In a season where all films are trying too hard to either be award winners or box office cash cows — or both — Darren…
But let’s not fool ourselves into believing that the original TRON was ever anything more than a curious novelty with some then-groundbreaking special effects. The story…
There’s a scene about halfway through Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s tepid The Tourist during which an Italian policeman appears to doubt Johnny Depp’s mistaken identity…
Early critical response to Joel and Ethan Coen’s True Grit, a faithful adaptation of Charles Portis’s western novel, has been mostly positive, yet many mask…
Boxing is a sport dependent on mental strategy, despite what its surface-level brutality suggests. In The Fighter, the physically tough but emotionally stricken welterweight boxer…
With Vengeance, Johnnie To once again makes art of action. In a stylish Hong Kong thriller held captive by the stoic auspices of French king-of-cool…
It probably wasn’t a difficult decision to have Nigel Cole direct Made in Dagenham, given that he was an ambassador of female solidarity just seven…
Dilettante Steve Antin proves the adage that persistence counts for more than talent in Hollywood. His resume is a scatter of acting, writing, production, and…
“Weapons are an extension of my body,” muses superstar terrorist Illich “Carlos” Ramirez Sanchez (Edgar Ramirez), signifying both the physical and mechanical prowess inherent to…
Tony Scott is frequently written off as an arty hack, the kind of filmmaker who dashes off chintzy, salacious action pictures with a dollop of…
For French director Gaspar Noe, life and death are not physical certainties but evolving psychological perspectives that often overlap. His three feature films (I Stand…
Think about these: Annie Hall, Sleeper, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan, and Purple Rose of Cairo. Are you smiling? Are you basking…
Paying off its central gimmick, promised in the trailers, of classy, prestige picture actors like Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman and John Malkovich firing machine guns…
Six years after an extraterrestrial race landed on Earth, a photojournalist is dispatched to Mexico to escort an American heiress back to the States. After…
As the saying goes, there’s only one thing worse than being a slut: being a virgin. A ludicrous notion if you value your health, but…
Just as Woody Allen keeps demonstrating a preference for leaving behind a depressing legacy of quantity over quality, that other favorite Great American Director, Clint…
What Frederick Wiseman is doing barely constitutes as documentary filmmaking anymore — there are no talking heads, no narration, all sound is diegetic, and only…
The American dissects the emotional enigmas of those working in two of the oldest professions — assassins and prostitutes, respectively. Its cryptic characters depend on…
The opening montage of I’m Still Here summons a cloud of fame engulfing actor Joaquin Phoenix — awards, accolades, the media appearances, the movies, and…
When Zhang Yimou announced he was to remake the Coen Brothers’ 1984 seminal noir Blood Simple, one couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking.…