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About 20 minutes into The Secret Life of Pets, an entertaining but inconsequential animated movie, I was struck by a powerful feeling of déjà vu. It didn’t take long for me to ascertain the cause. The Secret of Pets is pretty much...

Selma offers a warts-and-all snapshot of half-century old American history: events beginning around the first of January 1965 in Selma, Alabama and culminating with the triumphant third march to Montgomery and President Johnson's introduction of ...

Ever since people saw him in a tuxedo in Croupier, Clive Owen was considered the likely successor to Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. It remains unclear whether the producers passed over Owen in favor of the lesser known Daniel Craig or whether (as s...

In 1990, the MPAA introduced the NC-17 rating to provide an outlet for legitimate adult fare -- non-pornographic motion pictures with content deemed too strong for the under-17 crowd. The first movie released with an NC-17 was Henry and June...

There’s a trick to doing a psychological thriller right. Hitchcock understood it. So did Chabrol and the Coens. Paul Feig, however, needs to brush up a little more on his technique. Tone is one of the biggest problems with A Simple Favor, a...

Initially, Sky High looked like it was going to be one of the summer's throw-away movies - a family comedy with suspicious similarities to last year's The Incredibles. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that not only is Sky High too good to be ...

“Someday, my prince will come…” So sang Adriana Caelotti in the Depression-era classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the film that proved Walt Disney was more than Mickey Mouse. Some 90 years later, amidst a wave of cash-grabs that have ...

Summer is the season of bloat and the trait is evident in Spy's excessive running length. At about 90 minutes, this would have been a fresh, breezy action-comedy. However, with an additional half-hour of padding, viewers are forced to endure stre...