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Perhaps Robert Frost put it best when he said, "A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer." Once, practicing law was considered a worthy, honorable career. No longer. In a bloated legal system where technicaliti...

When Alien was first released during the summer movie season of 1979, science fiction films were all the rage. The trend had been started two years earlier with the unexpected box office success of Star Wars, and, by 1979, anything even remotely co...

Since its 1979 release, Apocalypse Now has been widely regarded as one of the most powerful and influential films about the Vietnam War. Were it not for the final thirty minutes, I might agree. There's little doubt that the bulk of the movie, whi...

Being There, Hal Ashby’s 1979 adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s novel, is a delightfully dark comedy that, despite a cynical bent, offers viewers a good time. At the heart of Being There’s popularity is a recognition that even the most simp...

Call Camera Buff a case of art imitating life. Although director Krzysztof Kieslowski admitted that this film doesn't tell his own story ("I made films because that was my profession, and I was too lazy or too stupid or both to change..."), it wi...

Just call it Grumpy Old Crooks. This quasi-remake of a 1979 caper film (which starred George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg) makes wholesale changes to the structure of its forebear – unfortunately few of them are for the better. An in...

Although the subject matter of divorce no longer carries the whiff of controversy and scandal it once did, Kramer vs. Kramer has lost none of its power in the forty years since its release. That’s because, although divorce has been normalize...

The Mad Max trilogy is pure adrenaline - a quality that was not lost when the franchise received an injection of American money for its third installment. The essential formula is straightforward, and involves a lot of fights and chases. The film...

There are three kinds of Woody Allen movies: the comedies, the dramas, and the hybrids. Manhattan, which many critics believe to be Allen's most complete motion picture, belongs solidly in the third category - it has plenty of humorous lines (some...

Each of the three "official" Monty Python movies has its own distinguishing quality. The first, 1975's Monty Python and The Holy Grail, is arguably the funniest and (in some ways) the silliest. The last, 1983's The Meaning of Life, is the most un...