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Back in the early 2000s, Walt Disney Pictures, operating from the motive of strip-mining every conceivable asset in the quest for cash, decided to make movies based on its two most recognizable theme park rides: “The Pirates of the Caribbean” ...

You Don’t Nomi is a 2019 documentary that takes a fond look back at the deservedly derided Paul Vehoeven/Joe Eszterhas box office bomb, Showgirls. Although director Jeffrey McHale approaches the retrospective from a decidedly subjective poin...

Top Gun is an ‘80s testosterone fix – a celebration of machismo and a recruiting film for the U.S. Navy. Typical of Jerry Bruckheimer/Don Simpson at their peak, the movie embraces masculine tropes to create a patchwork narrative that is almost...

There are three things going on in The Beta Test. One works exceptionally well. One works okay (although it will fare better with “insiders” than “regular folks”). And the other pretty much fails. It’s a mixed bag although the short ...

Timeliness can be important in a film’s release, but it’s rarely all-important. Consider The Beach House, for example. Here’s a movie about people trapped in a shelter-in-place situation by an unknown contagion that has infiltrated the a...

Most of those who elect to see Sully, Clint Eastwood’s re-enactment of the 2009 ditching of a commercial airliner in the Hudson River, will remember the incident involving U.S. Airways Flight 1549 from news reports. For several days following t...

Exodus represents Ridley Scott's attempt to emulate Cecil B. DeMille. Comparisons with The Ten Commandments are both unavoidable and appropriate. Considering the mixed critical reaction to the 1956 spectacle, it is perhaps surprising that Exodus co...

Sixteen years after her death, Princess Diana is still capable of generating interest, which is probably the only reason why this dull, pointless movie was greenlighted. A scattershot treatment of the paparazzi darling's life during her post-Charle...

Creating a bio-pic of Linda Lovelace (nee Boreman) comes with its own series of challenges. The chief of these is that no one, not even Lovelace (who died in 2002), has a consistent view of the salient facts of her life. So, basing a movie on her s...

Old action heroes don't die or fade away; they just keep going. Once upon a time, being an action star had an expiration date. Now, as long as there's some acknowledgment of the aging process - a line here, a joke there - it's viewed as more of ...