A Beautiful Mind (review)

Toss a coin: Which do you prefer: A Heartwarming(TM) tale of one man’s triumph over mental illness? Or one director’s biting off more than he can chew and falling rather flat on his face? Or one more mostly terrific performance from Crowe? No need to look for a three-sided coin — you get all three in A Beautiful Mind.

The Royal Tenenbaums (review)

So perhaps it’s not surprising that this vision, this valentine to a vibrant and alluring city would come not from native New Yorkers but native Texans Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (review)

Other critics have already dragged out the $10 words to describe this film — some of the ones I’d chose myself are ‘seductive,’ ‘masterful,’ ‘majestic,’ and ‘elegant’ — and you must believe what they say because they say True Things. But the one thing that strikes me most about LOTR: FOTR, besides its seductively masterful and majestic elegance, is simply how utterly right it is.

Ocean’s Eleven movie review: it’s so money, baby

Are you up for a little larceny that may be dangerous but is too much fun to pass up? Are you up for a smart dumb movie, the kind of delicious popcorn flick you get when some of the most talented and most watchable people in the biz let their hair down? Cuz this ain’t a movie that’s been fortified with vitamins and minerals or morals or anything good for you — this is pure cinematic junk food of the highest, tastiest order.

No Man’s Land (review)

A festival favorite around the world and winner of the best screenplay award at Cannes this year, Danis Tanovic’s No Man’s Land is a view of the strife in the former Yugoslavia that only a Bosnian could make, by turns mordantly funny and tragically affecting.

Final (review)

Science fiction and independent film don’t mix often, and that’s a shame, because true SF depends not upon expensive FX but only upon the posing of interesting speculations about technology and culture and the exploration of the effects of those conjectures on people. Here’s a great example of how SF on the cheap works. In … more…

The Business of Strangers (review)

In a bland airport hotel for stranded business travelers, two women — one with an agenda, one dangerously adrift — strike up a friendly comraderie to pass the time: Julie Styron (Stockard Channing: Isn’t She Great) is a smart, successful businesswoman; Paula Murphy (Julia Stiles: O) is a cocky, self-reliant writer with a “money job” … more…

Behind Enemy Lines movie review: saving Owen Wilson

Oh my god, is Owen Wilson gonna be a huge star or what? This weekend, millions of people who have never seen Bottle Rocket, have never heard of Wes Anderson, and have no idea that Wilson is a screenwriter of no small talent will be cheering on an Owen Wilson who channels the spirit of Steve McQueen while kicking some collective Bosnian ass and being all that he can be. Cuz Bruce Willis is gettin’ too old for this shit, I guess.

The Affair of the Necklace (review)

Don’t let the limited release and the Oscar cachet of its star fool you. The Affair of the Necklace has costume-drama snob appeal in spades, ’tis true, but this is pure bodice-ripper romance, done up right. If it were a book — and it was, actually: the film is based on the memoirs of its real-life heroine — it would surely sport a hilariously salacious cover, one you’d try to hide if you were reading it on the subway. But it’d be an un-put-downable book. A guilty pleasure? Oh, yeah. But all the more pleasurable for it.

ABCD (review)

“ABCD” stands for “American-Born Confused Desi.” “Desi” is an Asian Indian word for Indian, and this surprisingly downbeat family drama — from director Krutin Patel (he cowrote the screenplay with James McManus) — follows the travails of Nina (Sheetal Sheth) and Raj (Faran Tahir), who immigrated to the U.S. as children and now, as adults, … more…