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Victoria and Abdul, based on (mostly) true events as related in Shrabani Basu’s historical chronicle of the same name, is effectively a sequel to the 1997 film, Mrs. Brown. That movie, directed by John Madden, detailed Queen Victoria’s fri...

Violent Night, Tommy Wirkola’s contribution to the Santa Claus legend, is better than it has a right to be but not as good as it could have been. Using a similar premise to the one botched by 2020’s Fatman (with Mel Gibson as the Man in Red), ...

The Virgin Suicides is Sofia Coppola's directorial debut, and its effectiveness illustrates that she's better behind the camera than she is in front of it. (Most movie-goers will remember her ill-fated attempt to portray Michael Corleone's daughte...

The Virginity Hit takes the first-person, pseudo-documentary approach popularized by horror films such as The Blair Witch Project and applies it to the coming-of-age/teen comedy genre. Perhaps surprisingly, it proves to be a good fit, although que...

A general rule of summer film watching is to beware any August release featuring a major star. The only reason for a distributor to hold back such a production is a lack of faith in the picture's ability to succeed in the highly-competitive early ...

Often, one of the most overlooked elements of a film is its cinematography. Paradoxically, it is also the most important, whether specifically noticed or not. Movies are a visual medium where the pictures shoulder the lion's share of the bu...

Two distinct problems of execution keep The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan's "comeback" from being anything more than another disappointing title on an increasingly uneven filmography. Despite a promising premise and effective "Shyamala...

It's a pleasant thing to encounter occasionally a movie in which people are portrayed as decent (if flawed) individuals. In The Visitor, there are no human villains. No one wears a black hat. The antagonist is The System - the nameless, faceless...

Back in the late 1980s, the team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman gave new life to Disney animation by re-interpreting several classic stories as musicals. Unlike previous animated films that had incorporated the occasional song, Menken/Ashman...

Volcano is one of those films (like last year's Twister and Independence Day) for which it doesn't matter what I (or any other critic) have to say. Disaster movie junkies will go to get their fix; those who can't tell the difference between Th...