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It has apparently become an old-fashioned notion to believe motion pictures should be grounded in concepts like narrative and character rather than in how loudly the soundtrack plays classic rock songs and how many cuts the director can use in an ove...

As animated films go, The Tale of Despereaux represents adequate family entertainment. The quality is nowhere near the level we have come to expect from Pixar but, since there are no Pixar films in theaters this time of year, The Tale of Despereau...

First thing’s first: this is not a remake of the 1987 film of the same name starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two are connected only insofar as each claims to be an adaptation of the 1982 Stephen King novel. In the case of the first movie, simi...

What a year 2021 has been for Lin-Manuel Miranda. In addition to having one of his stage plays (In the Heights) transformed into a movie, he has also enjoyed major involvements in two animated films (Vivo for Netflix and Encanto for Disney) and ma...

Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life arrives stillborn, the misbegotten offspring of filmmakers who are so greedy that they probably wouldn't hesitate to plunder a grave or two. I would be tempted to recommend this movie as being entertainment of the "...

During the Spring of 1990, I remember being transfixed in front of the television set for an hour each Sunday night over a period of five weeks. The occasion was the "Masterpiece Theater" presentation of the British mini-series "Traffik", a comple...

In all fairness, I think I might have enjoyed this film if I was nine years old. As a much older man, however, “enjoyment” is far from what I experienced while enduring the two-hour slog of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. “Boredom” and �...

To say that TRON was ahead of its time is to understate the matter. '80s special effects aside (pioneering though they were), this movie is a tremendous predictor of things to come, not only in terms of virtual reality but with respect to the advan...

Welcome to film noir, Soderbergh-style. For his latest effort (and fourth feature), the talented director who made the dialogue-and-character-rich sex, lies, and videotape turns his attention to this talky update of 1949's Criss Cross. Focus...