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Deconstructing: To write about or analyze in a way that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth, asserts that words can only refer to other words, and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert the...

It can be convincingly argued that John Waters' oeuvre is an acquired taste. If that's the case, I haven't yet acquired it. I view Waters as a pre-adolescent male in a state of arrested development. He is obsessed with what kids snickeringly ref...

As a character study that examines a pair of reprehensible individuals, The Door in the Floor does an excellent job. The problem with the film is simple: how many people want to spend nearly two hours in the company of such characters. The viewe...

If you don’t know who the Earl of Grantham is, you can probably stop here. If you don’t know Lady Mary’s tragic history, this movie may not be for you. And if you aren’t breathlessly awaiting the next cutting quip from Lady Violet, the...

The term “fan service” is often used in association with popular genre projects: Marvel films, Star Trek, Star Wars, and the like. The two Downton Abbey films (the first, released in 2019, and its sequel, A New Era) illustrate that even Ma...

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, like 2019’s Downton Abbey and its 2022 sequel Downton Abbey: A New Age, is comfort food for fans. And there are plenty of them: an estimated 120 million viewers worldwide regularly watched the TV series at its...

When the Coen Brothers announced their (amicable) breakup following the release of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a great lamentation was heard throughout the population of cineastes. Of course, that wasn’t the end of the line for Joel and Ethan ...

Eastern Promises is the latest effort from acclaimed filmmaker David Cronenberg, whose recent work has elevated his status from that of a cult figure to someone in the mainstrem. Although the director has re-teamed with his The History of Violence ...

William Shakespeare. Charles Dickens. Jane Austen. Those three authors are perhaps the most frequently adapted writers of classic novels in the relatively short history of cinema. There’s a reason for that. The timeless nature of their outpu...

A unique romantic comedy, unfettered by the normal expectations of the genre, is a rare and wondrous thing. That's precisely what director Michel Gondry, working from a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adapatation), delivers. ...