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When the Game Stands Tall is one of those cliché-riddled feel good movies that, by trying too hard to be inspirational, ends up as cloying and overly sentimental. At first glance, the narrative trajectory might seem to be on a different vector fr...

When We Were Kings, a documentary about the Muhammad Ali/George Forman heavyweight "Rumble in the Jungle" boxing match, is a wonderfully nostalgic, and occasionally insightful, window into an event nearing its 50th anniversary. By nature, ho...

The screen adaptation of Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing, written by Lucy Alibar and directed by Olivia Newman, comes with a built-in audience – the novel has (to date) sold 12 million copies and, if only a fraction of those readers pays ...

Welcome to the lurid world of Atom Egoyan, B-grade schlock filmmaker. Until seeing Where the Truth Lies, I never would have considered applying this title to Egoyan, the eclectic filmmaker of some of the '90s most compelling features (Exotica and T...

Where the Wild Things Are may be the first family film in recent memory to rely not on narrative or character development but on ideas and the director's vision. The result is an involving experience for all but the most fidgety children and an op...

Although Where’d You Go, Bernadette suffers from an ungainly structure and uneven pacing, the production as a whole is engaging and uplifting. This is due in part to the strength of the cast but also owes something to director Richard Linkla...

While We're Young offers two movies for the price of one.  The first, about a married couple in their 40s coping with being rootless and middle-aged while lamenting the loss of their youth, is smartly-observed and relatable.  The second...

While it's true that making good romantic comedies is still something of an art, producing average films of the genre has become a science. Take a little chemistry, a portion of physics, some basic biology, and mix them together according to a wel...

Whip It, the directorial debut of actress Drew Barrymore, is a sports film that uneasily straddles the divide that exists between comedy and drama. Built upon a mountain of clichés, the screenplay wallows in artificiality and, although some of th...

It's a noteworthy achievement for director Damien Chazelle to infuse a tale about the development of a musician with all the tension and intensity of a top-notch thriller. Whiplash is riveting. At times, it evidences the qualities of a can't-turn-a...