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Calling The 400 Blows a "coming-of-age story" seems somehow inadequate. The label, while accurate, does not indicate either the uniqueness or the cinematic importance of this motion picture. These days, the average coming-of-age story tends to be...

Quentin Tarantino didn't originate the method of blending extreme violence with dark comedy but his early films (especially Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction) popularized it for today's generation. Since the early 1990s, many directors have att...

Filtered through a prism of Italian neo-realism, The Battle of Algiers is an unflinching portrayal of how high-minded ideals get trampled underfoot in the heat of war. The film is relevant to modern-day audiences not so much in the specificity ...

Beastly is Beauty and the Beast for the Twilight generation. Featuring a cast top-heavy with TV actors and a screenplay that could have been given an assist by Stephanie Meyer, the end result would have ended up on the ABC Family Channel if it had ...

The Oscar triumph of Green Book and box office success of The Upside reflects a thirst among some movie-goers for stories about racial harmony. The Best of Enemies arrives into this environment intent on hydrating psyches parched by the race-re...

When Boynton Beach Club began life, it was called The Boynton Beach Bereavement Club. Director Susan Seidelman, considering the somber nature of the original appellation, shortened the title with an eye toward marketing. Even with the new name, h...

With Brooklyn's Finest, director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter Michael C. Martin use the ensemble approach of Crash to tell the minimally entwined stories of three Brooklyn cops, all of whom have reached a crossroads of one kind or another. Storie...

Despite being blessed with well-designed period sets and top-tier acting, this collaboration between Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes and director Michael Engler fails to take flight. I’m not one who normally issues demerits for a slow p...

Over the years, I have come to expect great things from Michael Winterbottom. I haven't loved everything he has done, but he has made some powerful movies and even his least inspired films have been watchable. So Code 46 broadsided me, provoking an...

Taking a page out of the Maleficent handbook, Disney has decided to take another of its iconic villains – in this case, Cruella DeVil – and provide her with an origin story that recasts her as a misunderstood victim rather than one of the ...