Act of Valor

10 Things I Hate About You, which was directed by Gil Junger and adapted from Shakespeare by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, attempts (again) to make Shakespeare hip by translating a version of the story of The Taming of the Shrew into — guess what! — a 1990s high school, this one in Seattle…

Once upon a time, Hollywood’s stock-in-trade was the “wom-jeop” movie, designed to appeal to the chivalrous instincts of the boys and young men for whom it was intended by placing an attractive woman in jeopardy and then supplying a handsome young hero with whom the youths could identify themselves to rescue her. Its post-feminist equivalent…

A never-less-than-watchable film about the immigrant experience in America that diminishes its own considerable power with touches of magic realism

A cop-on-the-edge turns out to be more interesting for his marriage than as a romantic loner — another smashing two-star movie from Down Under.

A thrilling adaptation of the work of a popular historical novelist almost succeeds in taking us back to the days of Hollywood’s innocence

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