Movies starring Dan

One of the many, many smart decisions made by director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner when developing Lincoln was not to make it a traditional bio-pic of the 16th U.S. president. Instead, they confined the main story to a one-month ...

Watching Little Fockers is a depressing experience. Rarely does a comedy bring such an overpowering sense of sadness. Admittedly, I laughed a few times and am willing to admit that the experience as a whole was more bearable than the trial of sitti...

It's hard to believe that it's only been eight years since The Little Mermaid made its first appearance in movie theaters. Since the film's bow in 1989, when it introduced Disney's "new era", the studio has released six animated features (plus...

It takes a deft hand to fashion a feel-good movie with plenty of laughs and an upbeat ending out of a story that includes drug addiction, a suicide attempt, a death, Nietzsche, and Proust. Despite treading through a minefield of tone shifts, co-di...

"I think the title [of Little Women] has been so off-putting for men over the generations. They feel this is a terribly 'girly' story. But it's actually a wonderful epic tale about family where men's roles are just as important and deeply involve...

The connection between actor/director/writer Ben Affleck and author Dennis Lehane goes back nearly a decade. In 2007, Affleck made his directorial debut by adapting Lehane’s Gone Baby Gone for the screen. It was a high-water mark in both of the...

It would be impossible to write a review of this film without discussing the title. How many viewers will see Julianna Lavin's feature debut because it's called Live Nude Girls? And how many will avoid it for the same reason? There's little doub...

Over the past few years, there have been a number of "behind the scenes" movies about the film making world -- enough, in fact, that this category almost deserves to be considered as a genre in its own right. Most of these films, like Mistress, a...

In 2013, after making Side Effects, Stephen Soderbergh announced his retirement from feature filmmaking. Over the next few years, he kept busy, primarily as the main creative force behind the TV series The Knick, which he directed, executive p...

The Lookout is an effective little thriller that almost works from taut beginning to unspectacular end. The premise is interesting and the story is developed in such a way that the viewer is engaged throughout. The opening scene hooks us and the ...