Search for Land

Heart Eyes almost does it. It arrives with enormous ambitions and comes damn close to nailing it. Yet, even though it doesn’t fully deliver what the filmmakers attempt, it nevertheless provides a fun 90-odd minutes whose beats are like that of a...

"All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases. It's all frightfully romantic." - Juliet Hulme, Heavenly Creatures Heavenly Creatures is based on the true story of Pauline Rieper (Melanie Lynskey) and Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet) set i...

Hector and the Search for Happiness is about what one might get taking a male-slanted version of Eat Pray Love and crossing it with The Secret Life of Walter Mitty then grafting on a Jerry Maguire-inspired moment at the end. As cynical as that migh...

Few working directors display the versatility of Richard Linklater. Equally comfortable making high-concept art films, experimental outings designed for mass consumption, and multiplex-friendly fare, Linklater has brought to the screen projects as...

In 2001, only a few months after the fall of the World Trade Center, Peter Jackson swept us away to Middle Earth with The Fellowship of the Ring. It was a wondrous three-hour achievement: the first major attempt at serious, big budget epic fantasy....

In 2005, genre fans were able to celebrate the day when the entire six-film Star Wars saga was available for public consumption. Nine and one-half years later, the same can be said of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth epic. As George Lucas learned, th...

Special effects have always played an important role in Peter Jackson's adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's books but, with The Desolation of Smaug, the middle chapter of The Hobbit movie trilogy, they take center stage. This isn't necessarily a positi...

Hokum is a claustrophobic horror movie that mixes supernatural elements with human immorality. Although not technically a murder mystery, aspects of that genre can be found in the bare bones of the narrative. The film's main driver is a sense of i...

Of all the films I have seen in my life, A Hole in My Heart may have been the most disappointing. This is the fourth film from hot Swedish director Lukas Moodysson. Two of his previous three movies, Show Me Love and Lilya 4-Ever, made my year-end...