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The smart romantic comedy occurs so infrequently that it has obtained an almost mythical status, sort of like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. In the subgenre of gay and lesbian romantic comedies, intelligence is even rarer. Since the ratio of goo...

Legally Blonde 2 should never have been made. It is a cinematic abomination - a source of embarrassment for everyone involved. There have been worse films this year, but none has been marketed as this fun-loving and upbeat. Worthwhile moments ar...

The 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors is a celebration of two beloved motion picture genres: the musical and the cheesy science fiction flick. Before making it to the screen in its final form during the '86 Christmas season, Little Shop of Ho...

Billy Wilder, one of the titans of cinema during the 1940s and 1950s, won his first Best Director Oscar for 1945's The Lost Weekend (he would go on to win another for 1960's The Apartment). Over a span of 21 years beginning in 1940 and concluding ...

Edward Zwick is probably best known for his work on television. Along with Marshall Herkovitz, he was a driving force behind two long-running TV series (thirtySomething and Once and Again). He was also an important contributor to many others (inc...

I never thought it could happen. Jim Carrey (star of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) upstaged -- and not once, but twice! While it's true that The Mask is another vehicle for the rubber-featured modern-day amalgamation of Jerry Lewis and the Three St...

It’s hard to imagine a more generic wilderness adventure-turned-romance than Hany Abu-Assad’s The Mountain Between Us. Saved from the cinematic purgatory of direct-to-video by the screen presence of Idris Elba and Kate Winslet and some spe...

What do Alistair Sim, Albert Finney, George C. Scott, Jim Carrey, Patrick Stewart, Bill Murray, and Michael Caine (among others) have in common? They have played the part of Ebenezer Scrooge in an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas C...

It's a testimony to the enduring popularity of the story of Mutiny on the Bounty that it has been represented cinematically five times. In addition to the Oscar-winning 1935 production, which is arguably the best of the bunch, there are four other...

At the time of The Night of the Hunter’s release, the motion picture industry was in flux. Beset by the perceived threat presented by television, the studios were looking for ways to go bigger and better: color, advanced sound, widescreen as...