Treasure of the Sierra Madre

The latest exercise in nihilism and theatre-of-the-absurd from the Coen Brothers

In The Memory of a Killer, also known as The Alzheimer Case (De Zaak Alzheimer), Erik Van Looy has done a nice job of putting together an engaging, high-concept thriller. But once we’ve finished being caught up in it, we can’t help noticing that the high-concept pretty much goes to waste. It is this. A…

It is unfortunate for Stephen Frears’s The Van, based on the novel by Roddy Doyle, that it is coming out at a time when the economies not only of most of the countries where it will be seen but even that of perennially down-on- its-luck Ireland, where the film is set, are booming. The careful…

An interesting and authentic-looking account of men in combat in Afghanistan but one with a depressingly familiar anti-war subtext

It’s got Brad. And Julia. It’s also got a Very Big Star in a surprise cameo in the last reel playing (uncredited) the mysterious tycoon whom everybody has been talking about but no one has seen. And, as if all that were not enough for you, it’s got Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) in the very…

There is an essential bit of information about the plot of Open Your Eyes (in Spanish Abre Los Ojos), directed by Alejandro Amenábar, which is withheld until almost the end of the film and which, because I think it just about worth seeing, I will not reveal here. But it is worth knowing that it…