The Savages is a very good film. And yet I found it disappointing on what I can only describe as a metaphysical level. It is the sort of film that, while ringing with laudable authenticity and an admirable lack of maudlin sentimentality, prefers wallowing in misery to reaching for transformation.

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Repent sinners, for the Shopocalypse is at hand! So proclaims Rev. Billy, the head of the so-called “Church of Stop Shopping” in What Would Jesus Buy?, a new documentary which is almost guaranteed to make you cringe for any number of reasons.

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AMANDA
You don’t have much faith in humanity, do you?
DAN
None whatsoever.

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Years ago, when an interviewer told Cary Grant that everyone wanted to be him, the screen icon replied, “So would I! I would love to be Cary Grant.”
The quote speaks to the bogus persona many entertainers craft for themselves, personas that are far too complex, multivalent and contradictory to possibly be anything other than elaborate […]

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Hitman is the oddest of action movies — a film that is all but devoid of action. Not satisfied with simply being another mindless video game adaptation, the film also forgets to be entertaining.

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More fable than film, there is no earthly reason why August Rush should work. But it does.

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Lions for Lambs is peculiarly unique in my movie-going experience. I can’t remember the last time I saw film that I both disliked and want to see again as soon as possible.

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Love in the Time of Cholera is based on the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez who, in 1982, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his luxuriant body of work. After viewing this film adaptation of one of his most beloved works, you will be faced with one of two conclusions: either the Nobel committee has […]

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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.
Written anonymously around AD700, “Beowulf” is the oldest and greatest epic in the English language. Despite the fact that its storyline encompasses Viking Scandinavia, the roughly 3000-line poem is the solitary major surviving […]

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No Country for Old Men, adapted by the Coen brothers from Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name, is, quite simply, a flawless film. What is, perhaps, most amazing is that a film this terrifying, this violent, and this relentlessly nihilistic should also be this enthralling. If you see only one more movie this year, […]

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