Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Fine performances by its two principal actors are not enough in the end to make this movie very interesting

A Friend of the Deceased (Un Ami du Défunt), a Franco-Ukrainian film directed by Vyacheslav Krishtofovich and written—in Russian—by Andrei Kourkov, has a very attractive premiss. Tolia (Alexandre Lazarev), a translator living in Kiev and living a hand-to-mouth, hustling sort of existence not untypical of life in the former Soviet Union, finds that his rather…

Like the Iliad, Biker Boyz — directed by Reggie Rock Bythewood from a screenplay he co-wrote with Craig Fernandez and based on an article by Michael Gougis in New Times magazine — presents us with the theatre of raw masculinity. Also like the Iliad it depicts a series of stylized taunts and scenes of individual…

Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet is a good example of Shakespeare killed by terminal hipness. It is remarkably clever, and even has some good dramatic ideas. Having Juliet (Claire Danes) wake up just before Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) drinks the poison and simply cutting Friar Lawrence (Pete Postlethwaite) out of it is an interesting notion and…

A real treat for fans of Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean — and one that will make fans of those who aren’t yet

The Slums of Beverly Hills, written and directed by Tamara Jenkins is another meditation on family, this time the highly dysfunctional, motherless Abramowitz family in Southern California in 1976. The patriarch, Murray Abramowitz (Alan Arkin) is a sometime car salesman but mainly unemployed drifter who moves his family around from one cheap apartment or motel…