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12 Strong represents a recent war as depicted on screen in an old-fashioned way. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, war movies followed an established template that pitted the “good guys” (often Americans) against the “bad guys.” Such fi...

12 Years a Slave, sure to be a heavy hitter when the 2014 Oscar nominations are announced, is a powerful and compelling adaptation of Solomon Northup's autobiographical account of the dozen years he spent as a slave on Louisiana plantations from 18...

Danny Boyle doesn't believe in doing the same thing twice. After the rousing success of the romantic fantasy Slumdog Millionaire, he has switched not only gears but continents to tell the true story of Aron Ralston in 127 Hours, an "action film wit...

Benghazi. Few words have become more politicized in the last decade than this one, the Libyan city where, on September 11, 2012, two U.S. diplomatic compounds were sacked and four men (including Ambassador Chris Stevens) killed. It became a political...

If elements of 1408 seem a little familiar, it shouldn't be a surprise. Here's John Cusack, once again having lodging problems (see also Identity). Here's a supernatural debunker faced with something that refuses to be debunked (see also The Reap...

Fast pacing and a high energy level can cover a lot of sins, and nowhere is that more evident that in 2 Guns. The storyline contains some ridiculous elements and the climax is more like a coalescence of chaos than a legitimate conclusion, but it so...

Perhaps it takes the passage of time to gain the perspective to call some films great. Certain movies, despite being ridiculed upon their initial release, have been "re-discovered" years later and labeled as forgotten classics. It's a universal t...

The 16-year wait between the 1968 opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the 1984 release of 2010 doesn't represent the longest interval between a movie and its direct sequel (that distinction probably belongs to Gone With the Wind/Scarlett, although...

21 is a perfect example of how something that's "based" on a true story can nevertheless exist mainly in the realm of fiction. While it's true that the source material for the movie, Ben Mezrich's Bringing Down the House relates events that actuall...

The television series 21 Jump Street, like many old shows, is a product of its time. Trying to accomplish a "straight" remake of something so irrevocably tied to the '80s could not be done in 2012; it wouldn't work. When Michael Mann reworked Miami...