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The best things about Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood are not elements that will build large audiences. This is a film about character development/disintegration and a comprehensive look at the early days of the oil industry. The more ...

Many critics consider The Third Man to be the best British post-World War II film noir. There are others (myself included) who believe it to be one of the best-ever examples of film noir to come out of all of Europe. The Third Man has all the rig...

This Boy's Life is based on the autobiographical book by Syracuse University professor Tobias Wolff. It tells of his early life in Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Concrete, Washington. Tobias (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his mother, Caroline (Ellen Barki...

The Time Traveler's Wife is a conventional adaptation of an unconventional novel. That's not necessarily a bad thing - screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin and director Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) impose structure on a story that, in Audrey Niffenegger...

An astonishing motion picture by any standards, To Kill a Mockingbird only failed to win a Best Picture Oscar because it was in the running against Lawrence of Arabia. The minimalist might call this a "courtroom drama", but that would be selling t...

Tomb Raider may be the most faithful adaptation of a video game to-date. Unfortunately, faithfulness to the source material doesn’t always result in the best cinematic experience and this is one of those occasions. The Tomb Raider video game...

The scrutiny surrounding Tomorrow Never Dies, the eighteenth "official" James Bond film (not counting Casino Royale or Never Say Never Again), isn't as intense as it was around Goldeneye, but the attendant hype is, if anything, even more severe. ...

In some ways, The Town can be considered a throwback, at least insomuch as any movie reflecting the approach of '80s and '90s cop dramas can be tagged with such a label. With a crisp, clear style and a focus on character, director Ben Affleck is a...

When it comes to Transformers, I have no ax to grind, pro or con. For me, it's just another loud, plot-deficient summer motion picture. In this case, nostalgia doesn't grip me - I'm too old to have played with the gadgets or watched the cartoon. ...