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6 Below is the second stranded-on-a-mountain yarn we have gotten in two weeks and, although this one is based on a true story, that doesn’t make it any better than the fictional The Mountain Between Us. In fact, without the considerable tal...

More than 30 years ago, the template established by Animal House for college age comedies became a recognized standard. However, although the Animal House approach is a good way to get cheap laughs, it falls apart when anything more substantive is...

"A few years ago, a friend sent me a book about the prosecution of animals in the Middle Ages... These trials read like modern courtroom dramas. Since the animals were given a full defense counsel and were prosecuted with the whole rigor of the la...

Mira Nair's Amelia is a by-the-book bio-pic. By following the template, it's as safe and straightforward as one could possibly get, without narrative flourishes and with minimal exaggeration to satisfy Hollywood's appetite for fictionalization. Th...

Years ago, while watching Delicatessen (in 1992) and The City of Lost Children (in 1995), I wondered which of the co-directors, Jean-Pierre Jeunet or Marc Caro, was more responsible for the films' quirky tone and striking visual style. Although Ca...

To give director John Stockwell and screenwriter Matt Savelloni, at least Armed Response isn’t the generic shoot-’em-up I was expecting. There are some legitimately intriguing ideas explored in the film and, familiar though the concept of ...

Had Martin Scorsese made this film 25 years ago, it would have been greeted with a surge of curiosity. Howard Hughes, one of the richest eccentrics of the 20th century, was still fresh in the public's mind at that time. Now, more than a quarter c...

Basquiat, the fictionalized biography of graffiti artist-turned-international sensation, Jean Michael Basquiat, is the latest in a long line of "suffering artist" motion pictures, following closely on the heels of last year's controversial Tota...

Becoming Jane looks at the life of Jane Austen through the prism of her novels. The film is a semi-fictional biography of the esteemed author; although it incorporates people and events from her life, it also takes liberties with known events. Lik...