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At the beginning of The Intouchables, a caption informs us that this is "based on a true story." The Intouchables is a very good film - uplifting, funny, heartwarming, etc. - but its strengths are unrelated to the degree (or lack thereof) of factua...

One corner of the genre of sports clichés is devoted to true stories of overachieving underdogs. In recent years, Disney has repeatedly raided this area, creating one inspiring story after another, most of which (like Remember the Titans and The R...

Journey to the Center of the Earth is the first live-action feature to take advantage of the new digital 3-D technology. However, in generating what amounts to a 90-minute theme park ride, the filmmakers lost track of the need to tell a compelling...

Juno may well be 2007's "Little Film That Could." You know the category - there's one every year. Last year's entry was Little Miss Sunshine. Word-of-mouth for Juno has been building since its World Premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in ear...

It is possible to make a movie in which nearly the entire running length is a car chase. An example of how to do this is Duel. An example of how not to do it is Kidnap. The problem with this bottom-of-the-barrel thriller is simple enough to ide...

No one can accuse Martin Scorsese of not moving with the times. His latest production, Killers of the Flower Moon, follows in the footsteps of The Irishman in recognizing that the bulk audience will stream the film at home. So, although Scorsese h...

Kings and Queen, the 2004 film by French director Arnaud Desplechin, is wending its way slowly across North America, making its way into select art houses. The movie is quintessentially French, focusing on drama instead of melodrama and character ...

For Knocked Up, writer/director Judd Apatow's sophomore feature, the filmmaker has elected to follow pretty much the same formula that made his debut, The 40 Year Old Virgin, such a success. Considering how winning the formula is, it's a safe appro...

"Labor" isn't just a word in the title of Jason Reitman's new film, it's a description of what it feels like to sit through the movie. Messy, poorly focused, and overflowing with artifice, Labor Day is an unpleasant surprise to come from the pen of...