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"Whatever you do, don't fall asleep." - Nancy The dream - or nightmare - is a staple of the modern horror movie. After all, even as manipulative as the device is, it's still a proven way to jolt an audience. Filmmaker Wes Craven understood th...

The good news is that the 2001 version of Ocean's Eleven represents one of the rarest of Hollywood rarities: a re-make that is actually better than the original. That's not to say that this motion picture is an unqualified success - one tends to e...

You know there's a problem when the most interesting character in a film called Oliver Twist is a supporting woman named Nancy. Technically sound and surprisingly faithful to its source material, Roman Polanski's version of Oliver Twist comes acro...

Oliver Twist has never been one of my favorite Dickens novels, so perhaps that’s part of the reason why I’m lukewarm about Oliver!, the stage musical-turned-Oscar-winning motion picture adaptation of the book. It’s an uneven film with a...

Nostalgia - many movies (especially sequels to long-lasting franchises) trade in it to one degree or another. Few films, however, rely on its impact as strongly as The Peanuts Movie, the first big-screen outing for Charlie Brown & friends since 1...

As long as there will be movies, new adaptations of beloved classics will follow. The important aspect for every director to remember is to find a unique angle – a change in tone, a different slant to the narrative, a shift in setting, etc. ...

Remember how Liam Neeson made it an annual tradition to release a cheesy action/thriller every January or February? Well, Neeson appears to have retired from that business leaving the door wide open for Gerard Butler to step through. Butler has th...

These tough economic times, with the national unemployment rate inching toward double digits, would seem to offer the perfect opportunity to release a movie about the difficulties faced by a recent college graduate in obtaining not merely the "perf...

The Producers is a movie based on a play based on a movie about a play. And that's probably the funniest thing about it. In 1968, Mel Brooks made his big-screen directorial and writing debut with The Producers, a slapstick farce about how two B...

Pumping Iron is a puff piece. From its partly-scripted elements to its decision to focus on the most relatable aspects of bodybuilding, the movie is as far from a hard-hitting documentary as one can find. (For example, the rampant use of steroids ...