Much like “hilarious Islamic comedy” or “sublime Affleck picture,” the term “terrific second sequel” isn’t bandied about too much. Name one. Took you a minute, didn’t it? Don’t be ashamed — there are probably support groups for fans of Smokey and the Bandit III. Generally, creative juices are drained by…

Once in a while, a film comes along that is as sound, smart, sweet, and significant as can be, and Whale Rider is such a film. Fault the project on various counts if you like (I’ll try), but ultimately the tale is beyond reproach, a bane to cynics and a…

French putz Xavier (Romain Duris) is depressed. The poor guy lives in Paris, has Amélie’s Audrey Tautou as a girlfriend, eats gourmet vegan dinners prepared for him by his free-spirited mother, and is being set up for a graduate degree in economics by a friend of his father’s. “I don’t…

Imagine a large, dead Saint Bernard with its bones removed. Then visualize a hefty bellows inserted into it from behind, with a gorilla hopping up and down on it, causing the huge dog’s bag-like corpse to twitch spasmodically, wheeze and croak. Voila, this is today’s Nick Nolte. What’s amazing is…

While admitting to being neither a giddy young girl nor a particularly stupid adult, this critic shall review What a Girl Wants as objectively as possible. Accidental love-child Daphne Rey-nolds (Amanda Bynes) has spent her 17 years thus far as a native New Yorker holed up in Chinatown with her…

In nature, living things prey upon each other all the time. Humanity, on the other hand, has a choice. It is flouting this choice that excites director Gaspar Noé. In his latest project, Irréversible, he basically swipes Christopher Nolan’s backward-narrative structure from Memento to tell a lurid tale of rape…

In the hit Armageddon, our planet — big mother, source of life and self — is threatened by Ben Affleck and other calamitous horrors, with the movie commanding attention through fear. The converse now arrives in The Core, wherein the mama herself goes terminally nasty on the inside due to…

Adolf Hitler killed his own dog. Most of his other evil is well-documented now, and words alone are inadequate anyway, so let’s begin by considering this comparatively microscopic offense. For the many who shower their canines with at least as much affection as they offer other human beings (and often…

John Shaft went to Africa, so why shouldn’t Die Hard’s John McClane? In the new action romp Tears of the Sun, Bruce Willis undertakes a jungle-rescue operation on the Dark Continent, and for his part, it’s a McClane adventure in camouflage, minus all the sass and most of the spectacle…

Uh… yo. The word on the street is that the ‘Drzej is back at the helm. “Who?” you rightfully ask. Why, cinematographer turned director Andrzej Bartkowiak, of course. He’s the… er… “dog” who, under the auspices of producer Joel Silver (Richie Rich, The Matrix) created the hip-hop bang-bang chop-socky flicks…

Astaire & Rogers. Hepburn & Tracy. Heck, Ball & Arnaz, Houston & Washington, or Vardalos & Corbett. Over the decades, Hollywood has proven that its romantic comedies needn’t suck. But alas, they often do, as is the case with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Clearly, bigwig co-producers…

Let’s start with two raves and a beef. Final Destination 2 is a tight, rockin’ popcorn flick packed with nasty kicks. It’s also a rare beast, a second horror-franchise installment that matches and in some ways supersedes the original (unlike such sputterings as Jaws 2, A Nightmare on Elm Street…

Hitler as artist… Hitler as artist… Damn. So much for the ol’ “summarize plot, tease overpaid actors, pontificate wildly” formula. Reviewing Max — about the wonder years of Der Führer (Noah Taylor) and his fictional Jewish benefactor, Max Rothman (John Cusack) — looks to be something of a task. Set…

It all begins with the word. “I believe I may have a first sentence,” murmurs Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, yes really) to her husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), commencing labor on the author’s fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The year is 1921, but skillfully intercut segments illustrate that the book’s heady emotional…

Those who seek a polar opposite to Michael Caine’s kind-but-firm patriarch Dr. Wilbur Larch in The Cider House Rules will find it in Jim Broadbent’s horrid, one-eyed headmaster, Wackford Squeers, in the new adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. Author John Irving cribbed extensively from Charles Dickens to create his delightful (and…

Fantasy is at its best when it ennobles our reality, and at the movies this year no fantastic adventure towers above The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The second installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s delightful yarn is here adapted just as handily as last year’s The Fellowship of the…

Transcribed verbatim from the DVD commentary track of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, here’s an informative sci-fi concept from director George Lucas: “[A]s we go through the movie, there’s all these little funny moments like Jango bumping his head because in Star Wars one of the Stormtroopers…

Ah, Halle’s berries. Don’t care much for them personally, as they’re components of an actress (bane of the thinking man), but those golden globes are shifting loads of Hollywood product these days, the latest dose being Die Another Day, the 20th official entry in the 40-year-old James Bond franchise. As…

So, you wish to know whether Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is as good as the first Harry Potter movie. Is it as charming, visually gratifying, faithful to filthy rich author J.K. Rowling’s inescapable books? Well, that’d be yep times four, as it’s definitely an enchanting spectacular for…

Much like a psychic, a cinema critic must look through a movie and see the other side. In the case of the new thriller The Ring — remake of the 1998 Japanese hit, Ringu — the formative forces swim into focus without effort. There’s a DreamWorks boardroom, some executives exclaiming…

Ordinarily, it would seem pretty odious to put so fine a point on this, but what the hey: Gather up your gay friends, because here’s a movie they’re going to dig, dig, dig. Well, probably, anyway. That general demographic seems to be the target audience of the radical, whimsical French…

The not-so-great American pastime of serial killing has splattered pop culture in recent years, but from the biopics of America’s Most Unwanted to the nervy theatricality of Anthony Perkins or Kevin Spacey, only one legend stands definitive: that of Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter. Within the performance of that other eerie…