Give Dan Harris, the writer-director of Imaginary Heroes, plenty of credit for boldness and ambition. Not many kids fresh out of Columbia University would have the wherewithal to tackle a complex family-crisis drama with four or five different kinds of trouble running through it and half a dozen crucial minor…

Nobody messes with Samuel L. Jackson–at least not at the movies. He’s Shaft reinvented, the coolest cop on the street. He’s Mace Windu, the only swashbuckler in the Star Wars galaxy who gets to swing a purple lightsaber. Best of all, he’s Jules Winnfield, the ultra-hip hit man who spouts…

Clint Eastwood began digging into the third act of his career–the one that reveals the mature, deep-thinking artist…with a little jazz piano on the side–a dozen years ago, with the discomfiting anti-western Unforgiven. Since then, he’s hardly come up for air or given himself a break. Last year’s Mystic River…

Mike Nichols’ new film Closer is a boiling pot of lust, mistrust and double-dealing that might well be taken for outright soap opera–or, in quite a few places, soft-core porn–were it not for the sophisticated gleam of its well-heeled London desperadoes and the vicious dazzle of its dialogue. Adapted from…

The witless inanity of After the Sunset is so numbing that the sole reason for any living creature to sit through it–man, woman or household pet–is to marvel at the speed and variety of actress Salma Hayek’s costume changes. After an opening sequence in Los Angeles, this failed jewel-caper comedy…

The most crucial piece of equipment in Hollywood is obviously not the movie camera. It’s not the casting couch. Not even the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud or the personal trainer. It’s the Xerox machine–which was preceded by carbon paper. That’s why, over the years, we have had three Mrs. Norman Mains…

Summer movies don’t get much sillier or more empty-headed than Without a Paddle, and that includes Catwoman and King Arthur. What we have here is a low-wattage buddy flick proposing that a trio of boyhood friends, now 30 years old, can shed the last vestiges of their adolescence by traipsing…

There is nothing mysterious or subdued about Stacy Peralta’s enthusiasms. A product of Southern California’s vivid beach scene, he’s been a surfer since boyhood and was a professional skateboarder in the ’70s before he started making documentaries about the defining moments of those sports. The phenomenally successful Dogtown and Z-Boys…

Sheathed in a custom-tailored gray suit and sporting expensively barbered silver hair, Tom Cruise looks like an older, harder version of the self-absorbed L.A. sharpie he played 16 years ago in Rain Man. But in Collateral, a frenetic Michael Mann thriller that runs up a Baghdad-level body count, Cruise’s character…

Getting stranded at snowbound O’Hare for the night is one thing. You call home, maybe knock down a couple of martinis, then grab a blanket. A century ago, being quarantined at Ellis Island for eight months because you were, say, a part-time anarchist from Campobasso with a big mustache and…

In the mood to launch a thousand ships? Fine, but it’s gonna cost you. Feel like sacking the Temple of Apollo? OK, but bring drachmas. Depending on who’s counting, Warner Bros.’ pre-summer blockbuster Troy budgeted out at anywhere between $175 million and $250 million, including the big wooden horse, assorted…

Suicide made merry. Brotherly devotion tinged with carnal deceit. Personal tragedy transformed by malicious humor. These are some of the oil-and-water notions advanced by Lone Scherfig’s Wilbur, a mood-switching meditation on love and death that goes out of its way to yank our chains. From the sly come-on of her…

When we first see the title characters of Connie and Carla, a penny-dreadful imitation of one of Hollywood’s most inimitable comedies, they are loud-mouthed junior high girls mugging in the school cafeteria. A minute later, they are loud-mouthed grown-ups (well, they’re the size of grown-ups) screaming out show tunes in…

In Israeli writer-director Nir Bergman’s Broken Wings, we never see an automatic weapon, a military roadblock or a horrific explosion on a city street. Rather than dealing with the volatile politics of the Middle East, this quiet, soul-wrenching film examines the unresolved traumas of one middle-class family trying to cope…

The appeal of a quirky little Norwegian film called Kitchen Stories arises from the unlikeliest of sources–a series of domestic studies conducted in the early 1950s by a group of Swedish efficiency experts. The mission of the Home Research Institute, as far as anyone could tell, was to chart the…

At first glance, Hidalgo seems to be nothing more than an old-fashioned, flat-footed adventure epic plunked down on a vast stretch of desert and amply furnished with the usual Hollywood conventions–a strong, silent cowboy on horseback, a couple of villains with nasty black mustaches, a killer sandstorm and a cloud…

It’s clear by now that Meg Ryan, the bubbling sweetheart of half a dozen romantic comedies, means to bring new substance and seriousness to the latest phase of her career. Witness the lonely New York English teacher she played in last year’s brainy slasher flick In the Cut. In no…

Some acts of courage command everyone’s respect–the firefighter’s return to a burning house to rescue a child, the infantryman’s sacrifice of self for a wounded comrade, the weary black woman’s refusal to yield her seat on a segregated bus. Sometimes, though, courage can seem clouded–especially when it’s a response to…

On its surface, Jose Padilha’s absorbing documentary Bus 174 shows us how a homeless 21-year-old named Sandro Rosa de Nascimento hijacked a city bus in Rio de Janeiro on July 12, 2000, how he took 11 passengers hostage at gunpoint and became the raving centerpiece of a five-hour urban drama…

Surf’s up. Palm trees sway invitingly in the breeze. The sparkling beaches are amply decorated with bikini babes and hard-body surfer dudes. Everybody has a nice cold drink with a wedge of fresh lime in it. Seen that way, The Big Bounce is as alluring a midwinter pitch for the…

For those who pay no mind to Oprah, the dispute at the heart of House of Sand and Fog concerns the occupancy of a run-down little bungalow just inland from the northern California coast. It’s not much of a place, really. And to get a glimpse of the Pacific you’d…

Anthony Minghella’s magnificent film version of the Civil War epic Cold Mountain has much more going for it than Hollywood grandeur. Beyond its striking set pieces and gruesome battle scenes populated with thousands of extras, in addition to its movie-star glamour–Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are like beautiful pieces of…