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The Journey of August King is as close to a flawless motion picture as is likely to be produced by the film industry (independent or mainstream). Featuring strong acting, realistic set and costume design, an intelligent script, solid directing, an...

Films based on historical events come in all shades and colors. On one end of the spectrum are those like Gettysburg, with a meticulous attention to detail and adherence to the written record. Then there are movies like The Journey, which use...

When I was three years old and my playmates were happily watching Sesame Street and cartoons, I would sit in front of the television and gaze at the force of nature that was Julia Child (I also liked Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet). Her larger...

Kung Fu Hustle is an action/comedy designed with lovers of the '60s and '70s Shaw Brothers' movies in mind. It's an homage to a genre that, despite being regarded as campy by about 95% of the movie-going populace, has nevertheless captured the hea...

Despite the stewardship of director Stephen Frears and the participation of Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall, Vince Vaughn, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lay the Favorite, a would-be breezy comedy set in the world of grifters and gamblers, is as forgettable ...

Perhaps the kindest thing to say about Lee Cronin's The Mummy is that it's not the worst movie to bear the words "The Mummy" in the title. That (dis)honor belongs to the 2017 Tom Cruise disaster. Cronin’s film falls well outside the purview o...

It would be easy to lump Lethal Weapon into the vast scrapyard of mismatched buddy cop movies, but such a facile classification would do Richard Donner's 1987 thriller a disservice. This is one of the best of the subgenre, an action-packed movie t...

While watching Liar Liar, it occurred to me that the chief problem with this film is that it has a script. If Jim Carrey had been unleashed without such silly, incidental constraints as plot and dialogue, who knows where things might have gone? A...

This is going to be a shorter review than the movie possibly deserves but there’s a reason for that. Part of the greatness of experiencing The Life of Chuck comes from watching it unfold and discerning all the connective tissue. Revealing too mu...

Watching Little Fockers is a depressing experience. Rarely does a comedy bring such an overpowering sense of sadness. Admittedly, I laughed a few times and am willing to admit that the experience as a whole was more bearable than the trial of sitti...