The scrappy salvage tug Arctic Warrior sets out to plunder the legendarily missing and newly discovered luxury liner, Antonia Graza, and all bloody hell breaks loose for Captain Sean Murphy (Gabriel Byrne, 100 percent sodium chloride), robust team leader Maureen Epps (Julianna Margulies) and their crew, guided by a completely…
This exceedingly graphic Holocaust drama concerns the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, a special squad of Jewish prisoners who, in exchange for better food and a few extra months of life, escorted their fellow Jews into the gas chambers, then cremated their corpses. It was a pact made with the devil. Actor Tim…
Paul Thomas Anderson, the would-be Altman without the madman-genius baggage getting in the way, has forever ruined Adam Sandler. No longer will Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Little Nicky, the Waterboy, Big Daddy–or whatever moronic icon he seems to be playing this week–again be allowed to grace the big screen by…
Death is too often taken literally, and this unfortunate perspective is sustained by much cinema, despite the medium’s dubious kiss of immortality. There’s easy drama in tragedy and grisly ends, but not commonly do moviemakers successfully deliver symbolic death, the subtly grim yet vital bridge between lively verses. Happily, director…
Give Tom Tykwer considerable credit for knowing he couldn’t possibly outdo Run Lola Run, his frenetic breakthrough that made critics cheer and took MTV pacing to a whole new level, blending animation with live action, still photos and alternate realities in a way that made sense and raised the viewer’s…
Much like a psychic, a cinema critic must look through a movie and see the other side. In the case of the new thriller The Ring–a remake of the 1998 Japanese hit, Ringu–the formative forces swim into focus without effort. There’s a Dreamworks boardroom, some executives exclaiming that Shrek can’t…
Honestly, I’ve never been much into schmaltzy movies about the old neighborhood. The whole scene seems pretty hellish; all that cutesy talk about this good old street or that once-hoppin’ nightclub. Therefore, when it’s announced there’s a movie called Welcome to Collinwood about a bunch of Hollywood actors playing shticky…
It’s a family affair when widowed, repressed Lilia (Hiyam Abbas) and her spunky daughter Salma (Hend El Fahem) just can’t get enough of a suave drummer, Chokri (Maher Kamoun). This bold and lyrical first feature from Raja Amari expands the pat notion that middle-aged women just wanna have fun into…
More inspired by than adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” Bernard Rose’s film is set in the very fast lane of a modern Hollywood that would have chilled the great Russian author to the bone. Ivan is a high-powered agent who snags a major actor as…
Part watered-down Neil LaBute, part Seinfeld episode (especially the one in which George’s fiancee licks the poison glue and dies) and part Waking Life, Just a Kiss follows a group of youngish couples (Ron Eldard, Kyra Sedgwick, Marisa Tomei, Patrick Breen and Taye Diggs, among others) in New York as…
Usually a master of creating aliens that go bump in the night, director David Twohy (Pitch Black) herein takes a turn toward ghosts and haunted houses, only this particular supernaturally afflicted domicile happens to be an American World War II submarine whose crew comes to the rescue of three survivors…
Roger Avary’s screenplay for The Rules of Attraction is a remarkable work of literature: the disassembly and reconstruction of an impenetrable book by Bret Easton Ellis; a simplification and amplification of the 1987 novel’s attack on the bored, beautiful and wealthy; a streamlined and mainlined version of a story originally…
Good Lord, there hasn’t been this much blond hair on screen since the Von Trapp children sang and danced their way across the Alps in The Sound of Music. The fact that these latest golden locks belong to the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer, Robin Wright Penn and Renée Zellweger suggests…
In the past few years–more or less since the failure of his embarrassing Joan of Arc epic The Messenger–former wunderkind director Luc Besson has become a fantastically prolific writer/producer. (The IMDB claims he has nine projects lined up for next year.) His latest, The Transporter–a swift if sometimes ridiculous action…
Dallas gained a lot more than it lost the day civil rights lawyer Frank P. Hernandez shut down his practice and drove to New York City to talk his way into New York University’s film school. He never established himself as a filmmaker, yet the experience helped inspire the area’s…
The not-so-great American pastime of serial killing has splattered pop culture in recent years, but from the biopics of America’s Most Unwanted to the nervy theatricality of Anthony Perkins, Kevin Spacey or even David Byrne (whose Talking Heads song “Psycho Killer” says it all), only one legend stands definitive, that…
I might as well just come out and say it: Spirited Away is the best movie I’ve seen all year. Though it would be a masterpiece in any language, Hayao Miyazaki’s animated spectacular (and Japan’s highest-grossing film ever) is being released by Disney simultaneously in two versions–one in the original…
Where is the dividing line between romantic devotion and psychotic obsession? How can you know whether your romance is Titanic…or Fatal Attraction? Veteran Spanish writer-director Vicente Aranda (Lovers) uses the story of Queen Joan “the Mad” (1479-1555)–daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, mother of Charles I of Spain (who became Emperor…
Brad Silberling’s instincts are right about half the time, which means that, depending on your point of view, his films are either half empty or half full. His last picture, 1998’s City of Angels, an American remake of Wim Wender’s poetic Wings of Desire, tried to marry European art-house cinema…
So there’s no confusion, the star of Sweet Home Alabama is Reese Witherspoon, who graces the film’s poster in full-body pout and appears on the press kit in close-up mug-shot smirk; any closer, and we’d shoot up her nostrils and exit through her pores. Of course, there’s a great deal…
Chris Smith’s brief but thoroughly entertaining Home Movie carries on a grand tradition of American documentary–seeking out the eccentrics and contrarians among us. In the space of an hour Smith provides glimpses of five U.S. houses and their owners, and–thank goodness–his whirlwind tour is less suited to Architectural Digest than…
Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is released from a mental institution the day of her older sister’s wedding. One afternoon with her dysfunctional family and she’s ready for rehab again. No such luck, however, so instead Lee turns–or returns–to her favorite pastime: self-mutilation. Based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill…
