You gotta love John Sayles. No, really–you gotta, or else a mob of indie-minded cineastes will club you into submission. Sometimes it’s easy to comply, as with City of Hope and Sunshine State, both astute portraits of uniquely American class, race and real estate struggles boiling down to the burning…

Recently, ornithologists in Antarctica made a startling discovery: Female emperor penguins, being forced against their wills to endure stern patriarchal societal norms, tend to practice iffy mating habits. Close scrutiny revealed that most adult females go bonkers struggling to choose between an exciting-but-destructive “bad boy” penguin and a dependable-but-boring “good…

Visualize Tokyo. Got it? Now add popular favorite Bill Murray doing his “lovable schmoe” shtick. Toss in American Rhapsody’s up-and-comer Scarlett Johansson doing her standard “like, duh” face. Dip them both into emotional torpor in the sleek Park Hyatt, add local color, stir. Et voilà: Lost in Translation. For Sofia…

Once upon a time there was a guy named Sam Raimi. He grew up in Michigan and made amateur horror movies. He stuck with his hobby, and now he’s a filthy rich A-list producer-director in Hollywood. Beats workin’. Unfortunately, since we haven’t yet seen a genre-redefining horror movie in the…

It seems like everybody’s raving up Mexican cinema these days–either as a merit badge of self-conscious hipness, or because the stuff is impressive and sometimes both–yet the excitement is definitely deserved with Herod’s Law (La Ley de Herodes). This movie kicks the feisty Y Tu Mamá También right in its…

Most will deny it, but inside every grown man lurks a hypersensitive adolescent girl. Allow me to tell you all about mine and to share some of my poetry… Whoa! Relax. Put away that gun. Just seeking to emphasize that in the case of director Catherine Hardwicke’s debut feature, thirteen,…

It’s a great pleasure to behold a chunk of art that’s both dank and fresh at the same time, and this appraisal perfectly fits the superb Dirty Pretty Things. The latest from veteran director Stephen Frears (Gumshoe, Prick Up Your Ears, High Fidelity) immediately transports the viewer to a subjective…

Everyone in his right mind loves Donald Sutherland. The spry 67-year-old boasts one of the most respectable acting résumés this side of Christopher Lee, so when he turns up in the documentary Fellini: I’m a Born Liar, he speaks with authority. Looking a bit dazed but generally enthusiastic, he waxes…

If, in keeping with current fads, you seek movies featuring females kicking a bunch of ass, your appetite will be tended (and cultivated) at the multiplex all summer long. Wander into your local art-house, however, and you may find a fine, if somewhat challenging, import called The Legend of Suriyothai–billed…

To prepare for reviewing Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, I did the obvious research: I watched Yellowbeard again. Yes, yes indeed–can’t do without Fairbanks as The Black Pirate and Flynn as Captain Blood. But when appraising a new comedic pirate adventure, it’s important to consider…

Once in a while a film comes along that is as sound, smart, sweet and significant as can be, and Whale Rider is such a film. Fault the project on various counts if you like (I’ll try), but ultimately the tale is beyond reproach, a bane to cynics and a…

Much like “hilarious Islamic comedy” or “sublime Affleck picture,” the term “terrific second sequel” isn’t bandied about too much. Name one. Took you a minute, didn’t it? Don’t be ashamed–there are probably support groups for fans of Smokey and the Bandit III. Generally, creative juices are drained by parte trois,…

Once in a while a film comes along that is as sound, smart, sweet and significant as can be, and Whale Rider is such a film. Fault the project on various counts if you like (I’ll try), but ultimately the tale is beyond reproach, a bane to cynics and a…

French putz Xavier (Romain Duris) is depressed. The poor guy lives in Paris, has Amélie’s Audrey Tautou as a girlfriend, eats gourmet vegan dinners prepared for him by his free-spirited mother and is being set up for a graduate degree in economics by a friend of his father’s. “I don’t…

At some fast-approaching point in pop-culture evolution, we’re due to hit Total Outsider Saturation, wherein everybody is an outsider and therefore there is no longer an outside. In the fleeting meantime we have scintillating reminders of the struggle like X-2: X-Men United, the latest bid from comic book land to…

Adolf Hitler killed his own dog. Most of his other evil is well-documented now, and words alone are inadequate anyway, so let’s begin by considering this comparatively microscopic offense. For the many who shower their canines with at least as much affection as they offer other human beings (and often…

Just to admit this up front, my ideal concept of musical comedy involves Bryan Adams and Dave Matthews garroting each other onstage with their own damnable guitar strings. Nonetheless, even viewers with a more centrist appreciation of the genre may feel disappointed by this friendly new folk-music curiosity called A…

Imagine a large, dead Saint Bernard with its bones removed. Then visualize a hefty bellows inserted into it from behind, with a gorilla hopping up and down on it, causing the huge dog’s baglike corpse to twitch spasmodically, wheeze and croak. Voilà, this is today’s Nick Nolte. What’s amazing is…

Even under our current government, drugs are still something of a problem in society, which means that the rockin’ and reelin’ Spun hasn’t arrived too late to buzz with significance. In modern pop culture, being young, hooked, miserable, depraved and endlessly self-pitying reached its zenith of coolness about a decade…

It was only in 1967 that Great Britain struck from its jurisprudence the “common scold,” essentially a crime of catty insolence for which the convicted party–almost always a woman disturbing the peace by nagging a man–was punished via a public ducking into cold water. Nobody likes a bitch, but arguably…

You know how boys love to play soldier? How they get stern-faced and march out to destroy an enemy whom they believe needs destroying? Well, actors are into that, too. Sometimes they soldier on even when Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson isn’t around to help them frown determinedly. Such is…

In nature, living things prey upon each other all the time. Humanity, on the other hand, has a choice. It’s flouting this choice that turns on director Gaspar Noé. In his latest project, Irrversible, he basically swipes Christopher Nolan’s backward-narrative structure from Memento to tell a lurid tale of rape…