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It’s a fair assessment that my overall unfamiliarity with Indian cinema may have amplified some of my criticisms of Mani Ratnam’s Nayagan (or, as it is also known, Nayakan). Two aspects that I found to be distracting – the oddly-placed mu...

In motion pictures, there are essentially three types of satire: a fatuous, silly kind that emphasizes jokes to the exclusion of all else; a lightly comic approach that gently pokes fun at issues while developing a plot and characters; and a vicio...

Next represents Nicolas Cage's second superhero movie in the space of two months. However, where Ghost Rider was based on a comic book, Next takes its inspiration from a Philip K. Dick story. The result is not unlike what we have come to expect o...

Into the calm before the box-office storm of The Lost World rises Night Falls on Manhattan, Sidney Lumet's triumphant return to worthwhile movie-making. The director of such memorable films as Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Network has been in a ...

There is a scene in Nil by Mouth, actor Gary Oldman's directorial debut, that is excruciatingly difficult to watch. It's not especially graphic, since the gruesome details take place out of frame, but anyone with an imagination can conjure up ...

Expecting normalcy from a Coen Brothers production is a pointless endeavor, but anticipating brilliance isn't outlandish. Their latest feature, which has about zero box office potential, provides plenty of the latter and a little of the former. It�...

No Reservations is an adequate adaptation of Sandra Nettelbeck's 2001 German feature, Mostly Martha. While not as emotionally resonant as its inspiration and tending a little more toward melodrama, No Reservations is nevertheless a uplifting tale ...

Now begins a period of prayer for Eddie Murphy - he must pray that no one who can cast a Best Supporting Actor vote in the 2007 Oscar race will see Norbit, because no one in their right mind could think of providing an honor to anyone involved in t...

Like Shakespeare's Hamlet and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of those stories that is re-made on a fairly consistent basis. If you don't like the latest incarnation of the count, wait a few years and there will be anothe...

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Novitiate is the even-handedness with which it treats religion in general and 1960s era Catholicism in particular. Set mostly within the confines of a convent, the feature debut of writer/director Margare...