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Consider a movie that takes place in the Big Apple and features a heterosexual romance with an age gap, a dose of "Jewishness," a psychoanalyst, and an ending that doesn't pander to all the usual clichés. This may sound like Woody Allen - in fact...

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...

[Click here to read my review of the original 1960 film.] There's no secret why this new version of Psycho exists. Redundant and unnecessary as it is, it will likely make money for Universal Pictures (a studio in dire need of a box office succe...

There's something almost old-fashioned about Michael Mann's Public Enemies, a mostly factual re-telling of the descent and death of John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), one of the 1930s most infamous bank robbers. More drama than thriller, the movie does...

When critics bemoan the dumbing down of movies, they're talking about stuff like The Purge. This is quite possibly the most moronic motion picture I have seen thus far in 2013 and that's saying a lot. The movie has obviously been constructed for th...

The success of 2013's The Purge took everyone by surprise, including writer/director James DeMonaco, who was immediately called upon by distributor Universal Studios to pen a sequel. The result is The Purge: Anarchy, a story set in the same world a...

The Purge: Election Year represents writer/director James DeMonaco’s attempt to squeeze one more movie out of a premise that has run dry. The first movie of the series offered little more than The Concept - an alternate universe tale that took ...

Pushing Tin, from acclaimed British director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Enchanted April), is the latest example of a movie that wastes a strong cast on a lame script. The film, billed as a dramatic comedy about the lives of air traf...

It's difficult to pinpoint how R.I.P.D. fell into the rat-hole in which it exists. Is the problem the director? The screenwriters? Did the studio step in and sabotage the production team's creative vision? Regardless, in R.I.P.D., we have a legitim...

Taylor Hackford's Ray has a tremendous performance by Jamie Foxx and a soundtrack that is jammed with recordings by the late Ray Charles, but both work in service of a paint-by-numbers screenplay that runs too long and could have been developed in ...