Aki Kaurismäki's much-awarded The Man Without a Past (2002 Grand Jury Prize winner at Cannes) will certainly be too drily quirky for some tastes, but it is a comedy for grown-ups, and for that w... 
By framing his latest film with black-and-white Warner Brothers logos, Clint Eastwood correctly implies that Mystic River is a classical film noir. Like Dennis Lehane's exceptional novel, Eastwood's... 
The protagonist of Carlos Reygadas's Japón quietly embodies the punchline to the old joke Woody Allen quotes--as a metaphor for life--in Annie Hall: "Two elderly women are at a Catskill Mounta... 
I've come to accept what some people see in Northfork, but as the credits rolled, you couldn't have convinced me that anyone anywhere would ever really want to watch it. Sanity returned, as I remembe...
Amores Perros (Love's a Bitch) was the International Critics' Week Grand Prize Winner at Cannes, the twice-screened, twice sold-out closing night showcase for Cinequest, and Mexico's nominee for Best... 
When Sam Raimi brought Spider-Man, at long last, to the big screen, he brought with it that character's lower-middle-class roots. Marvel Comics maven Stan Lee, like Raimi, knew that readers might enj... 
David Cronenberg's Spider begins with a credit sequence of paint-peeling images suggesting a Rorshach test, followed by a prolonged, unsettling tracking shot the once and future Master of Suspense su... 
Where to begin describing Bad Company? From producer Jerry Bruckheimer's Office of Demographics comes, ostensibly, another well-reasoned packaging of a star twosome (typically, a white man and a blac... 
Following on the heels of British stage director Sam Mendes (now an Oscar-winning film director of American Beauty), British stage director Stephen Daldry offers up his debut feature Billy Elliot, an... 
Alan Parker's reverent adaptation of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes is likely to please devotees of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller. Those few who haven't yet read the book, however, may wonder... 
It is a rare film in today's climate which transcends mood and achieves spirit. Robert Duvall-- as writer, director and star-- has fashioned such a film, The Apostle, and he has been rewarded with an... 
The Straight Story, taken on its own merits, is an amiable enough drama made by a filmmaker of rare skill. But, given that the director is David Lynch, the film's modest creative returns are cause f...
Julian Schnabel, once a painter and now a film director, has made significant strides as a filmmaker in the four years since Basquiat. For that film, a biopic of painter Jean Michel Basquiat, Schnabel... 
When Hollywood releases a film about two lesbians, one must at the very least sit up and take notice. The thriller Bound is certainly a strange creature, and rarely boring.This is the directorial deb... 
Though the dances themselves are sometimes histrionically shot or overedited, Diamond ultimately succeeds in putting Taylor's best foot forward in this wholly memorable film. 
Perhaps a comparison of 1994's Jurassic Park to its new sequel, The Lost World, would be a splitting of hairs. The strengths and weaknesses of each produce a balanced effect. The first film had the n... 
Clint Eastwood's film of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil shares with its bestselling source material a wealth of history, and an inherent confusion of fact and fiction. Eastwood lays an under... 
Alfred Hitchcock's classic Rear Window is perhaps Hitch's most purely perfect film. It packs in the popcorn thrills, a great Jimmy Stewart performance, and a subtle internal deconstruction of the fil... 
Tim Burton has proven his enormous talent as a filmmaker with the strikingly, cartoony, horrific, skewed, and often silly images which populate his universe. But for a filmmaker with such an attracti... 
A young boy helps an outcast protagonist find a place in the world and a fresh opportunity for a meaningful life. It's the plot of many a film, including Sling Blade, by writer-director-star-Oscar ba...
The words that often strike dread into the hearts of literature lovers are "Inspired by." After all, films that are "based on" books often bear little enough resemblance to their sources. But "inspire... 
While modest in means, Bedrooms and Hallways is a terribly clever comedy of manners conspiring to blur the lines of sexual orientation. Director Rose Troche (Go Fish) runs with Robert Farrar's invent... 
Le Placard (The Closet) is a typically high-concept French farce--of exactly the type that Hollywood regularly cannibalizes for English-language remakes. In this case, that might not be such a bad i... 
After a prolonged bout of flailing and despite being an original Woody Allen confection, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion falls, finally, flat. One of Allen's nouveau lightweight comedies, Scorpion tak... 
Despite sometimes lamenting the output, film fans have been offered a pretty good variety of quality films touching on the gay and lesbian experience. Highlighting that point is the arrival of a new... 
Coming out of a dismal movie summer, the first taste of fall is like manna from heaven—in contrast, that is. Directed by Scott Hicks (Shine), adapted by William Goldman, and starring Anthony Ho... 
Jane Austen-philes may get a larf out of Bridget Jones's Diary, the new film "based on" Helen Fielding's hit novel. The film is helmed by Sharon Maguire, who modelled one of Fielding's FOBs (friends... 
On the Hollywood scene, Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence has already been branded a failure where it really counts: at the box office. Such woes seem inevitable for a film that awkwar... 
Romantic with a capital "R," Anthony Minghella's filmed take on Charles Frazier's bestselling Cold Mountain has pictorial heft to spare but is slow to engage through character. It seems all too easy... 
The history of the world comes down to real estate: "highway robbery," coercive deals, conquering, planting flags, squatting. In various Holy Lands, men and women fight tooth and nail for what they b... 
As usual, Tim Burton's latest film is abundant in storytelling piquancy and deficient in storytelling proficiency. I love-hate Burton for his superior visual style and narrative blockheadedness--his... 
In the 101 years since Peter Pan's first, cameo appearance in a J.M. Barrie novel, no live-action sound feature has been made which, simply, tells the tale of Peter Pan. While a 1924 silent version h... 
In her best-selling social tract Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher asserts that "Parents know only too well that something is happening to their daughters. Calm, considerate daughters grow moody, demandi... 
Though I felt a wave of crankiness rolling back in after the cool breeze of Something's Gotta Give, I still had to hand it to writer-director Nancy Myers (What Women Want, Baby Boom). Myers attracted... 
The British comedy-drama Calendar Girls bears a fair comparison to The Full Monty, which ushered in a new era of cheeky lower-middle-class comedies of self-empowerment. The surprise of the film is th... 
It goes without saying that Mona Lisa Smile was pitched as a female take on Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society, but the new Julia Roberts vehicle has its own distinctive wrinkle. Set in the early '50s,... 
Watching the Las Vegas yarn The Cooler is like the tentative euphoria of watching a roulette ball, until it bounces from your winning slot to the one that spirits away your cash and your dreams. A vi...
Holiday moviegoers should be forewarned: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, while not to be missed, requires an adjustment from its blockbuster predecessor, The Fellowship of the Ring. Decidely a...
When Peter Jackson decided to film J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy tale The Lord of the Rings, he inherited a classic story and a brand name. But he also invited a hailstorm of challenges: a potentiall... 
What do Jim Carrey and Woody Allen have in common with Ben Stiller and Will Smith. Both were rumored pairings to star as the conjoined twins in the Farrelly Brothers' ultimate buddy picture Stuck on... 