Emanuele Crialese has a gift for making images speak louder than words. In his achingly beautiful film Respiro, Crialese paints pregnant pictures. Early in the film, he shows us a mother and her chil... 
Coming as it does on the heels of his widely panned American erotic thriller Killing Me Softly, Chen Kaige's Together will represent for some a further "selling out" to American cultural tastes. Like... 
A Mighty Wind represents an intriguing development of Christopher Guest's mockumentary style. The recipe remains the same: round up the usual suspects--a friendly group of skilled improvisers and tal... 
Computer-animation giant Pixar scores again with Finding Nemo, an amusing tale which will no doubt please all ages. Following in the admirable footsteps of Monsters, Inc. and A Bug's Life and the pro... 
Despite being the winner of eight Icelandic Academy Awards, Hafið (The Sea) fails to generate much interest. This umpteenth variation on Shakepeare's King Lear might have worked if its melodrama... 
With the wholly engrossing documentary Spellbound (punny title duly noted), Jeffrey Blitz savvily covers the 1999 National Spelling Bee--a.k.a. the 72nd Annual Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee--by necessa... 
Matt Dillon's City of Ghosts could just as easily have gone to the cable graveyard. Dillon's debut as director and screenwriter (with Barry Gifford) has the familiarly haphazard feel of a director tr... 
One poster on IMDB raved about The Trip, "If you like Will and Grace you'll love The Trip," which sounds about right, though it's hardly a ringing endorsement. Writer-director Miles Swain uneasily bl... 
Richard Kwietniowski's atmospheric Owning Mahowny does for gambling addiction--in a minor key--what Days of Wine and Roses did for alcoholism. In concert with quintessential schlub Philip Seymour Hof... 
With his assured directorial debut The Dancer Upstairs, celebrated actor John Malkovich slyly comments on the artistry inherent in fields divergent from his own: dance, politics, terrorism. Centrally... 
Anyone familiar with Chris Columbus's pre-Harry Potter output will recognize Daddy Day Care as a Columbus film: alternately tinkly and sweeping John Williams score, sunny visuals, upper-middle-class... 
Charlotte Sometimes is a challenging and, perhaps, difficult film. Writer-director Eric Byler's story is, by design, elliptical, foregoing traditional, user-friendly exposition for a greater realism... 
Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for... 
A postmodern take on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, the tightly plotted horror-thriller Identity packs a few good twists. Perhaps due to an overeager trailer and my aforeknowledge of a "... 
Beginning with its title character seducing the camera and ending with his humble self-possession, Raising Victor Vargas is truth in advertising. In a story which spans only a few days, writer-direct... 
At the beginning of James Foley's Confidence, Edward Burns intones in voice-over, "So I'm dead. And I think it's because of this redhead." Your tolerance for Burns, self-conscious voice-over, and hal... 
Without the leavening effect of its cast (mostly picked from the Douglas family tree), It Runs in the Family would be unbearably sappy. As it is, it comes damn close: the movie has the tone and canne... 
IMAX films staked their claim on big-screen nature documentaries quite some time ago, and perhaps rightly so. But Jacques Perrin's Winged Migration does something that I'm not sure an IMAX film could... 
Christophe Ruggia's Les Diables--a French/Spanish co-production--is touring the world's film festivals, including 2003's San Francisco International Film Festival. As of yet, no American distributor... 
Only on the rarest of occasions have I walked out of a film, but I distinctly recall doing so during Justin Lin's juvenile, unwatchable genre debut (with Quentin Lee), Shopping for Fangs. So it was w... 
The documentary Stevie ostensibly refers to its primary subject, Stephen Fielding, but could also refer to its prime mover, documentarian Steve James (Hoop Dreams). While in college, James served as... 
Screenwriter Ed Solomon famously wrote secular hits like the "Bill and Ted" movies and the original Men in Black, but now--as writer and director of the independent film Levity--Solomon nuzzles into... 
As far as I can tell, Assassination Tango is a wholly unique cinematic experience. There is, perhaps, a hint of a back-handed compliment in this, and Assassination Tango is undeniably a bowlegged mea... 
The much-awarded German drama Nowhere in Africa--Oscar's Best Foreign Film for 2003--deserves kudos for bringing to cinematic light yet another intriguing perspective on the displacement of the World... 
The Vin Diesel vehicle A Man Apart recalls the scores of generic actioners of the '80s--the muscle-bound good guy pushed over the edge takes on the drug trade which cost him his a) partner, b) wife,... 
In a piece I wrote over a decade ago, I ridiculed Hollywood's obsession with remaking Die Hard, as in "Die Hard on a cruise ship" (Under Siege). I extrapolated the idea of Die Hard on a bus, which ca... 
Diverting but disturbing, Eddie Griffin's stand-up concert film DysFunktional Family frequently feels wrong. Displaying little of the finesse of the best concert films, DysFunktional Family affords c... 
The film adaptation of Stephen King's 800-page tome Dreamcatcher might more aptly be named Dreamsieve, for all the command it has over image and idea. Sprawlingly incoherent, Dreamcatcher trawls the... 
To advertise the ballsy bloodsport The Hunted as the product of an Academy Award-winning director (William Friedkin) and two Academy Award-winning actors (Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro) is to... 
All film distributors--especially the independent ones--now pine for the next My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a sleeper hit wielding gentle comedy and big emotion. Fox Searchlight Pictures may have what th... 
The Core opens with a burst of cheesy zeal; we burrow under the Para-mountain to the deliciously overwrought music of Christopher Young. When the earth's core stops spinning, we go topside to see inn... 
Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Marx, Allen, Brooks. Writing-performing comedy auteurs. Is it me or has it been a while since Hollywood has welcomed a comedy auteur to get down to business? Steve Martin and... 
Basic is the sort of calendar-filling misfire that clogs resumes and sits on video store shelves. The hint of something more ambitious lies under the egomaniacal star turns and a convoluted screenpla... 
For a while, Tears of the Sun seems as if it might be subversive in its anti-heroics, fronted by the iconic, scowling chrome dome of Bruce Willis. Instead, Antoine Fuqua plays jack of all trades--nam... 
Let's play a little game. Name this movie. Middle-aged white bread comic stars as a surburban schlub whose home is overrun by a con artist who won't leave. Houseguest (1995) with Phil Hartman and Sin... 
It's tempting to mimimize Gus Van Sant's experimental indie Gerry by dubbing it The Slow Walker (as opposed to last year's The Fast Runner) or perhaps Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Lost or even Dud... 
Like Robert Altman's appropriation of the Raymond Carver ouevre for the film Short Cuts, Rose Troche's The Safety of Objects imaginatively weaves together the pieces of A. M. Homes's short story coll... 
With irresistible technique, the ring of truth, and sheer force of will, Brazil's City of God announces itself to America as the picture to beat in 2003. Adapted by Bráulio Mantovani from Paul... 
Like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Real Women Have Curves taps into a desire for sweet entertainment throwing back to seemingly more innocent times. Real Women Have Curves also speaks to two cultures und... 
On viewing All the Real Girls, I could only conclude that it is, at least partly, brilliant. Director David Gordon Greene, in the press notes to his sophomore follow-up to the much-praised patience-t... 