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Comparing Fantasia 2000 to the original Fantasia is in some ways unfair, especially considering the way movie-going methods and tastes have changed over the past six decades. Yet, even though the hand-drawn animation has been helped along by the la...

From Rocky to Raging Bull, boxing movies with a variety of themes and intentions have been staples at Oscar time. On the one hand, there are the crowd-pleasing stories: tales of woebegone underdogs given a chance at redemption by going 15 rounds in...

Despite some great acting, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is a largely unpleasant viewing experience and the downbeat tone isn’t helped by a narrative that flits back and forth in time without rhyme or reason, sometimes confusing the vie...

Like 2015’s Everest and In the Heart of the Sea, The Finest Hours offers a man vs. nature survival story; in this case, however, the storyline is more upbeat. Directed by Craig Gillsepie, the film is a fast-paced thriller guaranteed to get the ...

Flags of Our Fathers is Clint Eastwood's homage to the honored dead of World War II as well as a meditation upon how an icon is formed. Based on the book by James Bradley and Ron Powers, the movie centers around the Battle of Iwo Jima, one of the ...

Freakonomics is a most atypical documentary indeed. Comprised of a collection of shorts by noted filmmakers Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight), Seth Gordon (The King of Kong), and He...

I confess a degree of bafflement about why Hollywood apparently considers it necessary to employ the dumbest possible screenplays for movies like this. On one level, the only significant differences between G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Transformers ar...

Not that long ago, toys were developed from movies. Now, it's the other way around. This wouldn't be a bad thing if the filmmakers took the time and effort to do something interesting with the premise. Even considering how well-established is th...

There seems to be little doubt that Ruben Fleischer, the director behind the well-received Zombieland and the less well-received 30 Minutes or Less, is a Brian De Palma fan. How else to explain the kinship that exists between Fleischer's latest, Ga...

Let me begin this review of the 2016 Ghostbusters remake by pretending there was no 1984 iteration. How enjoyable would the film be if it didn’t have such enormous baggage, if it didn’t emerge under the long shadow of a beloved predecesso...