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Films based on historical events come in all shades and colors. On one end of the spectrum are those like Gettysburg, with a meticulous attention to detail and adherence to the written record. Then there are movies like The Journey, which use...

Two words that come to mind when considering The Judge are generic and predictable. It's also well-intentioned and earnest (perhaps to a fault). There are some good scenes and instances of strong acting but the project as a whole is so familiar tha...

What’s in a name? It would be disingenuous to assume that Nick Hornby was ignorant of the titillation value of calling something “Juliet, Naked.” However, to be clear, there’s nothing prurient about the movie. The title refers to a son...

The pen may be mightier than the sword but, as related in Michael Cuesta's Kill the Messenger, whispered innuendo is more deadly than both. Imagine, if you will, All the President's Men with Robert Redford's Bob Woodward brought down by attacks on ...

Last Breath has epic potential but opts instead to present its gritty survival story with as little fat as possible – so little, in fact, that it cuts too close to the bone at times. Based on a true story, it tracks its documentary source materi...

The niche occupied by Lawless is a precarious one. Too erudite for the average action/thriller-oriented moviegoer and too pulpy for the art house crowd, this intense, brutal drama may struggle to find an audience. A fictionalized account of the lif...

There's a little Roald Dahl in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and that leads one to wonder what a twisted director like Danny DeVito (Dahl's Matilda) or Tim Burton (Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) could have made out of ...

When it comes to romantic movies, I have adopted a philosophy. All that's really required to craft an affecting love story is that the protagonists are well-developed, the actors playing them evidence a degree of sexual chemistry, and their relati...