Patrice Leconte's psychological nonthriller (the Bernard Herrmann-esque music and the visual allusions to Rear Window are red herrings, and the frequently jostled camerawork is the furthest thing from Hitchcock) goes from one improbability to another: an abstracted thirty-something woman walks through the wrong door and tells her innermost troubles to …
The Coen brothers film with the widest, the broadest, the massiest appeal to date, or in the common phrase their "most accessible." Two glamorous A-list movie stars of opposite sexes, George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, looking their respective bests, sugar-cured and honey-glazed, and none of the Coen "regulars" -- no …
High-tech tale of betrayal and revenge, lighthearted to the point of self-contradictory and callous (Charlize Theron does, at least, haul off and sock the man who murdered her father: that sure felt good), mechanically directed by F. Gary Gray. As remakes go, it has the advantage of coming from an …
An On Golden Pond for the Douglas dynasty, not only post-stroke Kirk and Michael ("It's more difficult for him to enunciate his insults"), but also the young and obnoxious Cameron, grandson and son. It's Golden-y right through the three of them fishing in a rowboat against autumn leaves, and through …
An Australian geologist (Toni Collette) is obliged to squire a Japanese speculator (Gotaro Tsunashima) around the Outback: "I'm a bloody geologist, not a geisha!" The clash of cultures and languages produces unexciting results: e.g., a toneless rendition of "Danny Boy" at a karaoke bar. Events take an unexpected turn, however, …
Victor Salva, following his original Jeepers sleeper, has more time and money at his disposal, but no better an idea: a high-school basketball team, plus three cheerleaders, on an orange school bus in the middle of nowhere, under attack by the Winged Thing -- officially The Creeper but better called …
The amiable Rowan Atkinson plays the Inspector Clouseau of Her Majesty's Secret Service, leaving the funny French accent to the megalomaniacal villain (John Malkovich, not so frightfully funny after all; not Peter Sellersishly). The hero has his humble origins in an ad campaign for a credit card, and there is …
The reunion of Papa Bear and Man-Cub ("You can take the boy out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the boy") for a reprise or two of the Oscar-nominated song (1967), "The Bare Necessities." Tail-chasing animated sequel that ends up pretty much back where it …
Myopic, borderline xenophobic romantic comedy about a couple of blissfully self-obsessed young Americans -- Ashton Kutcher, a name that sticks in your teeth if not in your memory, and Brittany Murphy and her upturned nose and her upturned lip -- on a European "honeymoon from hell." Directed by Shawn Levy.
After a sizable step forward in his third film, Jackie Brown, and after a lengthy interval of six years since then, Quentin Tarantino takes several steps backwards in his fourth. An odd blend of pretension and triviality, it posits a comic-book world in which there can exist a Deadly Viper …
Wry and dry comedy about a team of Swedish efficiency experts who descend upon a Norwegian village to study scientifically the kitchen habits of bachelors. The observers are to perch on a high chair in an out-of-the-way corner of the room, under strict instructions never to interact with their subjects. …
The video-game adventuress, back in action. Here she is, punching a computer-generated shark on the snout and hitching a ride on its dorsal fin; and here, sliding in slow-motion down the face of a cliff on a rope, upside down, while picking off would-be assassins all around her with her …
Tom Cruise as "one of the most decorated warriors this nation has ever known," circa 1876, a tormented Civil War vet and Indian fighter who is hired as a mercenary to train the troops of the Japanese emperor to combat a renegade samurai, and who is then taken captive by …
A psychiatric intern brings his upper-crusty East Coast fiancée (at work on her dissertation on the reproductive activities of the fruit fly) to stay in his mother's house in the Hollywood Hills. But his mother, a free-as-the-breeze record producer, hasn't yet vacated the premises as agreed, along with the British …
Olivier Dahan's run-of-the-mill road movie has Isabelle Huppert in the role of a Côte d'Azur streetwalker on her last legs, and hasn't a lot else: some luscious reds, some schmatzy songs on the soundtrack, a sentimental flower motif, some maudlin maternalism. Huppert, doing one of her total-immersion jobs, looks quite …