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It would be possible to form a tragedy from the background inspiration of Ruben Fleisher's 30 Minutes or Less, but the filmmakers have not traveled that route. Instead of fashioning a heartbreaking tale about greed and inhumanity, Fleisher has app...

There can be a lot of power in stories about addiction: the power to dishearten, the power to frustrate, and (on rare occasions) the power to uplift. Regardless of the substance at the core of the disease, movies about addiction follow a famil...

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...

Although a serviceable thriller, Good People suffers from the disconnect that exists between its narrative structure and its pacing/tone. The "feel" desired by director Henrik Ruben Genz (making his first English-language feature after compiling a...

Heart Eyes almost does it. It arrives with enormous ambitions and comes damn close to nailing it. Yet, even though it doesn’t fully deliver what the filmmakers attempt, it nevertheless provides a fun 90-odd minutes whose beats are like that of a...

With a standout final performance by Chadwick Boseman and equally arresting work by Viola Davis in the title role, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom gets the year’s award for least-likely title to vie for a ton of Oscar attention. Adapted from the ...

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...

The Mustang is an unconventional tale of redemption that earns its upbeat ending by not falling prey to every cliché of the genre or giving in to the temptation to become too maudlin or sentimental. Although actress-turned-director Laure de ...

Three years after the modest 2013 hit Now You See Me, the filmmakers decided to make an ill-advised sequel, even though the original had all the earmarks of a stand-alone film. Sure enough, the second installment underwhelmed, shedding nearly ever...

Q & A is testimony to the validity of the old adage: a good story, when well told, can never be told too many times. With this movie, director Sidney Lumet doesn't bring anything radical to the screen. The premise - a decorated cop discovered to ...