Zack and Miri Make a Porno is a parody of a chick flick. Despite its unquestionably bad manners, it is, at its core, a sweet and innocent tale of two people who discover love in the most profane of situations. However, to get at that core, don’t be surprised if you want to wash out […]

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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.
Pride and Glory has had a rocky road getting to the screen. Set to begin production in early 2002, the film was abandoned after the 9/11 attacks on New York City, when it […]

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There may be no more solid director in Hollywood than Clint Eastwood. However, such praise is double-edged. While it means that Eastwood knows how to choose his projects with meticulous care and craft films that rarely err on the side of triviality, it also means that they only occasionally reach for and even rarer still, […]

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Few directors come with more baggage than Oliver Stone. Few filmmakers are as loved or as vilified. Stone’s films always register on the political Richter scale — liberals flock to them and conservatives recoil from them. W., his latest work, isn’t going to be any different. But it should be. W. is, to borrow a […]

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Each time I exit the theater after a screening, representatives from the studio are poised with eager notepads and impatient pens to record my thoughts. I usually try to have some pithy soundbite ready. It gives me something to do during the credits. As I made my way out of Sex Drive a few weeks […]

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Body of Lies opens with a quote about evil begetting evil. But try as you might, you will not be able to come to a conclusion about who drew first blood. Whether the wicked chicken or the malevolent egg came first is entirely in the eye of the beholder in this slick, genuinely thoughtful but […]

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Thirty-one-year-old director Gil Kenan, who’s only other film, Monster House, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Film, now gives us a shadowy, sci-fi version of Goonies in keeping with the more sinister feeling world in which we now live. City of Ember is an obsessively creative and wondrous film, proving beyond a […]

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Let’s face it, we may never see an original sports movie ever again. Every last one has already been made. The last truly original sports movie (and one of the best) was Rudy, because it was never a story about winning — it was a story about heart. The Express shares a lot of Rudy’s […]

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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.
Ay, Chihuahua! Beverly Hills Chihuahua is better than its premise and trailer might lead you to believe. But not by much.

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The line between harmony and heartbreak becomes profoundly blurred in the achingly beautiful Rachel Getting Married, a film that is certainly not always enjoyable, but does always ring powerfully true. Wrenching and uncompromising, it is wise enough to know that no family is wholly dysfunctional. Grace, like hope springs eternal, even it if waits in […]

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