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An innocuous but haphazard family comedy that seems less crafted for children than dreamed up by a team of them, "Bedtime Stories" is energetic enough to occupy youngsters, yet slipshod enough that their parents will wish a few more adults had been around during filming. Instead, there was Adam S...

Imagining someone other than the beatifically battered Mickey Rourke in the title role of "The Wrestler" would be like picturing someone other than John Malkovich in "Being John Malkovich." As washed-up, onetime ring master Randy "The Ram" Robinson, Rourke -- a career-crash victim himself -- is "...

A Scrooge for the 21st century has arrived just in time for Christmas, and wouldn't you know he's come back in the form of Dirty Harry? As the spitting, swearing, hate-spewing lead character of "Gran Torino," Clint Eastwood delivers a lacerating and hilarious valedictory of a career as America's ...

Expectations for "Valkyrie," Tom Cruise's history-based thriller about the July 20, 1944, attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, were low. The subject matter couldn't be more serious, and Cruise's career hasn't exactly been a steadily accumulation of gravitas. Gone but not forgotten are the days of...

"Forrest Gump," "Meet Joe Black." That's a glib way to sum up "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which stars Brad Pitt as a man who, born and swiftly abandoned in New Orleans in 1918, then ages backward into the late 20th century. Loosely based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story (very loosely, u...

George Michael, the dean of local sportscasters, said yesterday he has ended his 28-year career with WRC (Channel 4) after the station sought to cut the budget of the interview programs and segments he hosts.

"The Reader," a post-World War II drama starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, exemplifies the kind of prestige production -- based on a highly regarded novel, brought to the screen by filmmakers of unerring good taste, drenched in historical import and moral heft -- that seems scientifically e...

Plaid is back -- if it ever really left -- and it's come a long way since the school uniform and the lumberjack look.

While I'm away, readers give the advice. On divvying up the holidays:

It's not the most hard-core jam session, but it might be the cutest. On a Tuesday afternoon at Payne Elementary School in Southeast Washington, hip-hop literacy class starts in the auditorium after school. About 30 students stand in a circle while a tall, dreadlocked instructor, Khalif "MC K-Juice"...