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The Girl Next Door builds up enough good will during its successful first half that we're willing to forgive some of the strange and disappointing convolutions the plot takes us through during the final 45 minutes. There are two primary reasons wh...

Spoilers follow, although those who have read the book won’t be bothered by them. Although The Girl on the Train is a serviceable thriller, it’s hard not to see it as something of a disappointment. As a B-movie whodunnit designed for f...

Few screen romances are as touching, as tragic, and as life affirming as the one shared by Nick (Robert Carlyle) and Karen (Juliet Aubrey) in director Michael Winterbottom's Go Now. While the film is ultimately about the effects of multiple sc...

With 1964's Goldfinger, the third James Bond story to reach the screen, the "Bond formula" had reached maturity. Screenwriter Richard Maibaum, a participant in the scripting of the previous two movies, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, had id...

The Good German, Steven Soderbergh's film noir homage, is nearly perfect when it comes to style and tone, but it concentrates so single-mindedly on the mechanics of the narrative that it loses sight of its characters. The movie meticulously steps ...

Since its 2011 release, the film Goon has become something of a cult phenomenon, especially among Canadian hockey fans. (Is that term redundant?) This status likely explains the existence of a sequel. Called Goon: Last of the Enforcers, it con...

Like fine wine, some film age well. The passage of years or decades does little to limit their capacity to provoke tears, laughter, or some other feeling. Then there are the vinegar vintages – movies that may be highly regarded at the time o...

In style, if not substance, The Greatest Showman is reminiscent of the Disney film, Newsies. Like the 1992 live-action musical, The Greatest Showman comes to life when the characters are singing or dancing but struggles through the sequences i...

When the invasion of Iraq transpired in 2003, assurances came down from on high that this act was necessary to remove the clear and present danger represented by Sadaam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (this is when the acronym WMD entered the...

If one discounts Halloween III, it has taken twelve movies, four timelines, and nearly 45 years to get to this point. If there was such at thing as “truth in advertising” in movie titles, this would be the last bow of one of movie-dom’s long...