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Arena is one of those movies where there’s a strong temptation to assign a one-star rating (or less). Indeed, based on “traditional” reviewing metrics, this 1989 sci-fi throwaway is undeserving of any degree of respect. The story is a hodgep...

Ash (Bruce Campbell) is a housewares salesman at an S-Mart department store before a venture to the house from The Evil Dead and The Evil Dead II sends him through a time tunnel into the Middle Ages. Suddenly, as the "Promised One" of prophesy, he i...

It is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the behemoth before which every other would-be blockbuster during the summer of 2015 must bow. Yet, perhaps because the filmmakers subconsciously recognized this and didn't feel the pressure to excel, the ...

For Rodney Dangerfield, the stand-up comedian whose catchphrase was “I don’t get no respect,” Back to School provided an opportunity to get more than his share of praise and adulation. The crowd-pleasing comedy grossed $91M, making it th...

The superheroes of DC Comics have been very good to Warner Brothers. In 1978, Superman became a major motion picture event, packing theaters and resulting in a franchise that generated three sequels before collapsing under the weight of bad writin...

The box office performance of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman assured there would be sequel but Burton’s desire for greater creative control caused the production of Batman Returns to linger in development longer than Warner Brothers preferred. In ad...

Let me start with a disclosure: I have not read the Alex Garland novel upon which The Beach is based, so I'm not in a position to discuss firsthand whether or not it butchers its source text (according to some reports, it does). The film represen...

Horror/comedies were all the rage in the 1980s, with many of the so-called “serious” genre entries displaying a toothy sense of humor (although one can debate to what extent this was intentional). Excepting perhaps 1984’s Ghostbusters, none ...

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a worthy follow-up to its 1988 predecessor, Beetlejuice. For this much-delayed sequel, director Tim Burton has hewed close to the strengths of the original, repeating them when appropriate and acknowledging them when not...

Tim Burton's name is on the credits but Big Eyes doesn't feel at all like the visually eccentric, gothic-tinged productions we normally expect from the offbeat director. Oh, there are some "Burton-esque" moments, like a vacation in ...