Search for Jean

Thank god for Jake Gyllenhaal.  Absent his performance, Demolition would have been a more unbearable slog than it is. It’s rare when a good performance can save a bad movie but it can make some of the more tedious parts watchable. The problem with...

For many people, there is no hell more unimaginable than having a healthy, active mind trapped in a paralyzed husk of a body. Some of those in this situation seek a quick end to their misery (as was the case with Ramon Sampedro, whose tale was dra...

Elegy, based on Philip Roth's The Dying Animal, provides an incisive perspective of how a person's inability to believe in love destroys a single, fragile chance at happiness. The movie tells the poignant tale of how one man - intelligent, urbane,...

Emerging from its Cannes debut, Elemental has received mixed reviews. The reason for the lack of enthusiasm seems to be related to expectations by some critics that the film doesn’t take a more aggressive stance in the culture wars. There’s a ...

Stalingrad, 1942-43. It was the bloodiest single battle in the known history of war, with more than one million perishing of wounds, disease, and the bitter cold of winter. Like Napoleon a century earlier, Hitler came to Stalingrad with the ai...

"Why is the price of justice so high?" - Maheude, Germinal Germinal, based on the landmark novel by Emile Zola, presents a startlingly authentic and powerful look into the tumultuous, tragedy-riddled lives of 19th century French coal miners. ...

It's ironic that a motion picture designed as mainstream, commercial entertainment in France will be viewed as an art house film during its American run. The movie in question is Patrice Leconte's The Girl On the Bridge, which made more than $20 m...

Director Andre Téchiné (My Favorite Season, Wild Reeds, Thieves, Alice and Martin) has never been shy about confronting difficult subjects in his films, as one glance at his loaded résumé will reveal. Téchiné enjoys exploring dark, complex ide...

The Glass Castle, based on the memoir of the same name by Jeannette Walls, comes across as an offbeat coming-of-age story whose integrity is impeded by the need for closure. Real life doesn’t work that way but movie-goers don’t like loose ...

In essence, Good Will Hunting is an ordinary story told well. Taken as a whole, there's little that's special about this tale -- it follows a traditional narrative path, leaves the audience with a warm, fuzzy feeling, and never really challenges o...