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Two words that come to mind when considering The Judge are generic and predictable. It's also well-intentioned and earnest (perhaps to a fault). There are some good scenes and instances of strong acting but the project as a whole is so familiar tha...

When I was three years old and my playmates were happily watching Sesame Street and cartoons, I would sit in front of the television and gaze at the force of nature that was Julia Child (I also liked Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet). Her larger...

What’s in a name? It would be disingenuous to assume that Nick Hornby was ignorant of the titillation value of calling something “Juliet, Naked.” However, to be clear, there’s nothing prurient about the movie. The title refers to a son...

Apparently, the producers of Jumanji wanted this film to be a Jurassic Park for 1995's holiday season. If so, it's a badly misplaced, and ultimately futile, hope. For, although no one would suspect Steven Spielberg's 1993 dino-picture of having a...

Perhaps there are interesting directions in which the filmmakers could have taken the Jumanji series – after all, the 2017 reboot, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, was vast improvement over the mid-1990s original. Unfortunately, driven by Hol...

Every year, there are a handful of pleasant and unpleasant surprises in multiplexes. Count Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle among the former. A tremendous improvement over the tepid 1995 original, this quasi-sequel brings humor, fun performances,...

One of the cardinal rules when making a motion picture about a superhero, especially one no one has heard of, is not to make the integrity of the story depend on the existence of a sequel. Unfortunately, that's a rule that director Doug Liman brea...

The first encounter with the family of a spouse (or would-be spouse) can be a daunting experience, especially when their world is not yours, and vice versa. For his feature debut, director Phil Morrison (from a script by Angus MacLachlan) takes us...

The first encounter with the family of a spouse (or would-be spouse) can be a daunting experience, especially when their world is not yours, and vice versa. For his feature debut, director Phil Morrison (from a script by Angus MacLachlan) takes us...

The process of transforming beloved animated classics into live-action versions has become a modern cottage industry. This self-cannibalization has included titles like Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and now The Jungle Book (with Beauty and...