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M. Night Shyamalan has always been something of an illusionist. Even at his best, he succeeds not because he's a masterful storyteller but because he's an expert at sleight-of-hand and pulling rabbits out of his hat. With The Lady in the Water, S...

The Hidden Fortress is the third-most influential of Akira Kurosawa's films (behind Rashomon and The Seven Samurai). Unlike many of the great Japanese director's best-known efforts, The Hidden Fortress has not been remade in another language, but ...

Those who know Akira Kurosawa only for his samurai movies (a genre that includes his most famous titles) may be surprised when exposed to the “other side” of his work – less ostentatious films like Red Beard, High and Low, and (most nota...

The careers of filmmakers David Lean and Bernardo Bertolucci overlapped for a short span (Lean’s best years coming prior to Bertolucci’s breakthrough) but, when the controversial Italian director released his celebrated epic The Last Emper...

It's rare that a film of such power opens in U.S. theaters during January. Of course, when it comes to foreign-language films, the usual "rules" don't apply and the latest offering from Hirokazu Kore-eda has arrived in art houses following a succes...

In an era when MTV-inspired film making techniques have begun to dominate motion pictures, its refreshing to see something with the simple, unhurried style of Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda's feature debut, Maborosi. This film, which is reall...

Call it the law of diminishing results. Akira Kurosawa’s 1956 classic The Seven Samurai (the first time this story was made into a movie) is a great film - a contender for one of the best 100 motion pictures of all time. (It’s at #32 on m...

As remakes go, The Manchurian Candidate is better than most. It remains faithful to the premise and themes of the original, but, by avoiding a slavish re-interpretation, it offers some surprises to those who are familiar with the 1962 version. Ye...

There are a lot of things going on during the course of the two hours comprising the running time of Monster, but the most forceful is the issue of perspective. How the narrative evolves is highly dependent on the point-of-view of the narrator and...