Act of Valor

An repellant and loathsome film about repellant and loathsome people that seeks to mine a mostly played-out seam of schlock and shock

Magnolia, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, is like David O. Russell’s Three Kings in being an impressive display of moviemaking talent without ever quite becoming an impressive movie. In both cases, I think, the problem is that the talented writer-directors are overreaching themselves and trying to do too much. In the case of…

The portrait of a real-life French con-man who doesn’t succeed in being as charming as the film wants to portray him as being

Six Days, Seven Nights, directed by Ivan Reitman, tries and does not completely fail to be an old- fashioned sort of romantic comedy. Anne Heche plays Robin Monroe, deputy editor of a New York fashion magazine who meets cute with Harrison Ford as Quinn Harris, a crusty old souse of a pilot living the life…

Jack Nicholson gives the performance of his career and Alexander Payne delivers on the promise of Citizen Ruth and Election

The Spanish title of Only Human by Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri is Seres queridos, or “loved ones” and suggests one of those happy-clappy, boosterish Euro-junk films, like Cédric Klapisch’s Auberge Espanole, in which everybody is part of one big happy European family living in a tolerantly multicultural spirit stronger than any differences between them….