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By the time Thunderball, the fourth in the "official" James Bond film canon, was released, the "Bond Formula" had already been perfected. It goes something like this: take the suave 007 (always impeccably dressed and ready with a witty one-l...

When one considers the films that won the Best Picture Oscar in the decade from 1956 through 1965, it’s evident that the Academy favored two kinds of productions: spectacles and musicals. During that span, there were two outliers: 1960’s T...

It's rare for a feature film to attain the trifecta of entertaining, informing, and educating. Most motion pictures set against an historical backdrop inevitably bend the facts to fit their story. Unless the movie claims to be a documentary, this...

Twilight may end up being the most disappointing film of 1998. It certainly holds that distinction to date, but I'm aware that there are ten months left in the year. And let me emphasize that by "disappointing," I mean something that falls drasti...

With Two Lovers, director James Gray has remained geographically within his comfort zone (New York City), but has moved textually away from the crime and corruption-laced stories that have marked his previous efforts. This is strictly a character-...

Angelina Jolie's sophomore effort as a director is a high-profile adaptation the true-life book Unbroken (written by Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Sea Biscuit). Those unaware that the film is based on historical events might understandably ass...

Now that Kevin Costner has grown too old to convincingly play a baseball star (even an aging Major Leaguer, as in For Love of the Game), he has progressed logically. In The Upside of Anger, he portrays an ex-Detroit Tiger whose life has deteriorat...

Finally, the entire Barrytown Trilogy has made it to the screen. The process started back in 1991, when Alan Parker made The Commitments. It continued in '93, when Stephen Frears filmed The Snapper. Now, with the addition of 1996's The Va...

If 2018’s Venom felt like an afterthought, then the sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, feels like an afterthought to an afterthought. With its short running length, this drunk-on-CGI production is less a movie and more the outline of somet...

A View to a Kill represents the farewell bow of two long-time Bond film actors: Lois Maxwell, who portrayed Miss Moneypenny in all fourteen official movies from Dr. No to this one, and Roger Moore. While Moore's stamp on Bond was never as memo...