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This is what happens when a less-talented director tries to make a Christopher Nolan movie. The convoluted result – low on thrills, lower on coherence, and lowest on acting – is more confusing than compelling. Boiled down to the essential deta...

Since Liam Neeson began his action star career with Taken, most of his play-for-pay films have been depressingly generic. Although far from a revelation, In the Land of Saints and Sinners rises above many of those. Perhaps that’s because the...

Raiders of the Lost Ark was a nearly perfect action movie – upon its release in the early 1980s, it redefined the genre for decades to come. It also provided a trap for co-creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, forcing them to repeatedly tr...

It’s apparent that writer/director Brandon Cronenberg has a fascination with what constitutes identity. That question, posed existentially without the involvement of religion or spirituality, lies at the core of both Cronenberg’s dark, trippy ...

Spoiler Alert: The review discusses things that are part of the established historical record but which may be unknown to anyone not familiar with the subject matter. One could be forgiven believing that a movie about the most successful f...

Janet Planet explores the mother/daughter relationship between single mom Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and her strong-willed, socially awkward child, 11-year old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler). Although characterized by strong performances across-the-board, the...

Jesus Revolution takes a fascinating period of American history – the hippie movement and its associated fallout within the Christian community – and transforms it into a bland, TV movie-of-the-week experience. While neither badly made (the pe...

John Wick has lost his mojo. The aspect of this franchise that made it compulsively watchable for the first two installments has degraded during the last two. John Wick has always been a comic book-style property (although Chapter 4 feels more lik...

When the focus is on comedy, Joy Ride hits and misses with gusto and some of its most outrageous gags deliver big laughs. The problem is that co-creator/director Adele Lim has delusions of crafting a dramatic foundation for the humor and the since...

Kandahar is one of those movies that exists without having a compelling reason for doing do. As a war movie, it’s not especially insightful or gut-wrenching. As an action film, it lacks energy, momentum, and consistency. As a drama, it feels art...