Sergeant York

Jackie Chan’s First Strike, directed by Stanley Tong, is another example of the only kind of action film I seem to get any enjoyment out of anymore. Most of them are so artificial and unbelievable: special effects overwhelming the human element. But the remarkable Jackie Chan does action at the human level. This he gets…

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…

What? You didn’t know that Nixon was assassinated? You must not have been paying attention to the Hollywood fantasy-factory

How on earth did Ron Howard hope to succeed where Peter Weir failed? Hubris, I suppose. Ron Howard’s done a guest shot on “The Simpsons” (along with those other giants of the silver screen, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger) and Peter Weir hasn’t. But for those of us not giddy with success, however, the idea…

An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn, written and directed by super-screenwriter Joe Esterzhas, is that most painful of spectacles: Hollywood satirizing itself. Let us be clear: Hollywood likes nothing better than satirizing itself, and there is never any shortage of stars willing to do cameos and play up to their stereotypes in order to…