reviews

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…

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…

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” 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…

Directed by actor Todd Field, in a remarkably assured feature film debut, In the Bedroom starts out a finely drawn family drama and builds with a menace so subtle that you almost don’t notice it until violence strikes as it does in real life: suddenly, shockingly, and completely unexpectedly, even though, in retrospect, the signs that it was imminent are all there.

Ed Burns takes us back to the angst-ridden New York dating scene once more in his most engaging and most accomplished film yet. Shot partly documentary style, it follows a game of romantic musical chairs amongst Manhattanites who, notably, represent not only well-off professionals but the ex-bridge-and-tunnel working class, too: TV producers mix with schoolteachers, … more…

Whether you support or oppose the current U.S. military actions in Afghanistan, you’re unlikely to be unmoved by this disturbing documentary about a people forced back into the Middle Ages by their unwanted rulers, who have taken religious fanaticism to its disgusting extreme. As a group of Italian aid workers struggles to set up a … more…

Hong Kong action meets MTV in this feature debut from Thai writer/directors Danny and Oxide Pang, yet another brotherly team of hotshot young filmmakers. A love of Quentin Tarantino and martial arts flicks exudes from their tale of living and dying by the sword, or the gun, as it were. Hitmen Kong (Pawalit Mongkolpisit) and … more…

Spy Game is a Tony Scott film, so you know there’ll be lots of cell phones whipped out and hot faxing action, glowing green blips on a CRT and false-color satellite photos, guys in dark suits sitting around conference tables and insidious government conspiracies afoot.