Searchers, The

A great movie as spectacle, though also an illustration of the limits of spectacle

Torn between thuggery and a career as a classical pianist? You must be French. Yet this Frenchman began life as Harvey Keitel

A moving and beautiful portrait of the natural bond between teacher and pupils that is also a stealth critique of today’s educational orthodoxy

Corny and over-the-top as Hollywood’s celebrations of the virtues of rural life as compared to urban used to be, at least the filmmakers usually gave the impression of believing in it.

When the Cat’s Away (not a very adequate translation of the French Chacun Cherche Son Chat or “Everyone’s looking for his cat”), by Cédric Klapisch, is a charmingly old-fashioned kind of film, in spite of its depiction of very contemporary social realities. It offers a marvelously undimmed romanticism about Paris, and about the glamour of…

You can see why the novel The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacqueline Mitchard made such a hit as the first selection of the Oprah book club and why its film version, directed by Ulu Grosbard from a script by Stephen Schiff, will doubtless be the chick flick of the season. There’s a child…