Those who identify as fans of the Halloween films will want to see Halloween: Resurrection, the eighth in the series; those who don't care about Halloween won't. That said, Halloween: Resurrection co... 
The Iranian films that make their way into our cinemas tend to have a neo-realist formality to them, usually depicting the ravages of poverty, basic human feeling, and the emotional wake which follow... 
If I were to give a "State of the Movies" address, I'd like to be able to say that creativity remained an important part of the process, but (sigh) Hollywood producers seem intent on making us movie... 
I think Woody Allen will have to die before I'll be able to accept, much less welcome, his many imitators. Of the many blatant attempts to ape Allen's style or thematic obsessions, only Rob Reiner's... 
Listen, Reign of Fire—the preeminent post-apocalyptic dragon picture—makes a terrible film. But I'd be lying if I said it didn't make a darn diverting movie. This is the kind of movie tha... 
With Lovely and Amazing, writer-director Nicole Holofcener offers a clever and funny riff on self-esteem and the family dynamic. The planned accidents which comprise the story--and the fine ensemble... 
Stuart Little 2 is liable to immediately put you into a good mood. As director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King) once more pushes in on his mostly idyllic, colorful, Sesame Street-esque New York, we listen... 
Sunny and colorful at heart and in its eye-catching visuals, Stuart Little updates (very freely) E.B. White's book, but the tone is so guilelessly sweet and the details so smartly steered to modern c... 
Steve Irwin a.k.a. The Crocodile Hunter a.k.a. Serious Yahoo came to prominence on television, hosting various incarnations of his confrontational animal-wrangling derring-do. His TV presence is, I s... 
Sam Mendes follows up his Oscar-winning smash American Beauty with an adaptation of Max Allan Collins's graphic novel Road to Perdition (itself based on the anime film Lone Wolf and Cub). In doing so... 
Charlotte Gray is one of those odd-duck historical fiction films that ignores the scintillating truth and instead spins a frustrating web of simplistic half-truths. With the appropriate panache, audi... 
In the period surrounding the fall of Saigon in 1975, American soldiers routed waves of Vietnamese refugees into orientation camps. There, fledgling immigrants poised on an uneasy border, unsure if t... 
Men in Black II, unsurprisingly, lacks the joyful inventiveness of the original. Conventional wisdom dictates that sequels are not meant to be inventive; instead, they are exercises in maintenance. O... 
You may have heard that A Walk to Remember is a pleasant antidote to postmodern teen flicks and gross-out "romantic" comedies. For much of its running time, this assessment is accurate...which makes...
With a touch of the same goofy spirit that fueled Amélie, Elling tells a simple tale of simple folk who, though mentally challenged, resemble most anyone in their struggle to overcome daily fea... 
It's tempting to give the well-acted, watchable Like Mike an innocuous two-star pass, but this kiddie fantasy relies on too-many clichés (and a dubious implicit message) in delivering its pref... 
Zacharias Kunuk's Atanarjuat: the fast runner works on several levels. It's lyrical mythology, domestic drama, travelogue, and museum piece. In adapting a story from oral tradition dating back a few... 
Arguably, there's not much cinematic value to a comedy concert film, especially in a time when comedy concerts are customary cable fare. But Margaret Cho's Notorious C.H.O. makes a good case for the... 
For a kid flick, Hey Arnold! The Movie appears to endorse an awful lot of reckless, criminal behavior. It's all in good fun, I suppose (for kids, anyway). While the movie will undoubtedly please fans... 
Since Hollywood has already made Brewster's Millions about six times, Columbia Pictures decided to plunder its vaults for a fresher (but still proven) rags-to-riches premise for comedy star Adam Sand... 
The Emperor's New Clothes is a star vehicle with a tricky premise. The star, Sir Ian Holm, is marvelous, and the premise isn't half bad. But neither commodity is used to its fullest potential, makin... 
The sort of movie that beats one into submission, Blake Edwards's The Great Race hails from that bygone era when epic, big-budget comedies had "guest stars" and lavishly recreated an even more bygone... 
Blake Edwards's Skin Deep is that most idiosyncratic type of movie that contributes to a prominent director's ouevre without adding much distinction (except the invitation of autobiographical analysi... 
A seminal comedy from Hollywood's Golden Age, Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington spins a fascinating depression-era morality tale with heart and humor. The film also epitomizes its director, Frank Capra, w... 
Peter Care's The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, based on Chris Furman's posthumously published 1994 cult novel, captures youthful disaffection and the yearning to fill the emotional void which opens... 
Bill Watterson's immortal Calvin and Hobbes comic strip seemed to validate the suspect term "instant classic," though Watterson (unlike the Disney corporation) was not the type to capitalize on the p... 
John Sayles is an edgy auteur--literally. His films are frequently "border films," taking him around the edges of the U.S.: New York and Jersey in The Brother from Another Planet and City of Hope, Al... 
More an exercise than a fully-realized film, Windtalkers is nevertheless a perversely funny inversion of a history of American war movies and, for that matter, the B-grade Westerns of yesteryear. It'... 
Olivier Assayas's period piece Les Destinées Sentimentales--promoted in the U.S. simply as Les Destinées--represents a departure for the director. Like his wayfaring protagonist, Assaya... 
In a summer that's shaping up to be pretty good for pulp entertainment, the long-aborning The Bourne Identity provides more essentially guilt-free thrills. Director Doug Liman adds to his knack for c... 
In Woody Allen's 1977 classic Annie Hall, Allen's thinly veiled alter-ego Alvy Singer steps into his own childhood memory of a family dinner and uses his more articulate and jaded elder perspective t... 
Finn Taylor's Cherish is a little too lazy to make good on its ambitions, but it's an inoffensive entertainment designed, like the pursuits of its characters, as a vicarious escape from life's drudge... 
Like Kandahar, the film Maryam got an unexpected post-9/11 windfall. A film that might otherwise have been a blip on the cultural map got a cheerleader in Roger Ebert and found its way into a surpris... 
By way of preface, I should say that, though I am a man and I recognize that Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is not designed for me, I also recognize its value as popular entertainment. Men ar... 
Director David Fincher is a supreme technician, and he has a sensibility (a slum of suffering, with a back door of hope). But his ability to develop the right material remains in question. Panic Room... 
Despite protestations to the contrary, Woody Allen has always betrayed autobiography in his films. Of course, Allen isn't telling his own life story in any literal sense, but his movies are a psycho... 
Seen apart from expectations and hype, Spider-Man is what it is: a solid comic-book movie. Director Sam Raimi provides dollops of humor, romance, and kinetic action, and though Spider-Man and Raimi f... 
Undercover Brother--Malcolm D. Lee's blaxploitation spoof--may not be wholly original and it's definitely not politically correct. But it is fast and funny, which qualifies it as sterling summer ente... 
Writer-director Jill Sprecher took the long road to her latest film. It started with a severe head injury, the result of a New York mugging. It continued with the loss of backers and her own apartmen... 
It's easy to relate to Stacey Peralta's Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary chronicling the birth of skateboarding as a hobby, sport, and phenomenon. Like any average Joe at a high school reunion, tell... 