Raiders of the Lost Ark

Hands on a Hard Body by S.R. Bindler is a documentary about a contest, held annually in Longview, Texas, by the Jack Long Nissan dealership, which gives away a $15,000 pickup truck to the contestant who can keep at least one hand on the truck longer than anyone else, given five minute breaks every hour…

Father’s Day by Ivan Reitman is based on the preposterous premiss that an apparently happily-married woman, upset at her husband’s failure to pursue their runaway 17 year old boy who has left home to become a rock-band groupie, would tell not one but two old boyfriends that they might be the boy’s father—in the expectation…

A remarkable evocation by the director of Central Station of life in the outback of Brazil 90 years ago is spoiled by a facile ending.

Naturally, I had hoped to be able to avoid going to see Lasse Hallström’s sickly-sweet Chocolat. After The Cider House Rules, indeed, I hoped never to have to see another movie by Hallström. But when Chocolat was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar I resigned myself to the necessity of having to waste two hours…

I didn’t bother going to see Fight Club when it came out in October because, having seen Seven and The Game, the earlier films by its director, David Fincher, I thought I knew what to expect: namely, bargain basement nihilism and pseudo-profundities got up into an “edgy” package with “edgy” music and featuring big stars…

A movie that prompts the reflection that the therapeutic romance isn’t really romantic at all