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I’m a sucker for movies that question the sanity of the main character and thereby cause the viewer to wonder about the reliability of the narrative. Such films, if made right, can offer a wild ride. Unsane, Steven Soderbergh’s second post...

Over the last 20 years of his career, Steven Spielberg has often coupled a crowd-pleasing would-be blockbuster with a more serious-minded project. Thus, in 1993, he released Jurassic Park in tandem with Schindler's List. In 1997, there were The Los...

There's a longstanding movie riddle that asks the following question: Is it better to have a mediocre director and a great screenplay, or a great director and a mediocre screenplay? War of the Worlds, Steven Spielberg's entry into the 2005 summer...

In his nearly 50 years of movie-making, Steven Spielberg has traveled along many different roads but West Side Story represents his first musical. A remake that draws on both of its classic inspirations – the 1961 Oscar-winning movie (directed by...

What Happens Later represents Meg Ryan’s minimal-fanfare return to the genre that made her a star and that resulted in one of the most fertile female/female writer/actor partnerships in the history of filmmaking. With Nora Ephron providing the w...

Those who were regular viewers of Veronica Mars recognize there's an immense wellspring of charisma available to Kristen Bell that she has thus far been unable to tap in her post-Mars career. When in Rome, despite being a standard-order romantic c...

Want to know why Paramount Pictures is struggling? Watch Without a Paddle and you'll gain some insight. At least the film understands what it is, as is indicated by the steaming pile of excrement that appears 2/3 of the way through the proceeding...

Once upon a time in motion pictures, the historical epic was a popular genre – big, sprawling stories featuring larger-than-life characters splashed across a wide screen. The best of these often deviated wildly from the facts that formed their f...

At the risk of being called a curmudgeon, let me voice a dissenting opinion about Wonder, a “family drama” that veers too far into saccharine fantasy for its messages about tolerance and anti-bullying to sound a clear and genuine note. Oh,...

The underlying concepts addressed by Wonder Park are more sophisticated than the treatment they receive in this animated film (which has been developed as a pilot for a new Nickelodeon TV series). However, with plot elements that echo The Wizar...