Emerging from Till Human Voices Wake Us, it was easy to overhear some male viewers striving adamantly to put the film’s metaphysical themes in their place — to explain them away, as it were. This is a shame. The source of the story’s mystique is fairly simple and may be…

John Shaft went to Africa, so why shouldn’t Die Hard’s John McClane? In the new action romp Tears of the Sun, Bruce Willis undertakes a jungle-rescue operation on the Dark Continent, and it’s a McClane adventure in camouflage, minus all the sass and most of the spectacle. As Navy SEAL…

Apart from “I Am Fascinating” and/or “My Parents Are Horrid,” the reigning theme of film students’ movies is “Lovers Are Bonkers.” Thus, it comes as no surprise when a director’s first feature contains many elements that’ll be instantly familiar to anyone who’s ever hung around a film school. So it…

It all begins with the word. “I believe I may have a first sentence,” murmurs Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman — yes, really) to her husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), commencing labor on her fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The year is 1921, but skillfully intercut segments illustrate that the book’s heady emotional…

Those who seek a polar opposite to Michael Caine’s kind-but-firm patriarch Dr. Wilbur Larch in The Cider House Rules will find it in Jim Broadbent’s horrid, one-eyed headmaster, Wackford Squeers, in the new adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. Author John Irving cribbed extensively from Charles Dickens to create his delightful (and…

The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A miracle in midnight-movie finery; a spot-on analysis of adolescent ambition, gender struggles and xenophobia; an eternal pop-culture time capsule: Richard O’Brien’s madcap musical, adapted with and directed by Jim Sharman, offers participation-primed audiences — who aren’t sounding their smartest these days — the secret…

Fantasy is at its best when it ennobles our reality, and at the movies this year no fantastic adventure towers above The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The second installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s delightful yarn is adapted just as handily as last year’s The Fellowship of the Ring,…

Transcribed verbatim from the DVD commentary track of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, here’s an informative sci-fi concept from director George Lucas: “…as we go through the movie, there’s all little funny moments like Jango bumping his head because in Star Wars one of the Stormtroopers bumps…

Christ is sexy. There — got your attention. But honestly, think about it: nice guy, pretty hair, carpentry skills, puts loaves (and fishes) on the table. Plus all that doing miracles and rising from the dead and being the Son of God business. Heck, he’d be a prime catch for…

So, you wish to know if Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is as good as the first Harry Potter movie? Is it as charming, visually gratifying and faithful to filthy-rich author J.K. Rowling’s inescapable books? Well, that’d be “yep” times four, as it’s definitely an enchanting spectacular for…

With Frida — the story of profoundly passionate and uncompromising Mexican-Jewish painter Frida Kahlo — it’s evident that a few folks in marketing know how to work the demographics (it’ll be extremely PC, possibly mandatory, to gush in adoration of it). But that’s the first and last cynical comment of…

Now, here’s an innovative narrative: Two shticky goofs of different races get stuck with a ridiculous mission and must overcome their mutual antagonism to save the day. Been there? Done that? You bet! Yet somehow, amazingly, the new I Spy dishes out fresh and funny antics while simultaneously spewing forth…

Death is too often taken literally, and this unfortunate perspective is sustained by much cinema, despite the medium’s dubious kiss of immortality. There’s easy drama in tragedy and grisly ends, but moviemakers don’t often successfully deliver symbolic death, the subtly grim yet vital bridge between lively verses. Happily, director George…

Ordinarily it would seem somewhat odious to put so fine a point on this, but what the hey: Gather up your gay friends, because here’s a movie they’re going to dig, dig, dig. Well, probably, anyway. That general demographic seems to be the target audience of the radical, whimsical French…

Since average folk can’t often afford to fly to Paris (unless they live, say, in Lyon), 93-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira offers some consolation in the form of I¹m Going Home (Je Rentre à la Maison). Shot more than two years ago, it’s a seemingly sweet and deceptively simple…

Sometimes when a director shoots at a barn, the satisfaction comes in simply watching him hit it dead center. So it is with The Good Girl, wherein Miguel Arteta (Star Maps) targets middle-American ennui with wit, compassion and no shortage of ornery malaise. Like Arteta’s second feature, Chuck&Buck, this one’s…

Not much has changed in the ten years since Mike Myers used the Wayne’s World movies as a personal launch pad, and then tipped his James Bond-spoofing Austin Powers hand when he became popular enough to reap the rewards. Now those spy-movie sendups — with the major characters played by…

Of all the A-list men playing dedicated authority figures, Star Wars alums Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson remain among the most amusing and pleasing, which is why K-19: The Widowmaker glides along engagingly rather than sinking. In many ways, it’s just another cramped, dank submarine movie — bells, whistles, leaks,…

There are a few dubious claims regarding popular perceptions of the life and death of Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite the legend, he wasn’t — at five-foot-six — particularly short. He was also more than just the sturdy product of military training in Brienne and Paris, considering that his Corsican mother adamantly…

Naked emotion is a tricky thing to sell in motion pictures, especially in semi-autobiographical ones about confused mama’s boys gradually learning that life exists beyond the control of their lens. Back in 1988, Giuseppe Tornatore challenged himself thus with Cinema Paradiso and upped the ante, adding his unabashed sentimentality to…

The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, for those unfortunates who’ve missed it these past 109 years, goes something like this: A dandified London wastrel by the name of Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff (portrayed in this adaptation by Rupert Everett) welcomes into his chambers his friend and ally, Ernest (Colin…

Kick a boy enough times and he’ll become a man. The question is, of what sort? In his long-awaited feature portrait of the comic-book hero Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi brings forth a kaleidoscopic answer full of hope and verve. Flashy enough for kids and insightful enough to engage adults, the…