If movies succeeded on their ambitions alone, St. John of Las Vegas would be hilarious. But St. John misses the mark almost every time.
The German-made North Face is told with nail-biting gusto that will keep you clenched with suspense for the final hour. The icy tension created by this film is enough to induce frostbite.
Either you're a Leonard Cohen fan or you're not; there seems to be no middle ground. Which pretty much sums up who the audience is for Leonard Cohen L...
Andre Techine's The Girl on the Train feels like two different films cobbled together, without much to connect one to the other, beyond the fact that they're about the same characters.
I had to laugh after I saw Creation at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, when I read speculation in the press that the reason it was having trouble...
No, Ong-Bak 2 isn't a great movie and, no, Tony Jaa isn't a great actor. But so what? If you love the pure kinetics of a well-shot martial-arts film, Tony Jaa is the most exciting figure to come along in years.
Peter and Vandy is touching and insightful, a film that understands what that first whoosh of emotion in a relationship feels like -- and how quickly love can change and vanish.
Only the very young and the very undiscriminating will find this movie enchanting -- or even mildly entertaining. Obviously, Jackie Chan isn't immune to making one for the paycheck and phoning in his performance.
While there is violence galore in A Film with Me in It, the lion's share is accidental.
The film is about a chapter of sports and international political history that few outside of South Africa would be aware of. In most ways, it's a standard underdog tale, but this one comes with a difference.
Perhaps Fantastic Mr. Fox will be the film that convinces adults that animation isn't just for kids.
To get a sense of just how deep the lingering effects of institutionalized racism in South Africa must run, take yourself to Skin, a powerful and compelling drama based on a true story.
What to make of omnibus/anthology films such as New York, I Love You? Do you judge them by the best of the short films contained within? Or by the wo...
The film has a strong Dickensian flavor to its plotting, as Nick Twisp works his way through both the twisted landscape of suburban Oakland, Calif., and the crowded byways of his own psyche.
It's exactly the kind of middlebrow entertainment that attracts people who no longer go to movies -- because it seems like the kind of movie they no longer make.
I've been touting Up in the Air as the year's best film since I saw it in Toronto in September -- and I still haven't seen anything that has changed my mind.
This is, by my count, the third version of Dickens' story that Walt Disney Studios has put out. The story, however, was always Dickens', as it is now.
Lars von Trier is a fraud, who keeps making movies because he has somehow convinced enough people that his delusions or pretensions (the latter, more likely) are art and that his movies are worthwhile.
When is a sports movie not a sports movie? When it's Tom Hooper's terrific The Damned United, yet another feather in actor Michael Sheen's cap.
This is a movie that has few ideas of its own, except for one large and highly suspect central one.
Unless you're a dog undergoing house-breaking, you don't need to have your nose rubbed in s**t to be reminded that it exists. But that seems to be Michael Haneke's raison d'etre.
Brothers is the classic example of a movie that tries to be too many things and ends up not being much of anything except overwrought.
Uncertainty ultimately doesn't go where you expect it to. It's a fascinating experiment that also happens to be an interesting and highly watchable movie.
A flat, self-consciously mannered film, Gentleman Broncos winds up as a waste of time for everyone involved -- including you, if you make the mistake of seeing it.
I don't want to know how Spike Jonze made Where the Wild Things Are. I'd rather simply simmer in the joy of having watched it unfold before my eyes.
