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The Japanese writer Shusaku Endo's interest in the silence of God led him to provide his 1969 novel on the subject with the mere title, Silence. The time is the 1600s.  Two Catholic priests from Portugal sail to Japan to spiritually aid the Christians there and to...

Clockstoppers (2002), directed by Jonathan Frakes, is about adolescents who are empowered by science for moving in hypertime, namely, so fast that everything around them appears as though it were in suspended animation.  A stimulating pop piece for a while, the film...

To me Fast Five (2011), the latest fast-and-furious item, is fairly enjoyable.  But only fairly.  Its best action sequence comes way too early; it's superior to the final action sequence.  It involves a train targeted by Dominic Toretto (a smug Vin Diesel) and several...

I'm not buying the premise of The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), all about a rich boy who, for some reason, beats prostitutes to a pulp.  It's a ho-hum legal thriller. Marisa Tomei, Josh Lucas, Frances Fisher, Bryan Cranston and even Matthew McConaughey should all be put to...

The Barbarian Invasions (2003), by Denys Arcand, offers a few characters from Arcand's 1987 film, The Decline of the American Empire.  The '03 product could almost suitably be called The Decline of the Canadian Nation, but first things first. Remy (Remy Girard), a...

Yes, there is teenage heartache in the 2011 Prom, but there is hokum as well. Nova (Aimee Teegarden) crushes on a boy who's uninterested in her and, what's more, faces the total destruction by fire of the prom decorations she and others have fashioned at her high...

Crazy Love (2007) begins with the murky vision of an injured person, which vision, or eyesight, is meant to be that of Linda Riss.  The man who did it to her was her former lover, Burt Pugach. A plain-looking New York lawyer with money, raised by a barbaric mother,...