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John Wick has lost his mojo. The aspect of this franchise that made it compulsively watchable for the first two installments has degraded during the last two. John Wick has always been a comic book-style property (although Chapter 4 feels more lik...

When the focus is on comedy, Joy Ride hits and misses with gusto and some of its most outrageous gags deliver big laughs. The problem is that co-creator/director Adele Lim has delusions of crafting a dramatic foundation for the humor and the since...

Like David Lynch, Miranda July populates her films with quirky characters and her narratives peel back the veneer of normalcy to show what’s underneath. That’s where the similarities end, however. While Lynch gravitates toward darkness and...

We have entered the world of post-modern superheroes, where the concept of someone with special powers doing battle against the forces of evil seems quaint, almost boring. Batman is The Dark Knight. Superman is on hiatus because the most interest...

Stunt coordinator-turned-director J.J. Perry, making his sophomore feature, knows what he wants from his movie and understands the B-movie aesthetic necessary to get it. And there are times when The Killer’s Game works on that level. The stunts ...

The most important name associated with this new telling of the tale of King Arthur is “Guy Ritchie.” More than most working directors, Ritchie comes to projects with his own specific take on them – one that inevitably rubs some viewers ...

There are reasons why Hollywood rarely backs a murder mystery.  With its various narrative complexities, double dealings, and mandatory twists, the genre is generally unsuited for the constrictions demanded by a two-hour timeslot. As the PBS ...

If one was to clump together all the movies – both narrative and documentary – made about the Vietnam War (or, as it’s called in Asia, the American War), the number would be in the three-digit range. I have seen many of those (although b...

The Last Exorcism is one of those rare films where the marketing campaign is more interesting than the film it publicizes. The movie is clearly low-budget and, rather than spending big bucks in the traditional arenas, Lionsgate has elected to prom...

Despite being adapted from a novel by co-screenwriter Darryl Ponicsan, Last Flag Flying feels like a Richard Linklater film. The director’s sympathy and affection for the characters is evident. He doesn’t judge them although they may have ...