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Kodachrome is proof of the concept that solid direction and superlative acting can transform even a mediocre script into something worth watching. At its heart, Kodachrome is a middling road picture – a film whose every plot point is predict...

As a romance, a drama, or even a sports movie, The Longest Ride never reaches a satisfying destination. With its confused, sometimes-contradictory themes and scattershot love story aspirations, the film never gains traction on the shifting sands of i...

A single phrase might be all that's necessary to review The Lucky One: "A Nicholas Sparks movie." Sure, Scott Hicks (Shine) is the director and Will Fetters (Remember Me) gets a screenplay credit, but the average movie-goer who settles into a theat...

For anyone who wept hopelessly at the tragic romance of The English Patient, Message in a Bottle is the movie you have been waiting for. In addition to being a beautifully-photographed motion picture with a solid (albeit melodramatic) storyline an...

To call Music of the Heart a departure for filmmaker Wes Craven is to make an understatement of colossal proportions. Craven, the driving force behind two of the world's most popular horror movie series, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, has o...

I can kind-of, sort-of see how this story might work as a novel. Bad dialogue doesn't sound as howlingly awful when not spoken aloud. Idiotic plot contrivances don't seem as painful and obvious. A love affair depends only on the spell woven by t...

I have not read Nicholas Sparks' The Notebook, but I have heard good word-of-mouth about the novel. Sadly, the elements that made the book special did not survive the transition to the screen. The Notebook, as adapted by Nick Cassavetes from a sc...

Occupation accomplishes the previously unthinkable: an alien invasion film that makes Independence Day look smart. A so-bad-it-has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed motion picture (not that I recommend subjecting oneself to the experience), Occupation...

Red Sparrow is a deliciously perverse, unflinchingly violent thriller – a modern-day espionage tale that breaks with the tradition of making the spy business the purview of suave and debonair characters. With a story that argues that the Col...