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An Ideal Husband is a delightful parfait - an irresistible concoction of brilliant dialogue, sumptuous set design, top-notch acting, and a plot littered with Machiavellian twists. Possessing a light tone tinged with an acerbic accent, An Ideal Hus...

The chief pleasure to be found in any version of Oscar Wilde's play, The Importance of Being Earnest, is the dialogue, and Oliver Parker's re-interpretation is no different. All of the great lines are here: "The very essence of romance is uncertai...

Although Looking Glass doesn’t get Nicolas Cage back to where he was in Leaving Las Vegas, it’s leaps and bounds better than some of his recent fare. (Left Behind may be the low point but, considering how many for-hire jobs he has taken in...

Billy Wilder, one of the titans of cinema during the 1940s and 1950s, won his first Best Director Oscar for 1945's The Lost Weekend (he would go on to win another for 1960's The Apartment). Over a span of 21 years beginning in 1940 and concluding ...

These days, Hollywood seems to be almost entirely bankrupt of new ideas. For bursts of inspiration or innovation, the movie-goer increasingly has to seek out independent motion pictures. What we are getting more and more from the big studios is a...

In the 1940s and '50s, star power drove movies. Staples of cinema like plot, character, and photography were often of secondary importance to who topped the marquee. Well-known actors could draw large crowds to a bad movie, while obscure name...

Wilde Salome and its companion piece, Salome, may rightfully be considered Al Pacino’s “lost film”. Although made more than a decade ago in 2006, the movie wasn’t fully edited and ready for showing until 2011. Despite making some fest...

Shadow of a Doubt is a Hitchcock film that doesn’t necessarily feel like a Hitchcock film. That doesn’t mean it’s not a bona fide classic but many of the tropes that would come to be identified with the Master of Suspense are conspicuously a...