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The word that best describes Guy Ritchie's version of Swept Away is "unfortunate." The word that best describes Madonna's attempt to play Amber Leighton is "unfortunate." The word that best describes my decision to see this movie is "unfortun...

In the past, it has been difficult to get the public interested in political films. This is especially true of younger viewers who are not old enough to participate in the voting process. 2008 may be different, however, with the "rock star" candi...

Takers is a standard-order heist flick that stays mostly true to its B-movie roots until the end, when director John Luessenhop attempts to inject a little seriousness (there's some slow-motion and even an operatic score) into an otherwise unpreten...

It’s in vogue to call some horror films “throwbacks,” but, at least in the case of Danny and Michael Philippou’s directorial debut, Talk to Me, it’s an accurate assessment. In recent years, the horror trend has been for “safer” movie...

Tammy is a road trip movie and, like many road trip movies, it embraces a meandering, aimless tone. It's often said for films of this sort that it's the journey that matters, not the destination. Unfortunately, in this case, neither is worth the pr...

In March 1977, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences committed another in their seemingly-endless series of injustices, awarding the Best Picture Oscar to John Avildsen's Rocky, thereby snubbing one of the great modern American classics...

Ted is essentially a one-joke movie. Okay, it's a very funny joke, but it's still only one joke. As a short, this could have been brilliant - hilarious, irreverent, and blisteringly satirical. I laughed a lot during the first half hour, not as much...

The original Ted was an engagingly ribald comedy that worked in large part because the gimmick was fresh. After all, Teddy Bears, even on those rare occasions when they talk, don't normally curse, smoke weed, and engage in sexual pantomime. At th...

One common complaint about modern-day horror is a tendency to spoon-feed plot elements to viewers, revealing not only too much about the resident evil but doing it in a manner that leaves little to interpretation. Whatever its flaws, and there...

Here's a movie that falls into a category titled "Under the Radar and Straight from the Heart." I have now forgiven director Brad Silberling for making Moonlight Mile, the painfully melodramatic weeper from 2002. The Lemony Snicket film helped get ...