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"Movies for fans" (as distinguished from "fan-made movies") - motion pictures targeted primarily at aficionados of a series and secondarily at the public - have been around for decades, but never has one been as openly dismissive of the general mov...

With a legion of titles like Pet Sematary, Firewalker, Sleepwalkers, Maximum Overdrive, and Children of the Corn, it's reasonable not to expect much from Stephen King-inspired motion pictures. Adaptations of the prolific author's work typically va...

There's something delightfully old-fashioned about Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects. It's the kind of thriller that Alfred Hitchcock might make if he was still alive and active today. It never seeks to do too much with the premise nor does it go ov...

When The Silence of the Lambs took the Academy Awards ceremony by storm in 1992, winning in five major categories (Best Picture, Best Director - Jonathan Demme, Best Actor - Anthony Hopkins, Best Actress - Jodie Foster, and Best Adapted Screenplay ...

Skyfall can take its place alongside From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service as the best Bond can offer. With an Oscar winner at the helm and Oscar winners in two prominent roles, Skyfall overflows with talent but, as...

A Sound of Thunder takes a thought-provoking science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury and turns it into a noisy, messy Hollywood action/adventure extravaganza. This approach isn't unique or inherently bad (it worked, for example, with Blade Run...

Warning: Oblique spoilers. An “average” James Bond movie can be described using three words: “satisfying but flawed.” To the extent that’s true, Spectre fills the mold. Overplotted and at least 20 minutes too long, t...

Stand By Me reinforces something that has been understood in Hollywood for decades: nostalgia sells. With this film, it's "planned nostalgia," meaning that the production was designed from the beginning to encourage older audience members to look ...

At the end of Superman II, the producers promised "Coming Soon: Superman III." It has taken 26 years for that promise to be fulfilled. To be sure, there were movies in the 1980s called Superman III and Superman IV, but those were bad jokes masquera...

Hamburg. Nazi Germany. 1939. Peter (Robert Sean Leonard), Thomas (Christian Bale), and Arvid (Frank Whaley) are three "Swing Kids" -- young rebel Germans who have fallen in love with the forbidden: American movies, British fashion, and Swing musi...