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Regarding a concussion as a serious brain injury is a relatively recent phenomenon. For many years, “getting your bell rung” (as the expression goes) was something people were expected to shrug off. For sports, the fix was to take a coupl...

It has been a long time since I came as close to walking out of a movie as I did with Confessions of a Shopaholic. Not only did I find this production to be irritating, unfunny, and lacking in entertainment value, but I found its underlying slavis...

When it comes to a Spike Lee movie, it would be foolish to expect a politics-free zone. Lee is an activist filmmaker and has never pretended otherwise. He makes movies that entertain and educate but, most importantly, he seeks to challenge. So...

Where are the flying cows when you really need them? Dante's Peak is obviously predicated on the dubious idea that bigger is better. 1996's Twister brought in hundreds of millions at the box office by showcasing relatively small (if something s...

Consequences. In real life, these ramifications emanate from every action like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. Often in movies, especially those that feature characters who don't play by the rules, such penalties are suspended. However,...

For some reason, the Nazis are popular during the holiday season of 2008. They occupy central positions in Valkyrie and Good, flitter around the periphery of The Reader, and are rarely seen but very much present in Defiance. Edward Zwick's adapta...

In July 1967, civil unrest resulting from the brutality of the predominantly white Detroit police department reached a boiling point. The result, which history has named the “12th Street Riot”, was one of the deadliest and destructive riots in...

Taylor Hackford's The Devil's Advocate has many laudable qualities, but subtlety is not among them. The story, which postulates that the devil is walking among us today, gives Satan's human alter-ego a truly obvious name: John Milton (for those w...

While watching Disney's Dinosaur, with all of its incredibly rendered creatures and seamless blending of animated objects with real backgrounds, a question occurred to me: In movies like this, can the writing keep pace with the technology? Films ...

Thirty-six years after publishing The Shining, Stephen King returned to the world where the Overlook Hotel once stood to catch up with how things have been going for the now-adult character of Danny Torrance. The lure of making a movie...