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... 
The camera peeks out of the darkness, between the lights, and through the wings to the dazzling brightness, color, and motion of a modern dance. So begins Dancemaker, a documentary that fulfills its... 
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... 
In Chasing Amy, a largely sophomoric outing from writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats), a childish wish-fulfillment tale is played out. Holden, a young comic book artist (Ben Affleck) falls... 
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... 
In the late '80s and early '90s, everyone wanted to be John Woo, the bad boy director from Hong Kong who expended an army-sized requisition of ammo in every operatic action scene. Increasingly, Woo h... 
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... 
Leave it to Stephen Frears to make one of the boldest films of the year and wrap its wounded, oozing tissue in gauzy subtlety. Throwing back to his earliest, most socially conscious work (like My Bea... 
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... 
Fairfield, California mother admits that her favorite book as a child was Cheaper by the Dozen, but only a supreme faith in humanity can explain the love and patience this mother of thirteen children... 
The way I see it, the sour Bad Santa has two comic assets (neither of which should be underestimated): a funny cast, headlined by Billy Bob Thornton, and more swearing than American cinema has heard... 
In his first English-language feature, 21 Grams, director Alejandro González Iñárritu choreographs the dread follies of life and death. The crushing import of life-blood and seme... 
I'm not sure what accounts for the bizarre nexus this year of Girls Will Be Girls and Die Mommie Die!, two drag homages to washed-up, boozy, drug-addled Hollywood royalty and the back-stabbing such q... 
When Ron Howard's version of The Alamo--set to star Russell Crowe--fell apart due to budget concerns, Howard licked his wounds and apparently told his agent, bring me the Western scripts. But just as... 
Nothing says "beware, moviegoers" like top billing for Paul Walker, Hollywood's favorite open-mouthed bass. Before he opens his prodigious aperture, Walker is the all-American hero-next-door: slight... 