Soggy, sloggy family saga, adapted from the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, spanning from Calcutta 1977 to New York City present day, and for the title figure, christened Gogol after the 19th-century Russian writer, spanning from mere gleam-in-the-eye to aspiring architect, engagement-breaker, husband and then cuckold. The passage of time, so …
Difficult-to-stomach documentary on the Japanese invasion of the then Chinese capital in 1937 and subsequent atrocities, recounted through archive footage, still photos, present-day interviews with survivors, and excerpts from letters and diaries read on camera by actors in costume (Woody Harrelson, John Getz, Mariel Hemingway, Stephen Dorff, Jurgen Prochnow, et …
Modest, clever, diverting comedy about a directionless college grad (Scarlett Johansson), with a major in Business and minor in Anthropology, who falls into a temp position as an Upper East Side nanny, continuing her anthropological studies independently in the exotic society of the filthy rich. The self-absorbed parents (Laura Linney, …
National disgrace: another overtaxed premise with an eye to a Franchise. ("This doesn't involve another treasure hunt, does it?") The honorable name of Gates has been implicated in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and rather than finding this historically intriguing, the present-day Gateses find it personally insulting. Exoneration will lie …
The Coen brothers' first literary adaptation, from a Cormac McCarthy original, an overflowingly bloody pulp thriller, plumped up with folksy first-person social commentary in italics, about a Texas good ole boy who stumbles upon the internecine scene of a drug deal gone bad, makes off with a satchel of cash, …
How the Iraqi war (and peace) was bungled, as told by a carousel of on-the-ground and ivory-tower experts, well-organized, one-sided, clear, and convincing. Some eye-widening footage inside "postwar" Iraq, but it's mostly a talking-heads movie, which is to say mostly not a movie. Narrated by Campbell Scott; directed by Charles …
American remake of Mostly Martha, blunted to the point of total pointlessness, eliminating the national differences between the German and the Italian, leaving only the passably cool Catherine Zeta-Jones and the insufficiently warm Aaron Eckhart as the executive chef and sous-chef at a swank Manhattan eatery. Abigail Breslin, of Little …
Numerological thriller puts a lot of ingenuity into ferreting out that combination of digits. It begins on February 3 (i.e., 2/3), flashes back to December 23, points out elsewhere that the numerals in 9/11/2001 add up to twenty-three (you might get fourteen or 2021, but try again), and on and …
The gang of scammers and heisters reassembles on a weak premise (revenge for the backstabbed and cardiac-arrested Elliott Gould), weaker even than the deeper premise of making a huge pile of money for Warner Brothers. Despite the "emotional" motivation, there is no loss of smugness (only a loss of Julia …
Retiring train engineer Odd Horten, odd indeed, goes ever so slightly off the rails in a storyline that leads steadily in new directions, to new people, never doubling back until the sentimental end. Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer duplicates the mundane drollery of his Kitchen Stories if not quite the number …
Muted, thin, bittersweet (i.e., mostly sweet, with a bitter aftertaste) musical romance about a Dublin busker (Glen Hansard, founder of a rock band named The Frames) and an immigrant Czech pianist and single mom (Marketa Irglova) with whom he feels himself in tune. Frugally produced, scruffily photographed, the film has …
Spanish ghost story that strives at all times to stay within arm’s reach of ambiguity — real ghosts or overheated imagination? — in the mold of the Henry James prototype, The Turn of the Screw, or at any rate in the mold of the academic squabbles over it. James may …
From France, a démodé Bond spoof set appropriately in the mid-Fifties and shot scrupulously in the style of the period. What contemporary Hollywood production would impose such self-discipline? Would deny itself a computer and rely on its wits? Director Michel Hazanavicius evinces a fond remembrance of an era, a screen …