They Were Expendable (1945)

M:I-2, directed by John Woo and written by Robert Towne, is like the original Mission Impossible (1996) in being a postmodern-style romance of technology. The earlier film, which was directed by Brian de Palma, did for the deus ex machina what Shakespeare did for the Aristotelian unities, which is to say that it blew the…

The few. The proud. The homocidal and sex-obsessed. Both Anthony Swofford and Sam Mendes tell us far more about themselves than they do about the United States Marines

The Game, directed by David Fincher, may be one of those films about which it is possible to say virtually nothing without giving away an essential fact about it—a fact which a great many viewers would be very cross at me for having revealed. It always seems to me a very shallow sort of enjoyment…

Fierce Creatures by Robert Young and Fred Schepisi brings together again the four principal actors of A Fish Called Wanda, though not in their characters from that film. This is quite a different story—about an Antipodean tycoon presumably based on Rupert Murdoch called Rod McCain (Kevin Kline) who takes over a small zoo in England…

I’m Not Rappaport, written and directed by Herb Gardner from his stage play, takes its title from the old vaudeville joke. Comic walks across the stage as it were down a street and encounters straight man with surprise: “Rappaport! What happened to you?” he says. “You used to be a short, fat man and now…

The thing I like about the films of Zhang Yimou, especially the early ones like Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, and Raise the Red Lantern is that he takes such complete advantage of being almost the only filmmaker in the world today who is allowed to wallow in nostalgia for a frankly reactionary past. The reason…