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The last time Nicolas Cage bared his fangs – in 1988’s Vampire’s Kiss – his performance was widely criticized (and, in some circles, praised) for being outlandishly campy. Now, some 35 years later, Cage has channeled the same zany zeitgeis...

Reno 911!: Miami represents an argument against taking 22-minute TV comedy shows and expanding them to 80-minute feature films. Something that entertains over a short period when watched from the vantage point of a couch or a recliner does not nece...

Memo to director Chris Columbus: In most cases, it's a bad idea for a movie to be a direct representation of a play. "Opening up" the setting is sometimes not all that's necessary to make a stage production into something cinematic. In a theater...

With its curious fusion of tear-jerking drama and fish-out-of-water humor, Rental Family is indeed a strange brew—one of those films that sounds slightly ridiculous in synopsis but blossoms into something unexpectedly tender when experienced mom...

Over the years since its March 1984 release, Alex Cox’s debut feature, Repo Man, has developed a reputation as a “cult classic.” Unlike many other films to claim that badge, this one deserves it. Largely dismissed by mainstream audiences dur...

Repo Men feels like it was cobbled together using pieces of other, often better motion pictures. I could provide a list of titles but it would be more comprehensive simply to state that if a movie is set on a less-than-optimistic future Earth, some...

Every year, there seems to be one film that kicks you in the stomach and leaves your head reeling. In 1999, it was Tim Roth's profoundly disturbing, unforgettable The War Zone. This year, it's Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, one of the mos...

Rescue Dawn, which transpires in southeast Asia during 1965, makes three things perfectly clear. First, director Werner Herzog is obsessed with the story of Dieter Dengler. Second, Herzog loves making movies about men with a tenuous grasp on sanity...

It would be interesting to get a psychologist's perspective about why revenge/vigilante (two sides of the same coin) motion pictures are suddenly so popular. From The Brave One to Death Sentence to Before the Devil Knows You're Dead to Reservation ...

Reservoir Dogs grabs you by the throat and digs its claws in deep. From the moment that the unwitting viewer tumbles into the realm of Lawrence Tierney's gang of eight, they are hopelessly trapped there until the final credits roll. As the first ...