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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There is no arguing with faith. Not that that stopped the political humorist and one of America’s sharpest social critics, Bill Maher in his hilarious and thought-provoking new documentary, Religulous. They say that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Maher comes on like honey, but the provocateur is an unrepentant vinegar man.

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Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a film about love, friendship, music and one very well traveled piece of gum. Brazen yet bashful, Infinite Playlist is a delight of a film, leavened with a phosphorescent soundtrack and enough quirky performances to last the rest of the year.

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The quintessential American genre, the Western, has been mercifully roused to life of late. The latest entry, Appaloosa, is firmly grounded in genre orthodoxy even as it teases at the edges of nonconformity. The results are decidedly mixed.

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Try imagining the pitch for Flash of Genius: “It’s a true story about the guy who invents the intermittent windshield wiper blade and his subsequent fight for recognition. I’m telling ya, this thing is gonna write itself.” On its face, it’s not exactly the sort of story that sets studio heads’ hearts aflutter. So it’s […]

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Blindness comes with an established pedigree. Adapted from Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago’s lauded book, the film is directed by Academy Award-nominee Fernando Meirelles (City of God) from a screenplay by Tony Award-winner Don McKellar (Broadway’s The Drowsy Chaperone) and stars Academy Award-nominee Julianne Moore. It would be easy to assume, given that sort of […]

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Miracle at St. Anna wants with all its impressive might to be more than just a war movie. But director Spike Lee bites off far more than he can possibly chew and ends up choking on his overindulgence. Part murder mystery, part war epic, part political polemic, part sentimental melodrama, this episodic film is a […]

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There’s nothing wrong with occasionally indulging in an entertaining film purely because it is an entertaining film. What is the point of a healthy, nourishing dinner if there isn’t any desert at the end? Eagle Eye is a popcorn movie in the very best sense of the word. Don’t go looking for deep commentary. Don’t […]

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