Search for Fran

The Piano is about passion, the most basic and primal element of human nature. No matter how thick the veneer of civilization is, or how deeply-buried beneath layers of social repression those latent emotions are, passion ultimately cannot be deni...

Despite arriving on North American screens mid-way through the month of November with a cast that features three previous Academy Award nominees (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson) and a similarly honored writer/director (Richa...

Any movie emerging from Aardman Animation Studios comes with a set of expectations, the majority of which are satisfied The Pirates! Band of Misfits, an affectionate parody of the pirate genre. Suffused with satire, wit, and the dry, tongue-in-chee...

By turns powerful and frustrating, The Place Beyond the Pines is a three act tale about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the sons. It uses coincidence to emphasize consequence and ably applies karmic lifestyle interpretation to the text. ...

Remember how Liam Neeson made it an annual tradition to release a cheesy action/thriller every January or February? Well, Neeson appears to have retired from that business leaving the door wide open for Gerard Butler to step through. Butler has th...

Planet of the Apes was arguably the first American science fiction franchise of the post-serial film era. In many ways, the Planet of the Apes series developed the blueprint used by many subsequent multi-segment science fiction endeavors (such as ...

Playtime, the 1967 comedy from acclaimed French director Jacques Tati, is an odd film (even coming out of a tradition of filmmaking that prided itself on defying conventions and breaking barriers). With no real plot and little in the way of ch...

Polina is mesmerizing. Part of that is because perhaps 50% of the scenes are dance-related, choreographed by co-director Angelin Preljocaj. Another part is because the lead, Anastasia Shevtsova (making her acting debut), is a classically-trai...

The Postman, an Italian film from British director Michael Radford (White Mischief, The Elixir), is a charming piece of cinema that takes several comfortable formulas and expands upon them in ingenious and emotionally-satisfying ways. There's a li...