At last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Bella joined the likes of Chariots of Fire, American Beauty, Life is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hotel Rwanda as the winner of the coveted People’s Choice Award. While the award does not, by any means, clinch an Oscar nod, it worked for each of the aforementioned […]

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Filmmaker Wes Anderson is something of a cinematic aberration — liking his films is not a prerequisite for admiring or even adoring his quirky talent.
Anderson’s films appear technically simple, despite the fact that they are numbingly intricate and complex. His musical soundtracks, drawing on such British Invasion favorites as The Kinks and The Who, are […]

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You might think that Dan in Real Life mines the familiar story of family dysfunction, a well that, let’s admit it, never runs dry. But you’d be wrong. Dan in Real Life goes boldly (and refreshingly) where few films have gone before — into the home of a normal, loving family dealing with an abnormal […]

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When was the last time you watched a morality play — much less one that deals with people battling incapacitating disabilities — that was also unabashedly, side-splittingly hilarious? If nothing comes to mind, perhaps that is reason alone to check out Music Within, the new independent film based on the true story of one man’s […]

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Most love stories start at the beginning. Rails and Ties starts at the end.

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During an encore appearance on Bravo’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio” just two weeks ago, Sir Anthony Hopkins related to his erudite host James Lipton the advice the venerable Sir Lawrence Olivier gave him when he was just beginning his acting career:
“Always risk. Go out onto the edge of the limb of the tree. Go out […]

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It has been dubbed “The 24 Scenario,” after the popular television drama. A massive bomb, for instance, is set to go off within a large American city and someone in U.S. custody knows where it is and how to disarm it, but is refusing to talk. Do the rights of the many trump the rights […]

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This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies. To read the rest of this review, click here.
This has been the year of the revenge picture. First came the abominable Death Sentence, then the extremely problematic yet far superior The Brave One. Now comes Reservation Road, a film that doesn’t […]

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It remains to be seen whether audiences who enjoyed Indian director Shekhar Kapur’s 1998, seven-time Academy Award-nominated Elizabeth will take to the sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age. The first film, a Western period drama filtered though Eastern sensibilities, was lavish yet restrained—spartan, and staged with almost theatrical minimalism. And while there are elements of that […]

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This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies. To read the rest of this review, click here.
There comes a point in everyone’s life — though for most of us, it is hardly a singular event — when we reach a crossroad and must make a decision as to which […]

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