Film
Love and Honor: Yoji Yamada goes back to the samurai well
At 76, Japanese writer-director Yoji Yamada is still best known in his homeland for a one-time Guinness Book…
Film
War, Inc.: John Cusacks not as clever as he thinks
Impassioned lefties John Cusack, cult novelist Mark Leyner, and Bulworth scribe Jeremy Pikser co-wrote this ineffectual Iraq War…
Film
The Tracey Fragments: Ellen Page is chopped into pieces
“My name is Tracey Berkowitz. Fifteen. Just a normal girl who hates herself.” Again leading as a…
Film
The First Saturday in May: Big Deal, a Horse Race
Of the 40,000 thoroughbreds foaled in the United States annually, only 20 make the regal two-minute run that…
Film
Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness: A Scottish Road (Movie) to Whimsy
Fitzcarraldo hoisted a steamboat over a Peruvian mountain so that a tiny village could experience opera. Not literally…
Film
The Killing of John Lennon: Must We Go There Again?
A nonjudgmental re-creation of 25-year-old Mark David Chapman’s 1980 assassination of the peacenik pop star—from three months prior…
Film
The Monastery: Love Among the Relics of Christianity
Living alone in the dilapidated Hesbjerg Castle he purchased more than 40 years ago, octogenarian bachelor Jørgen…
Film
Steep: Local Skier Makes Good!
The three deepest profundities plowed by Mark Obenhaus’ blandly beautiful, inarticulate extreme-skiing doc are: (1) Alaskan snow…
Film
This Christmas: Holiday Mush Season Starts Today!
Tyler Perry is going to wind up with a monopoly on mainstream adult dramas marketed to African-American audiences…
Film
Sharkwater: Endangered Species Upstaged by Self-Appointed Savior in a Speedo
As cinema progresses past some of the awareness-raising limitations of conventional journalism, we’re watching more docs on genocide,…
Film
Blame It on Fidel!: Adorable Preteen French Communists
While her friends play cops and robbers, broodingly precocious 9-year-old Anna (Nina Kervel) is asked by younger brother…
Film
Dedication: Mandy Moore Slums Among the Literati
Inland Empire‘s Justin Theroux pops his directorial cherry with this obnoxious Sundance throwaway, a by-the-numbers romantic comedy that…
Film
The Hottest State: Dont Hate Him Because Hes Ethan (Hawke)
After the deathly dull, faux-hipster muddle that was Ethan Hawke’s directorial debut, Chelsea Walls, expectations aren’t exactly high…
Film
Youre Gonna Miss Me: Music Doc Dusts Off the Myth of Roky Erickson
If you only see one gushy, poppy rock-doc about an influential singer-songwriter—renowned as much for his music as…
Film
Introducing the Dwights: Brenda Blethyn Makes Our Eyes and Ears Bleed
Brenda Blethyn’s trademark histrionics—maternal blubbering and drama-queen shrillness—worked smashingly for her intentionally trying role in Secrets & Lies,…
Film
Steel City: Ugly Betty Tries Kitchen-Sink Drama
Textured with the smoggy grays and troubadour blues of his provincial Illinois homeland, writer-director Brian Jun’s likable, downbeat…