Movies starring Toni Collette

There are reasons why Hollywood rarely backs a murder mystery.  With its various narrative complexities, double dealings, and mandatory twists, the genre is generally unsuited for the constrictions demanded by a two-hour timeslot. As the PBS ...

At first glance, Sue Brooks' Japanese Story appears to be an infusion of genre stories: man versus nature, a road trip, and a mismatched romance. However, while there are elements of each ingredient in the movie, Brooks and screenwriter Alison Ti...

As the end credits for The Way Way Back started to roll, I found myself wistfully wishing there could be a sequel to this movie. It's not because the narrative feels incomplete or because there are dangling plot threads. Instead, it's simply becaus...

Guillermo del Toro has taken us down some dark paths before, but this is the deepest and darkest he has gone, adapting the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham (which was previously made into a movie in 1947). Set during the Grea...

The previews for Muriel's Wedding liken this latest Australian import to two of its predecessors, Strictly Ballroom and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. These are inaccurate, not to mention misleading, comparisons. Those expe...

It's the romantic buried inside each of us that responds to movies like Emma. Sure, the film, like the Jane Austen novel upon which it is based, is laced with wit and sophistication. And, although it contains enough social commentary and char...

Evening, based on the 1998 bestseller by Susan Minot, is an example of a well-told familiar story. There are no surprises during the course of the film, which transpires across two time frames (1954 and 1998), but the strength of the screenplay an...

It takes a deft hand to fashion a feel-good movie with plenty of laughs and an upbeat ending out of a story that includes drug addiction, a suicide attempt, a death, Nietzsche, and Proust. Despite treading through a minefield of tone shifts, co-di...

The Night Listener is an eerie, occasionally disturbing motion picture focused on the differences between perception and reality. The film exists in the gray area separating drama from psychological thriller, although the mood is in many ways more...

Towelhead is a victim of the economics of movie-making. Despite being a critical success at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival (where is played under the name of Nothing Is Private), Towelhead has languished on shelves for a full year. With Warner Br...