Sands of Iwo Jima, The

The three Australian Twentyman brothers are such lovable criminals that we’re even supposed to love their criminality. In short, they’re just like American movie criminals.

All the way through The Winter Guest, which was directed and co-written by the fine British actor Alan Rickman, I was bothered by the fact that the action (I use the term loosely) was supposed to be taking place on “the coldest day in living memory” in East Fife, Scotland. Anyone who has ever been…

Outside Providence, adapted from his own novel by Peter Farelly, with his brother, Bobby, and directed by Michael Corrente, is better than most of the other late-summer kid movies, such as Detroit Rock City, The Adventures of Sebastian Cole or Teaching Mrs. Tingle. For one thing, it actually has some sort-of funny lines in it—for…

Mr Jealousy directed by Noah Baumbach (Kicking and Screaming) is the kind of film that young filmmakers ought to be making, and that I approve of in theory. But I’m afraid it is just not very good. The jokes in this would-be romantic comedy for the ’90s fall mostly short of being funny, the characters…

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 reverse of a feel-good film is a Michael Haneke film — but doesn’t he do them well!