You have heard it said that there are but two constants in the universe: death and taxes. It’s time a third constant was added to the list: Pixar can do no wrong. Pixar’s films have always been fueled by an expansive, unrestrained, berserker imagination. With WALL∙E, they’ve taken yet another giant leap, adding scalding wonder […]

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Chances are you will walk out of Wanted murmuring, “We’ve seen this before, haven’t we?” You won’t be alone. Wanted, while certainly not a remake of The Matrix films, nonetheless borrows heavily from their aesthetic and it is this aesthetic that will stick with you long after the story has faded. Is it possible to […]

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Against my better judgment, against my hardened presumptions going in, against all that is right and holy and decent in the universe, I have to admit that I…ahem…actually liked The Love Guru.

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Get Smart, the new movie starring Steve Carell, may share a name and concept with the iconic 1960s television series about a bumbling Cold War spy, but beyond that, this frivolous and unamusing mess so mangles its source material that it doesn’t deserve to be called an homage.

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Sometime after the phenomenal success of The Sixth Sense, it became popular to hate M. Night Shyamalan. Some critics, bemoaning what they see as a one-trick-pony, have turned it into something approaching sport. I’ve never jumped on that bandwagon. I love Shyamalan’s eerie, expansive imagination. I’m the one critic who thought The Village was a […]

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We may never know what drove Ang Lee, identified with artistic achievements such as Eat Drink Man Woman, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sense and Sensibility and Brokeback Mountain to helm the 2003 blockbuster, Hulk, but whatever his reasons, the film was a sprawling critical and popular disappointment, interested more in cerebral psychobabble than rip-snorting action. […]

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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.
Genghis Khan (meaning “universal ruler”) was the title given to the Mongol warrior, Temudjin, a 13th century tribal chief who echoed the accomplishments of Alexander the Great and founded an empire that swept […]

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Most films live up to expectations. Some utterly disappoint. Others are pleasant surprises. Kung Fu Panda falls into the latter category. There’s just no way an animated action-adventure comedy about a chubby, under-achieving panda seeking martial arts greatness should have worked. However, instead of collapsing under the weight of its own formulaic mediocrity, Kung Fu […]

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Being a film critic means you have to sit through far more bad films than you do good ones. Somebody has to bravely sacrifice himself in order to save others. Still, I’m not ashamed to say that I’m a glass half full sorta guy. Although I know it is a foregone impossibility, I try to […]

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What makes Christopher Bell’s Bigger, Stronger, Faster* so compelling is its bait-and-switch premise. It sets you up to believe one thing in the beginning and then spins you around to reveal a completely different conclusion by the film’s end. Bell’s summation is profound yet devilishly simple, obvious yet incessantly overlooked. He takes a subject matter […]

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