Mia Hansen-Løve wears many creative hats; actress, film critic, screenwriter, and director. After starring in two of fiancé Oliver Assayas’s films in her late teens,…
“A crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum…
A witless, calculated attempt to start another Pirates of the Caribbean-style franchise (this one based on a video game series), Mike Newell’s Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Prince…
In wildly different ways, Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl and The Last Mistress envision the collective invasion of the female psyche by male oppressors. In both,…
Neil Jordan is one of those directors whose reputation mysteriously exceeds his productivity. Few of his films stand out as anything more than thrill or…
The films of writer/director Nicole Holofcener are trim and personal, lit with the light of real life and warmed by the friction of relationships bumping…
How to Train Your Dragon is warm and winning, a real charmer of a family film. Given that it’s a product of Dreamworks Studios, who…
At this point, it seems fair to say that Jonathan Demme is the finest director of concert documentaries working today. Where most are content to…
Just four films into an already distinguished career, South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho has established himself as one of contemporary cinema’s most formidable genre directors. His…
In Remember Me, Robert Pattinson’s voiceover twice cites a possibly-apocryphal quote by Gandhi: “Whatever you do in life will be insignificant. But it’s very important…
“This is not a shortcut to the other side,” reads a sign on the wall of an occupied Baghdad palace during a particularly dull walk-n-talk…
The Runaways’ place in rock history is slight at best. They occupy a buried patch between feminal compatriots Patti Smith and the Go-Go’s and a…
For those who’ve spent hours on YouTube viewing parkour clips, there’s nothing more exhilarating than watching l’art du déplacement, the art of moving. Parkour, which…
There’s something to be said for the achievement of a modest goal. Kevin Smith has stated that his reasoning behind directing Cop Out was that he…
Frederick Wiseman’s latest doc was designed with the precision of an arabesque and contains a lesson on just how much precision an arabesque actually requires.…
Martin Scorsese has been letting us down for years, helming the sort of film that was roasted in 1992’s The Player, but which still gets…
After a yearlong delay, a replacement director, heavy reshoots, and multiple editors, The Wolfman is probably about as good as it could possibly be. It…
More vampires? Really? Is that what we need? You can’t swing a bat at the multiplex these days without hitting one, though it could be…
Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air feels like a sales pitch, and thanks to the film’s manipulative powers, we actually start to believe that a…
“You’ve never experienced anything like it,” gushed the LA Times about Avatar, James Cameron’s motion-capture extravaganza. And if you aren’t a Cameron connoisseur or an…
You think your life is hard? Sure, we all have problems, but Precious has it worse than most of us. An illiterate Harlem teenager with…