King’s Row (1942)

Flawless, written and directed by Joel Schumacher, is an odd-couple picture featuring Robert DeNiro as a retired policeman and security guard called Walt who suffers a stroke and turns for rehabilitative help to his neighbor, a “female impersonator” (as he prefers to call it) and cross-dresser called Rusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Rusty is to teach…

John Sayles preaches yet another of his tedious sermons in the hope, presumably, that his two-cents’ worth might just tip the scales of public opinion against President Bush

Dirty jokes just aren’t what they used to be. What do you have to do around here to violate a taboo, anyway?

Jerry Springer in ‘Ringmaster,’ directed by Neil Abramson and written by Jon Bernstein, stars Jerry Springer as the host of a daytime talk show very much like “The Jerry Springer Show”—only a disclaimer at the end informs us that this Jerry and that Jerry have nothing to do with one another. It is the downmarket…

Part romance, part lurid soap opera and part picture postcard of old Japan, this film slips just enough of the real thing past its inevitable Hollywoodification to make it worth seeing

Sling Blade by Billy Bob Thornton deserves credit for the acting job of its director and writer, who also plays the principal role, that of Karl Childers, a mentally retarded man in his 30s released from a state institution — the state seems to be Arkansas — after serving twenty years for murdering his mother…