Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)

Pity poor Pat Tillman, fated to be a posthumous propaganda tool for one side or the other in our increasingly graceless public dialogue on matters of war and peace

In the New York Times‘s review of East-West, a Franco-Russian production directed by Régis Wargnier, A.O. Scott noted that, on its release in France last year, the film had been criticized for “its supposed anti-Communism” but that, it seemed to him, “its politics are fairly restrained.” How typical of the New York Times to assume…

The most entertaining bit of Godzilla, which is rather short on entertaining bits, comes as the misunderstood scientist, Nick Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) is finally able to get through the remarkably thick skulls of the government and the military just what is at stake if they don’t make destroying the monster’s spawn their top priority, as…

The old stories are always the best. When I saw the trailer for She’s All That, directed by Robert Iscove, I thought: here was a kiddies’ movie that, unlike the dreadful but depressingly popular Varsity Blues, I might not find it quite unbearable to sit through. First, it was a retelling of the Pygmalion story,…

The Center of the World, directed by Wayne Wang from a script written by Mr Wang and others under the pseudonym of Ellen Benjamin Wong, is a sort of parable—an attempt to be honest about the relations between men and women by portraying a very odd relationship indeed. A computer nerd called Richard (Peter Sarsgaard)…

We should welcome the fact that Oliver Stone’s 9/11 movie is without an explicit left-wing agenda, but the absence of one also makes the film the victim of its own unbridled emotion