It’s difficult to reconcile American perceptions of Iran, a rigidly authoritarian Islamic fundamentalist society, with the captivating and compassionate films that emanate from the country. Most of these pictures, including 1995 Cannes Film Festival Camera d’Or winner The White Balloon and 1998 best foreign-language film Oscar nominee Children of Heaven,…

By their very nature, fundamentalist religions demand conformity. Original thought and personal aspirations are subordinated to duty and ritual as prescribed by scripture — be it the Bible, the Koran or the Torah. Members who do not strictly adhere to the precepts of the faith are ostracized, shunned, even expelled…

Even at just 92 minutes, Hanging Up feels endless. Intended as a humorous, heartwarming take on dysfunctional family relationships, this film doesn’t work as comedy or drama or anything in between. Given its wealth of above-the-line talent — director and costar Diane Keaton, writers Delia and Nora Ephron and actresses…

Although some people really are crazy, “crazy” is a relative term. Does it apply to someone who feels he might spin off into outer space and never be able to get back down to earth? Or is it only crazy when you have to cling to the nearest table or…

It is rare to find a movie that is as accomplished, multilayered and rewarding as the novel from which it was adapted, but The Cider House Rules is such a film. Directed by Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?), the film displays the kind of…

A tangible sense of sadness and longing hangs over The Legend of 1900, the mesmerizingly beautiful and poetic new film from Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, best known in the United States for his Academy Award-winning Cinema Paradiso. Based on a dramatic monologue by contemporary Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco but filmed…

Susan Sarandon is one of the screen’s most gifted actresses, a fiercely intelligent artist who invests her roles with depth, compassion, wit and humor. She has the ability to elevate even mediocre material, taking a potentially schmaltzy part, as in Stepmom, and making it totally believable. In her best films…

Am I a traitor to my gender because I didn’t find this unabashed film about female sexuality erotic, brave, or even — dare I say it — interesting? The ironically titled Romance, directed by the audacious French filmmaker Catherine Breillat (36 Fillette), has become something of a cause célèbre wherever…

There is something fairy-tale-like, but also deeply human, about Twin Falls Idaho, a gentle, beautifully realized tale of love and intimacy that marks the feature-film debut of identical twins Mark and Michael Polish. Michael directed the film, and both brothers wrote the script and star in it. It is what…

London-born novelist-screenwriter Hanif Kureishi doesn’t have Margaret Thatcher to kick around anymore, as he did so incisively and effectively in My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, but his concerns have not wandered too far afield. Rather, he’s softened the hard edges. Universal issues still inspire him, but…

Pretentiousness masquerading as profundity; self-indulgence masquerading as art. The Loss of Sexual Innocence, the dreadful new film from writer/director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, One Night Stand), joins the ranks of the worst films ever made. On the surface, this statement may seem harsh and heartless–but it will strike anyone…

David Mamet, famous for his in-your-face characters, brutal (and frequently raunchy) dialogue and deliberate, staccato prose, would seem an unlikely choice to write and direct a screen adaptation of British playwright Terence Rattigan’s genteel drama about injustice. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Glengarry Glen Ross–whose body of work is…

Directed by Walter Salles (1995’s Foreign Land), the Brazilian Central Station concerns the relationship between a homeless nine-year-old boy and the insensitive, acerbic woman who reluctantly agrees to help him find his father. Winner of the Golden Bear award for Best Film at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival (along with…

Genius can be a terrible, destructive gift. Jacqueline du Pre, the brilliant British cellist who enraptured audiences in the Sixties and Seventies with her musical passion and intensity, lived a life of great renown and acclamation but also one of harrowing loneliness and emotional turmoil. Her story is movingly told…

Given the manipulative tendencies of many mainstream pictures, Stepmom could easily have slipped into a sticky morass of sentimentality and melodrama. Instead, it proves a genuinely affecting movie that approaches its adult themes with intelligence, maturity and rare authenticity. The film stars Susan Sarandon as Jackie, a divorced mother of…

British actress Jane Horrocks is thrice-gifted: She can act, she can sing, and she can sing like Judy Garland. And like Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich and a host of other legendary performers. Horrocks’s ability to mimic the singing and speaking voices of these artists lies at the heart…

Even students of English history may have trouble sorting out the palace intrigues and intra-governmental conspiracies that fill Elizabeth, the handsome new production about Queen Elizabeth I’s ascension to the British throne in 1558. With the bewitching Australian actress Cate Blanchett (last year’s Oscar and Lucinda) in the title role,…

Well, now we know why the term “bored to death” was invented. Meet Joe Black, a new film produced and directed by Martin Brest (Scent of a Woman, Midnight Run), takes an interesting idea–Death assumes human form and comes to earth to learn about human existence–and reduces it to a…

A riveting but darkly disturbing thriller, Apt Pupil isn’t easy to sit through. The subject matter itself proves deeply unsettling, while two brief acts of sadism are so horrifying as to be unwatchable. And yet this brutal film borders on the brilliant. Beautifully structured and edited, with a chilling central…

Leelee Sobieski is a mouthful of a name (forty years ago, studio moguls would have made her change it to something short and unassuming)–but get used to it, because the young actress behind it is going to be getting a lot of attention. She almost single-handedly carries A Soldier’s Daughter…

The idea of destiny–especially the notion that two people are fated to meet and fall in love–is a load of crap, but a surprising number of people buy into it. Probably for that reason, it has proved a popular element in movie romances, City of Angels and Sliding Doors being…