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The Social Network, directed by David “Fight Club” Fincher and written by Aaron “Sports Night” Sorkin, purports to be a slick behind-the-scenes account of the meteoric rise of everyone’s favorite social networking site, and it certainly is that: slick. My first warning: this film is about as likely to offer you the [...]

Hollywood loves to make high school sex comedies based (loosely) on classic works of literature. Clueless was adapted from Austen’s “Emma”, and 10 Things I Hate About You is a retelling of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”. When these sort of movies happen, we can only hope that the writers involved keep [...]

Christopher Nolan seems to be fond of magic tricks. Sure, he made a whole movie about them (The Prestige), but in his broader career he appears to relish the idea that film itself can be a playful illusion to rival any magician’s sleight-of-hand. I think his newest, the much-discussed, lauded and/or [...]

Michael Sheen returns for his third portrayal of Tony Blair (the first two being 2003’s The Deal and 2006’s The Queen) in The Special Relationship, a savvy and absorbing HBO-produced movie dramatizing the diplomatic and personal ties between Blair and President Clinton (Dennis Quaid). It can indeed be considered something of a sequel to The [...]

It’s gotten to the point now where the mere mention of M. Night Shyamalan elicits either a laugh or a groan. It wasn’t so long ago that he was producing some truly phenomenal films–I for one believe that The Sixth Sense is a genuine masterpiece, even (or especially) when you look past its [...]

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World has all the ingredients to be one of the great cult favorites: it’s unique, funny, didn’t perform well at the box office, and a large percentage of the people who watch it probably won’t see the appeal. Oh, and most importantly, it’s set in Canada. It’s the [...]

This year, I’ll dispense with my annual paragraph-long effusion of general hyperbolic delight with all things Pixar. Phew–that certainly frees up some space. Toy Story 3 is indeed another timeless treasure from the folks in Emeryville, a charming, funny and quite poignant conclusion to one of the better trilogies in film history. Set [...]

Among some of those who study the long stretch of Western history commonly known as classical antiquity, the period is bookended by two Greek names: Homer (not the yellow one) at the beginning and Hypatia at the end. The latter name is not a household one, which is regrettable for a number of reasons. Hypatia [...]

Take heed, gentle reader: we are witnessing the Golden Age of Animation. At this year’s Oscars, the Animated Feature category swelled from its perennial selection of three computer-generated features (usually Pixar’s winner and two also-rans) to five brilliant and varied films, only one of which was computer generated (Up). The surprise nomination [...]

Originally, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood was to be called Nottingham, and it was to star Russell Crowe as both the Sheriff and the Merry Man in Chief. That film might have been a moderately fresh take on a character that has been portrayed in film and television dozens if not hundreds of times. [...]