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By another name, Broken Arrow is Speed gone nuclear. Yet, despite all the explosions, violence, special effects, and other choreographed excesses, this film doesn't have quite the same impact. It's fun, to be sure, and the wild ride doesn't let u...

Broken City? More appropriately, Broken Movie. There's an old multiplex proverb that goes something like this: "Beware ye movies opening in January that star A-list actors." Broken City illustrates the wisdom of those words. This mess of a moti...

I'd like to say that Bulworth is the best political satire in years, but the truth is that is has tough competition from Barry Levinson's corrosive Wag the Dog in that department. Both films succeed admirably, but, although each takes aim at the s...

Despite arriving during the era when this kind of movie was beginning a slow but inexorable fall from public favor, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid remains one of the best crafted and most beloved of all the Westerns. In addition to launching R...

Note: some spoilers discussing differences between the book and movie.I’ll admit to being disappointed by the newest adaptation of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. The motion capture technology that creates a dog out of the efforts of a...

Captain Underpants (or, to use the full, far-too-long title, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie) gets the summer’s animated roster off to a low-key start. The first of four high profile big-screen cartoons to grace theaters over the n...

I'm sure there will be wags who will glibly compare Cast Away to the likes of "Gilligan's Island" and "Survivor", but, in tone, approach, and overall accomplishment, this atypical Robinson Crusoe tale bears a strong resemblance to one of director R...

Cavalcade, which is based on the Noel Coward play of the same name, became the third anti-war movie in the Academy Awards' first six ceremonies to win the Best Picture Oscar. If nothing else, this reveals something about the lingering power of Wor...

Chasing Mavericks feels like two completely different movies that have been mashed together. The first, a derivative and unsatisfying coming-of-age story about a Santa Cruz boy and his adopted father figure, seems uncharacteristically weak for the ...

In recent years, I have become jaded about superhero movies, a genre I once enjoyed. A sameness and lack of energy permeates them, especially the origin stories. There's something perfunctory and unsatisfying about many of the big titles, leaving i...