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Napoleon Dynamite should be required therapy for anyone with a self-image problem. No matter how much of a loser a person believes himself to be, he couldn't possibly be in worse shape than the protagonist of Jared Hess' wickedly funny high school...

Not only is Nashville the title of Robert Altman's 1975 cinematic masterpiece and the name of the city in which the action is set, but it is the biggest and most colorful character on a palette crammed with well-developed, interesting individuals. ...

For decades, there has been an escalating tension between the NCAA and the student-athletes who play college sports. The center of the conflict lies with Men’s Football and Basketball – two multi-billion dollar empires where the NCAA and its m...

Guilty pleasure (n): a film that a critic shamefacedly admits to liking even though the prevailing opinion, as put forth by serious members of the profession, is that the movie is a piece of crap. Christmas Vacation is considered by many film ...

I'm as willing as any movie-lover to accept a certain amount of ridiculousness in a movie if it serves the greater purpose of entertainment. And, when it comes to action movies, I like to think that my level of tolerance is pretty high. Hey, I en...

How to review a movie that's essentially a copy of its predecessor? The temptation is to simply copy what I wrote about the first National Treasure into this space with a few minor edits to account for name and location changes. Everything from t...

There are two ways in which one can consider The Nativity Story. As a piece of religious instruction or an animated version of a crèche, it accomplishes its aims. As a movie, however, it's slow, plodding, and not terribly interesting. There's a...

Despite his reputation as one of America's foremost "serious" filmmakers, Oliver Stone's name under the "director" caption does not guarantee a good movie. I learned that lesson while enduring the seemingly-endless tedium of The Doors, and was rem...

Sometimes, pure technical accuracy isn't enough. Sometimes, artistry has to be taken into account. One such case in point is Barry Levision's The Natural, arguably the best baseball movie ever made. The film works not because it is flawless in i...

Nostalgia can be a wonderful thing, especially when a director tweaks it and plays with it. With Nebraska, Alexander Payne, working from a screenplay credited to Bob Nelson, targets a very specific slice of Americana that has often been romanticize...