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The Ghost Writer is a reminder that, regardless of his real-life problems, Roman Polanski can still craft compelling thrillers. This isn't Chinatown, but it doesn't need to be. Based on the novel The Ghost by Robert Harris, it's a fictional tale ...

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...

I saw Gigli for much the same reason that a good portion of the movie's eventual audience will see it. Jen and Ben? No. Morbid curiosity? Yes. After all, it had become fashionable to rip Gigli. The advance word on this film was so vicious tha...

Combine the talents of director Robert Altman and actors Kenneth Branagh and Robert Duvall, and you have the apparent recipe for a motion picture worth waiting for. But, although The Gingerbread Man is a finely-tuned example of mainstream entertai...

Since Jeff Bridges optioned the rights to Lois Lowry's The Giver shortly after its 1993 publication, the tale has been on a slow track to production. Bridges, however, didn't give up and, although his original choice for the title character passed ...

Glory is, without question, one of the best movies ever made about the American Civil War (a.k.a. "The War Between the States"). The reason isn't just the way in which Kevin Jarre's script illuminates a frequent oversight of history books, nor is ...

The success of Going My Way, a mediocre, light drama with a few songs, is a testimony to the overall popularity of the musical genre in the '30s, '40s, and '50s. There's nothing special or memorable about this overlong endeavor, the first of two m...

Rags to riches stories are a Hollywood staple. They’ve been around for as long as movies have been around because viewers love a yarn about how a ne’er-do-well, propelled by a combination of luck and hard work, makes good. It’s a dr...

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana It's astounding that a treatment of a factual incident from five decades ago could have such powerful resonance today. Lessons learned, it seems, are not taken t...

The Good Shepherd is Robert DeNiro's fictionalized account of the birth and early years of the CIA. While the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, many of the characters have real-life counterparts. The lengthy movie (15 minute...