer film without the jiggle. If someone was going to make a campy version of Casablanca, you'd think they'd at least have the decency to make it fun. Unfortunately, other than a couple of very obvious, ab...

Who would have imagined that the most appropriate word to describe Basic Instinct 2 would be "boring?" This plodding, pretentious follow-up to 1992's hit replaces Paul Verhoeven's lurid, over-the-top style with the leaden rhythms of Michael Caton-...