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Romantic comedies sell fantasy. Ultimately, that's their reason for being - to make even the most cynical heart crave true love. Some romantic comedies, this one included, fail because of an inability to convince the audience that the protagonists...

Magic Mike’s Last Dance exemplifies Hollywood’s obsession with established properties. When Steven Soderbergh released Magic Mike in 2012, it was designed as a stand-alone film with a beginning, a middle, and an end. However, its box office suc...

Since the demise of Friends, Jennifer Aniston has been desperately striving to find her motion picture niche. Despite having started her fifth decade of life (in an industry that is not kind to actresses over 40), she remains a bankable name, even...

It took a while for Groundhog Day to start spawning knock-offs but, once it did, the déjà vu-inspired movies turned from a trickle to a torrent. There have been sci-fi variants (Edge of Tomorrow), Blumhouse horror fests (Happy Death Day), an...

Once upon a time, there was an actress named Jennifer Lopez, whose performances in films like Out of Sight and Selena opened eyes and excited comment with their depth and authenticity. But Lopez wasn’t a one-trick pony and, as her multimedia pop...

The production notes trumpet The Matchmaker as "a romantic comedy for people who hate romantic comedies." This statement implies that the film has something exceptionally original or daring to offer those who are tired of screen love affairs that ...

Materialists, Celine Song’s follow-up to the sublime Past Lives, is a rom-com on Prozac. Weighed down by a flat performance from Dakota Johnson, the movie shifts into low-gear after an upbeat, promising first act. Johnson’s lack of chemistr...

For anyone who wept hopelessly at the tragic romance of The English Patient, Message in a Bottle is the movie you have been waiting for. In addition to being a beautifully-photographed motion picture with a solid (albeit melodramatic) storyline an...

It's refreshing to see a movie in which there are no special effects, no camera tricks, and no incidental music to strum on a viewer's emotional strings. These are some (but certainly not all) of the tenets of Dogma 95, the much-ballyhooed "cinema...

Moscow, Belgium is a romantic comedy with a different flavor. Although it follows many of the familiar patterns that characterize movies of this genre, it does enough things differently to allow it to step outside of the norm. While some elements...