A haven for the moviegoer who just wants to escape awhile from any and all Republicans. It recounts, through archival footage and up-to-date interviews with classmates and comrades, the young Kerry's transformation from war hero to war protestor. Essentially no more than an extended commercial for the Democratic presidential candidate …
A remake of a Japanese film, Ju-On: The Grudge, which was not much good to begin with. Perhaps, there, a better-than-usual rationale for a remake, especially because the same man occupies the director's chair, Takashi Shimizu: a second chance to get it right. No change, either, in the Tokyo locale, …
Consider-the-possibilities marital comedy written and directed by Yvan Attal, revolving around three car salesmen in contrasting marital states, and achieving a quality of genuine discourse. Tender moment: Attal, who also plays one of the three salesmen, gazing at his wife's neck as Elvis sings of how he can't help falling …
Or for short, Pot III. It has a new director — Alfonso Cuarón, of A Little Princess and, less pertinently, Y Tu Mamá También — and a new Dumbledore — Michael Gambon, in place of the late Richard Harris — in addition to new roles for the likes of Gary …
Ménage à trois in pre-WWII Paris, composed of a flighty bi-national socialite ("You're very modern, aren't you?"), a socially conscious Irishman, and a crippled dancer in exile from Spain: Charlize Theron, Stuart Townsend, Penelope Cruz, in order. The recipe caters to the apparently bottomless appetite in art houses for period …
Alias H.B., alias Red, alias Big Monkey -- a horned demon unleashed by the Nazis and harnessed by the forces of good (namely the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), his horns filed down to unmenacing stumps. A jokey comic-book adaptation (Dark Horse Comics) with delusions of grandeur. Guillermo Del …
The filmmaking debut of stage director Michael Mayer cannot much profit from the line of promotion stressing its shared origins in the author of The Hours, Michael Cunningham. It's true that the storyline spans a number of years, though nowhere near generations, the principal upshot of which is that the …
Going-through-the-motions Disney cartoon, a facetious, feminist (or cow-power) anti-Western wherein three heifers set out to capture Alameda Slim and save their dairy farm from foreclosure: "Huh! Bovine bounty hunters! Now I've seen everything." Voices of Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench, Jennifer Tilly, and Cuba Gooding, Jr.; written and directed by Will …
Righteous recounting of the internecine strife between the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda in the early 1990s, and the resulting genocide as the world twiddled its thumbs. Sort of a cross between The Killing Fields and Schindler's List, it mercilessly plays the shame game ("Rwanda is not worth a …
Martial-arts bodice-ripper about a blind showgirl (the jug-eared China doll, Zhang Ziyi) who is neither blind nor a showgirl, but an agent of an underground movement (and, evidently, a 9th-century forerunner of Zatoichi) opposed to the tottering Tang Dynasty. Zhang Yimou's follow-up to his Hero dispenses essentially more of the …
Hayao Miyazaki, the doyen of anime, creates here a dreamworld that doesn't so much pull the spectator into it as push him towards his own: more snore than howl. It certainly doesn't lack for imaginative detail. On the contrary, it could have made do with a little less. The titular …
A self-declared Existential Comedy revolving around the personal crisis of an environmental activist (Jason Schwartzman), currently getting squeezed out of the Open Spaces Coalition by his duplicitous but much better-looking and more charismatic colleague (Jude Law), who is literally sleeping with the enemy, the cheerleader-perky spokesmodel (Naomi Watts) of the …
If only the whole thing were as good as its credits sequence: a roving spotlight carving out white crescents on a black screen, picking out retro Forties lettering in a film noir font. It sets a mood; the movie doesn't sustain it. A second collaboration between the star and the …