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It's easy to understand why the original Magic Mike was a success: the not-too-cheesy, not-too-serious story of a male stripper featured plenty of beefcake, high-energy dance sequences, standout performances from Channing Tatum and a manic Matthe...

Magic Mike’s Last Dance exemplifies Hollywood’s obsession with established properties. When Steven Soderbergh released Magic Mike in 2012, it was designed as a stand-alone film with a beginning, a middle, and an end. However, its box office suc...

On those rare occasions when a great motion picture reaches multiplexes, the film critic must add another aspect to his or her job description: that of cheerleader. It is incumbent upon those of us who routinely dissect movies to applaud the arriv...

Missing is the stand-alone “sequel” to 2018’s Searching, the mystery/thriller that presented the story via computer screen captures. Although only tangentially related to Searching and featuring a completely new cast, Missing uses much the s...

Moneyball illustrates what can happen when a non-fiction book that's more about ideas and processes is translated into a feature film. There's a lot of fascinating information in Moneyball (although, to be fair, it's questionable how much interest...

An understanding of how society uses - and, more importantly, misuses - the term "monster" offers crucial insight into the intentions of first time filmmaker Patty Jenkins. Without offering justifications or excuses, Jenkins seeks to provide some ...

A film of uncommon depth, intelligence, and sensitivity, Munich defies easy labeling. Watching the movie is like reading a top-notch espionage thriller by Le Carre or Deighton. Yet, at the same time, this is a visual experience. The moral and ethic...

The "1600" in the title, Murder at 1600, refers to a house number on Pennsylvania Avenue: the address of the White House. That makes this the third movie in three months (following Shadow Conspiracy and Absolute Power) to deal with high-level gov...

If one had to classify My Date with Drew, it would fall under the documentary umbrella. A more honest appraisal, however, would be to call it "reality TV" for the big screen. After all, it has the same quintessential appeal: an "everyman" as the p...

Watching No Sudden Move, the thought came to me that, if I didn’t know the director beforehand, I might guess Steven Soderbergh or the Coen Brothers. It’s the kind of production that only those filmmakers (or their proteges) would make, using...