Tran Anh Hung’s beautiful meditation on family ties and family traumas, The Vertical Ray of the Sun, marks a captivating new chapter in the career of the writer-director who was the first to give Americans a glimpse of Vietnamese filmmaking. In 1994, Tran’s The Scent of Green Papaya made its…
During this cinematic Summer of Dumb, it would be all too easy to celebrate half-assed cleverness as a virtue, especially when proffered by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, who elevated the gross-out to an art form in Kingpin and There’s Something About Mary. Osmosis Jones, one of two films the Booger…
The most telling scene in Rush Hour 2 comes during the closing-credits montage of outtakes that has become the most enjoyable part of Jackie Chan’s Hollywood outings. Chris Tucker — the poor man’s Eddie Murphy, who now pockets more than the real thing per picture — and Chan have just…
Times certainly have changed. Twenty years ago, a musical about an East German transsexual rock singer would have premiered in one of New York’s Off-Off Broadway theaters or cabarets, run for a couple of weeks and remained the pleasant memory of a select few. But when John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig…
There are scenes in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes redo that are so hysterical they drown out minutes’ worth of dialogue that follow, which is hardly a knock. Indeed, the film is often so comical, so ridiculous in that self-aware, wink-wink sort of way, that it plays like a…
When last we spotted indie icons Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau on screen together, they were knocking back fruit-flavored martinis and chasing L.A. skirt in the inventive Gen-X hit Swingers. The goofy charm of that phenomenon now gives way, sad to report, to a labored fringes-of-the-mob comedy called Made, in…
Actor “Beat” Takeshi Kitano has built an international reputation over the past decade, primarily through a series of ultra-hard-boiled crime films in which he plays either a cop or a felon. With the exception of Gonin (1995, U.S. release, 1998), which was directed by Takeshi Ishii, all of these films…
There are scenes in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes redo that are so hysterical they drown out minutes’ worth of dialogue that follow, which is hardly a knock. Indeed, the film is often so comical, so ridiculous in that self-aware, wink-wink sort of way, that it plays like a…
Festering somewhere between an After School Special and kiddie porn lies this frank but heinously melodramatic open wound from veteran Canadian director Léa Pool (Emporte-moi). Adapted by screenwriter Judith Thompson from the novel The Wives of Bath, by Susan Swan, Lost and Delirious is about girl joy and girl sorrow,…
Who would have imagined that at this late date — more than half a century after the end of World War II, after The Diary of Anne Frank, Schindler’s List, Au Revoir, Les Enfants, Pierre Sauvage’s documentary Weapons of the Spirit and Jan Kadar’s amazing The Shop on Main Street…
A third Jurassic Park movie was, of course, inevitable, given that the second shattered box-office records (it also shattered the conventional notion that any movie starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore and a bunch of dinosaurs had to be at least somewhat interesting). But when you have one of the hottest…
Back in her early teens, Reese Witherspoon proved herself a terrific actress in her 1991 big-screen debut, The Man in the Moon. Since then, she’s done first-rate work in critical hits like Pleasantville, cult faves like Freeway and Election and underrated gems like Best Laid Plans. So how is it…
There’s plenty of French star power in The Closet (Le Placard), a comedy written and directed by the prolific director Francis Veber. The movie stars Daniel Auteuil, Gérard Depardieu and Thierry Lhermitte, which is roughly equivalent to a U.S. movie featuring Robin Williams, Nick Nolte and Tom Hanks, directed by…well,…
German filmmaker Tom Tykwer has a gift for fusing psychological complexity and crackling plot without forsaking the excitements of either. The success of Run Lola Run didn’t exactly turn Tykwer into a household name, but it earned him his props as a young lion of the art houses. Moviegoers hungry…
In the movies, dead husbands and dearly departed boyfriends have an irksome habit of revisiting the women who once loved them — usually at inconvenient moments. Consider Demi Moore in Ghost. Poor thing had to put up with the dramatically challenged shade of Patrick Swayze, who droned on and on…
Kiss of the Dragon — the latest vehicle for martial arts star Jet Li, a mainland Chinese talent who became a superstar in Hong Kong and has since succumbed to the blandishments of Hollywood — has a little of the best (plus a lot of the worst) of Hong Kong…
Even more than the recent Depression-era comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the turn-of-the-century drama Songcatcher is an absolute treasure trove of old-timey, traditional folk music. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia in the year 1907, the film follows city-bred musicologist Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) as she…
Time and Tide — the latest action picture from producer/director Tsui Hark, one of the world’s great entertainers — is a compendium of many of the best (and a few of the worst) traits of Hong Kong action cinema. It’s relentlessly visceral, making you feel as if you’ve been shot…
Sexy Beast, the debut feature from British director Jonathan Glazer, is a riveting, scary and often funny foray into a traditional American genre: the gangster film. Like the western, the gangster film has always been predominantly American turf, but every decade or so, the Brits come up with an entry…
If internal combustion ever becomes obsolete — that is, if the auto industry ever allows internal combustion to become obsolete — whatever will movies do for heart-stopping drama? Hoofbeats are dramatic, and the chug of a steam engine is suspenseful, but the roar of a gasoline-powered vehicle stirs the blood…
In the annals of social change, Alma Schindler is strictly small potatoes, and Bruce Beresford’s new biopic, Bride of the Wind, unwittingly threatens to erase her altogether. For those who don’t have the history of the Austro-Hungarian empire at their fingertips, Alma (Sarah Wynter) was an outspoken party girl from…
Those expecting Himalaya to focus upon the beloved traveling carnival ride known for its liberal use of Def Leppard (“Do you wanna go faster?”) are in for a few surprises. For one, this sensuous, exotic film is more like an issue of National Geographic come to life, rich with cultural…
