Writer-director Denys Arcand's follow-up to his Decline of the American Empire, albeit following along at too far a distance — seventeen years — to have much meaning for those who never bothered, through follow-up viewings, to commit the predecessor to memory. It may be that this highbrow weepie — the …
Something went terribly wrong on military training maneuvers in the Panamanian jungle, but what? A coy and annoying mystery of conflicting flashbacks. The torrential rainfall may or may not be an homage to Rashomon, but definitely not a worthy one. With John Travolta, Connie Nielsen, Giovanni Ribisi, Brian Van Holt, …
Feminist pep fest, or pap fest, about an Indian girl in West London who must weave her way through the obstacles set by her cookie-cutter traditionalist family -- is there any other kind from India? -- in order to pursue her bliss as a soccer player. (Glossary note for the …
Although the title sounds like a Hong Kong shoot'em-up by John Woo, the subject is actually straight-A suburban Asian-American teens, who use exclamations like "Sweet" and "Whatever," listen to rap music, get wasted, and escalate from classroom cheating to petty crime to big-time. It's nice to know, in case you …
Sanctimonious slush surrounding a dedicated doctor and an uncommitted wife (somebody else's) who make a deep connection while fighting famine in Ethiopia, Cambodia, and Chechnya. The high ideals amount to no more than emotional blackmail. With Angelina Jolie, Clive Owen, Linus Roache, Teri Polo, Noah Emmerich; directed by Martin Campbell.
Big bore. Tim Burton, to inhibit erosion of his "fan base," needed to bounce back in a big way from the commercial conservatism of Planet of the Apes, and in Daniel Wallace's slender novel he has found a fund of peculiarity: the sententious and sentimental memoirs of an Alabama fabulist, …
Vroom-vroom-vroom-VROOOOM! Noisy nonsense about mostly black motorcycle clubs that get together for ritualized drag races ("We got a strict code about hustling") or else, on one occasion, for a charity bike-wash to raise money for schoolbooks. There are no real bad guys, and only one dead guy. (But don't try …
Rapid pileup of events and characters: an actress, a novelist, a corpse, an escaped convict, a capitulating politician, a Nazi spy, a Jewish nuclear scientist, among others. Personal concerns collide with global ones, in the best tradition of the wartime romance; and the plush production and photography (some lovely effects …
Stephen Fry's admiring, not to say admirable, adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, a moralistic social satire to do with the hard-partying idle rich in England entre les guerres, but with obvious "relevance" to today: materialism, hedonism, drugs, sex, sleazoid press, and so on. The sloppy direction leaves you grasping …
Steve Martin as a divorced tax lawyer seeking companionship in an Internet chatroom, finding the ample, the abundant Queen Latifah, fresh out of prison: the uptight white and the up-front black. Predictable but not disagreeable. The two stars could play this in their sleep, yet they give every appearance of …
Pagan pietism, from the Disney animation studio, to do with a Northwest Indian lad who, in his anxiety to become a man, kills a bear and gets magically transformed into a bear himself, to see how the other half lives: blissed out on nature (the moose practice yoga) and communality …
A by-the-numbers divine comedy about a would-be TV anchorman, anchored instead to fluff pieces in the field, who curses God (Morgan Freeman) and is cursed in return with all of His powers on a temporary basis: see if you can do better. (Only two rules: "You can't tell anybody you're …
Prolonged dizzy spell brought on by an ancient Egyptian Soul Sucker who stalks the halls of a Texas rest home till he runs into some stiff opposition from a resident who may or may not be the real Elvis (weighing how he got there, you'd have to guess not) and …
Hellerish, or just plain hellish, view of an overseas Army base in the late-Eighties: "Soldiers with nothing to kill except time," and hence the black-marketeering, the drug-manufacturing, the arms-dealing, and so on. The film's release was long postponed after 9/11, on the supposition that it wouldn't suit the nation's mood. …
Hong Kong action hero Chow Yun-Fat is required to share honors and screen time with the crinkled brow and lopsided smirk of Seann William Scott (American Pie), as a New York pickpocket who learned his martial artistry by projecting and mimicking kung-fu movies in a Chinatown grindhouse. ("The most undisciplined …