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... 
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... 
Swimming with Sharks brings to mind a host of Hollywood satires which have come before, perhaps especially David Mamet's play Speed-the-Plow in its sick, Tinseltown triangle of self-centered lovers a... 
In an apparent effort to get all the business there is to be had at the movies, Columbia offers us a teen comedy for the Spider-Man run-off crowd. But The New Guy is strictly theater filler, whose on... 
More an embarrassing therapy session for Peter Bogdanovich than a fulfilled film, The Cat's Meow gives the director the unusual opportunity to both skewer and identify with the enemy of his friend. F... 
Purveyors of stupid comedy must walk a fine line: they must be unashamed, unconcerned with naysayers, and uninhibited. In order to make a good stupid comedy, they must also not, themselves, be stupi... 
The Deep End may not be deep, per se, but it touches surprising chords nevertheless. The second film from San Francisco writer-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel (after 1994's Suture), The Dee... 
Collateral Damage, a surprisingly bad Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, sets the bar another notch lower for the Austrian Oak. Once a reliable frontman for stupid but guaranteed-to-be-fun big-budget act... 
In the early months of the year, the Hollywood crap parade flaunts fantasy, even in supposedly realistic settings. Britney Spears' debut as film star, Crossroads, spins a tale that has the feel of m... 
Mr. Nicks:I've reviewed your independent study materials and found them sorely lacking. Based on the promise you display, you should be ashamed of the shoddy work you have submitted here.First, let... 
First, the camera pushes in, into thick underbrush of lantana, revealing an unknown woman's body. For the next two hours, the film, in effect, slowly pulls back to reveal greater perspective and tru... 
An actor's performance as a mentally-challenged character can come off as a stunt designed for Oscar attention more than a role in service of a compelling story, and Sean Penn in I Am Sam skirts dang... 
Ashley Judd could have had a career. Instead, she's made bad choices which allow her talent to be exploited and, worse, ossified to the point where her fundamental ability is now sorely in question.... 
If you like your devastation juxtaposed with jaunty jazz, you might enjoy Rintaro's new anime film Metropolis. Be forewarned, though: I use the term "new" lightly, as Metropolis scavenges the bones... 
Very seldom does a modern comedy come along which makes me laugh out loud, even amidst a guffawing preview audience. Orange County achieved this feat...repeatedly. In other hands, Michael White's sc... 
1998's Blade became that rarest and most hunted of Hollywood creatures: a franchise. This success story for New Line and star Wesley Snipes has come roaring back at the unfettered reins of Mexican h... 
Not unlike its recent predecessor I Am Sam,, John Q strands good actors in mushy, movie-of-the-week material. It's tempting to give a provisional recommendation baed on Denzel Washington's performanc... 
Following closely behind Alejandro González Iñárritu's breakthrough success for Mexican film, Amores Perros, Alfonso Cuarón's Y tu Mamá También has been desc... 
Though we've never been long without one, it seems war movies are all the rage again. In particular, Hollywood has resurrected the brotherhood theme in depicting our brave fighting men. Screenwriter... 
In a year of notable biopics about gay artists - such as Wilde and Love is the Devil--Gods and Monsters might be expected to fade into the background. But director Bill Condon's ode to gay film direc... 
Hollow Reed is the sort of drama Hollywood thinks it has been making for years: earnest, gripping, emotional and real. of course, Hollywood dramas are more often artificial, predictable, and facile t... 