Children of Men

Another dazzling film from the director of Nine Queens but, unfortunately, the last there will be

It is unfortunate for Stephen Frears’s The Van, based on the novel by Roddy Doyle, that it is coming out at a time when the economies not only of most of the countries where it will be seen but even that of perennially down-on- its-luck Ireland, where the film is set, are booming. The careful…

The End of Violence, directed by Wim Wenders and written by Nicholas Klein is a frequently enjoyable film in which, however, there is far too much going on, an excess of Germanic portentousness and a hackneyed narrative premiss involving a vast governmental conspiracy (ho-hum) against the people. On the symbolic level the film is about…

Rachel Leigh Cook is not only beautiful but she must be the greatest actress of her generation. How else to explain the fact that she can submit to being told in the patented denasal tones of Sylvester Stallone that she is “a special girl” —and that if she forgets it she’s going to have “a…

An amusing fairy tale that sometimes flirts with over-seriousness

Like Felicia’s Journey, Patricia Rozema’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is a film whose other virtues—in particular, the visual evocation of Regency England and the excellence of the performances of Frances O’Connor as the heroine, Fanny Price, Alessandro Nivola and Embeth Davidtz as the charming brother and sister, Henry and Mary Crawford, and Jonny…