The Dhamma Brothers

Convicts Embrace the Buddha

"What happens when you put a group of maximum-security prison inmates through the rigors of a 10-day Buddhism boot camp? This is the intriguing premise of The Dhamma Brothers, a..."

By Julia Wallace
Published: May 07, 2008

Frontière(s)

French Gore-Fest Says “Non” to Neo-Nazis

"Ah, the triumph of globalization: Give the French a taste of neofascism, race riots, and paramilitary crackdowns, and they seek solace in the American cinema's current favorite pastime—vigorously art-directed torture..."

By Jim Ridley
Published: May 07, 2008

My Brother Is an Only Child

Messy Italian Politics Explained as Sibling Rivalry

"The family as microcosm of a divided country: Two brothers "come of age" in late-'60s Italy as political strife reaches the provinces. A bounding prologue shows younger Accio entering adolescence..."

By Nick Pinkerton
Published: May 07, 2008

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

The Best Spy Spoof Since Austin Powers

"Two years after winning the audience prize at SIFF, this hilarious French spy spoof arrives like a breath of dry martini–chilled air from 1955. Before Ian Fleming devised 007, long..."

By Brian Miller
Published: May 07, 2008

Son of Rambow

Like Rocky, Only Handmade and Cute

"In the 1980s, three Mississippi 12-year-olds famously spent six years filming a shot-for-shot VHS remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The misfit heroes of writer-director Garth Jennings's whimsical comedy—two..."

By Jim Ridley
Published: May 07, 2008

Redbelt

David Mamet Puts Himself in a Headlock

"With his 10th feature—an entertaining tale of high-stakes martial arts—David Mamet has infused his trademark sleight of hand with a measure of two-fisted action. Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an exponent..."

By J. Hoberman
Published: May 07, 2008

Shotgun Stories

The South, Without White-Trash Clichés

"Jeff Nichols' film, seen at SIFF last year, is the kind of thing Breece D'J Pancake would have written had he lived past 30. Set in oppressive rural Arkansas, the..."

By Brian J Barr
Published: May 07, 2008

Speed Racer

The Wachowski Brothers Regress Into Their TV Infancy

"Converting a fondly remembered cartoon series into a prospective franchise, the Matrix masters, Larry and Andy Wachowski, have taken another step toward the total cyborganization of the cinema. Gaudier than..."

By J. Hoberman
Published: May 07, 2008

Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. Makes a Comic Book Movie We Actually Like

"Chalk it up to personal preference, but I've always been fonder of those comic-book heroes who emerge by intent rather than happenstance. I mean the ones, like Batman's Bruce Wayne,..."

By Scott Foundas
Published: April 30, 2008

Graduation: Bank Robbery for Dummies

"Brainy Polly (The O.C.'s Shannon Lucio) has just been accepted to Harvard, meaning she'll soon leave behind her three best pals from high school. So, two weeks before delivering the..."

By Brian Miller
Published: April 30, 2008

Flight of the Red Balloon: The Return of Hou Hsiao-hsien

"The Red Balloon was the art-house E.T. of 1956. Flight of the Red Balloon is something far more baffling—a literal-minded movie with an amiably free-floating metaphor. Chinese grandmaster Hou Hsiao-hsien,..."

By J. Hoberman
Published: April 30, 2008

Love Songs: French Musical Leaves Us Cold

"If the great movie musicals of yesteryear put a song in your heart, Christophe Honoré's Love Songs leaves you with a funny taste in your mouth. How else to describe..."

By Scott Foundas
Published: April 30, 2008

Made of Honor: Back to the O.R., McDreamy!

"Patrick Dempsey plays a conveniently rich and willfully single serial "fornicator" slowly but surely domesticated by his unspoken love for longtime BFF Hannah (Michelle Monaghan), who's on her way to..."

By Robert Wilonsky
Published: April 30, 2008

Maiko Haaaan!: He’s Hot for Geisha

"Kimihiko (Sadao Abe) has a dream. That, one day, he will play yakyuken (strip poker) with a geisha. The noodle company employee dumps his girlfriend, Fujiko (Kou Shibasaki), and transfers..."

By Erika Hobart
Published: April 30, 2008

Then She Found Me: Helen Hunt Gives Herself the Barbra Treatment

"First-time writer-director Helen Hunt stars as April Epner, a schoolteacher desperate to have a child before she turns 40. (Hunt herself turns 45 this year, but never mind that.) Adapted..."

By Robert Wilonsky
Published: April 30, 2008

Baby Mama: Tina Fey Gets Side-(Mommy)-Tracked

"Could have sworn I've seen this episode of Baby Mama before—like sometime in January 2007, when it was originally titled "The Baby Show" and aired on the other prime-time series..."

By Robert Wilonsky
Published: April 23, 2008

The First Saturday in May: Big Deal, a Horse Race

"Of the 40,000 thoroughbreds foaled in the United States annually, only 20 make the regal two-minute run that is the Kentucky Derby, a Mardi Gras–like spectacle that brings out bourbon-drinking..."

By Aaron Hillis
Published: April 23, 2008

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantánamo Bay: War on Terror Reaches the Stoner Demo

"Once more, Harold Lee (John Cho) and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) are on a road trip, this time not in search of the perfect late-night slider—a positively Homerian quest—but the..."

By Robert Wilonsky
Published: April 23, 2008

The Life Before Her Eyes: Uma Thurman Is Confused; Us, Too

"Riddled with high concept, this florid adaptation of Laura Kasischke's 2002 novel is a horror picture of sorts that plays off a Columbine-style high-school shooting from the victims' point of..."

By Ella Taylor
Published: April 23, 2008

Planet B-Boy: Takin’ the Bronx to Beijing

"True story: In fourth grade, a nun gave me and a friend detention for break dancing, squashing whatever dreams two guilt-stricken Catholic-school twerps may have had of becoming future b-boys...."

By Ed Gonzalez
Published: April 23, 2008

Zombie Strippers: Jenna Jameson Doesn’t Bare Her Flesh, But Eats Yours

"During George W. Bush's fourth term as president, the administration's desire for crises and predisposition toward fuckups leads to the creation of a zombie virus that the government hopes will..."

By Luke Y. Thompson
Published: April 23, 2008

Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? : Morgan Spurlock Makes Like Lawrence of Arabia. Not.

"Morgan Spurlock, the daredevil documentarian who lived on Big Macs for a month and turned this exercise in "body art" into the 2004 hit Super Size Me, returns—this time expanding..."

By J. Hoberman
Published: April 16, 2008

Backseat: Slackers Venture on Emo Road Trip

"Ben (Rob Bogue) has no job and a sexpot girlfriend (Aubrey Dollar) who wants to see other people; Colton (Josh Alexander, who scripted) just blew his latest acting audition by..."

By Jim Ridley
Published: April 16, 2008

Body of War: Yes, You Should Still Care About the Iraq War

"Co-directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue—yes, that Phil Donahue, who will do a Q&A following the 7 p.m. Friday show—Body of War is neither the most cinematic nor the..."

By Scott Foundas
Published: April 16, 2008

Chop Shop: Neorealism in New York

"You come away from Chop Shop with a mood, the voluptuous sum of its fine-tuned parts: the way a rundown patch of Queens is always flooded with mud; hot dogs..."

By Nathan Lee
Published: April 16, 2008

The Forbidden Kingdom: Jackie Chan in Dreads!

"The plot is pure choose-your-own-adventure: A bullied wuxia fanboy from South Boston (Michael Angarano) is teleported back into a LARP fantasia of feudal China, where he's singled out as the..."

By Nick Pinkerton
Published: April 16, 2008

88 Minutes : Hoo-Ah! Pacino Unleashed!

"Jon Avnet's cheesy new thriller is 105 minutes long, and I feared that 100 of them would be eaten up by Al Pacino chewing scenery. Alas, it's worse than that...."

By Ella Taylor
Published: April 16, 2008

Forgetting Sarah Marshall : Enough Penis; More Jokes, Please

"Jason Segel puts it all out there—and, like, it's all out there in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It takes all of five minutes for Segel, who wrote and stars in the..."

By Robert Wilonsky
Published: April 16, 2008

My Blueberry Nights : Wong Kar Wai Hearts America

"Wong Kar Wai called Chungking Express, his fourth film but first international calling card, "a road movie of the heart." My Blueberry Nights, his first film in English, has been..."

By Michelle Orange
Published: April 16, 2008

Priceless : Audrey Tautou Almost Steals Our Hearts

"Priceless begins as standard, unconvincing, assembly-line French farce and ends as a cop-out, feel-good rom-com. In between, it develops into something considerably more interesting. Audrey Tautou slinks off Amelie's ghost..."

By Vadim Rizov
Published: April 16, 2008

The Visitor : More Liberal Guilt

"The Station Agent's writer/director, Tom McCarthy, follows up that surprise success with another self-consciously whimsical tale of an unlikely threesome—except this time he decides to get political, making a liberal-guilt-trip..."

By Scott Foundas
Published: April 16, 2008

Young @ Heart : Is Kirk Douglas Available for the Remake?

"From the washed-out images to the twee voice-over (courtesy of director Stephen Walker), this British television documentary about the titular Massachusetts-based senior citizens' chorus so slavishly embodies the creakiest clichés..."

By Scott Foundas
Published: April 16, 2008

A Defense of Adam Sandler

"Before either was famous, Judd Apatow and Adam Sandler were roommates in Los Angeles, where they both worked the stand-up circuit and awaited their big breaks. Those breaks would come:..."

By Mike Seely
Published: April 09, 2008

Blindsight: Adorable Blind Tibetans Outshine Their Benefactors

"It's difficult to find anything bad to say about a movie featuring six adorable blind Tibetan children who are determined to climb a 23,000-foot peak just north of Mount Everest...."

By Julia Wallace
Published: April 09, 2008

Chaos Theory: Is Ryan Reynolds the New George Clooney?

"Who can lift the American screen comedy from a vast muck of sniggery boner gags and crap-pop bricolage? I'm pulling for Ryan Reynolds, the stud comic whose gouging inflection and..."

By Nick Pinkerton
Published: April 09, 2008

Irina Palm: How Could They Do This to Marianne Faithfull?

"Nobody can reduce tawdry material to doddering quaintness like the British, but this staggeringly inane joint effort of U.K., Belgian, French, German, and Luxembourgian film financing represents a true coalition..."

By Jim Ridley
Published: April 09, 2008

Refusenik: News Flash! Soviets Oppress Jews

"The strain of living and scheming under a totalitarian regime can make for great drama, as The Lives of Others proved. Unfortunately, Laura Bialis' ambitious documentary about the Jews of..."

By Michael Fox
Published: April 09, 2008

Sex and Death 101: Just Rent Heathers Instead

"Writer-director Daniel Waters, who scripted Heathers eons ago, inexplicably keeps gigging. Here, the name of the game is dull vulgarity trading as "deliciously dark" comedy—punch-line sex with dwarfs, the dead,..."

By Nick Pinkerton
Published: April 09, 2008

Smart People: Ellen Page’s Middling Juno Follow-Up

"Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid, beneath a greasy moptop and a brushy beard) is a misanthropic college prof who, when he's not willfully forgetting his students' names or altering clocks to..."

By Robert Wilonsky
Published: April 09, 2008

Street Kings: Keanu Reeves Kicks Ass, Takes Names, Bores Us

"Though conceived as yet another sobering frontline report on law enforcement's ever-expanding gray area, director David Ayer's grim police thriller mostly plays as one long dick-measuring competition. Keanu Reeves (blank..."

By Tim Grierson
Published: April 09, 2008

Super High Me: Skip the Movie, Score Your Own Laughs

"Stoner comic Doug Benson is nothing if not scrupulous about crediting the inspiration for this cold-turkey/baked-turkey documentary—Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. From an offhand joke is an herbal premise born:..."

By Brian Miller
Published: April 09, 2008

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation: Drama and Comedy in ’70s Brazil

"A brutal crackdown on left-wing dissidents by Brazil's new military dictatorship hardly registers in a country preoccupied with the 1970 World Cup championship. Before 12-year-old Mauro's radical parents go into..."

By Jean Oppenheimer
Published: April 09, 2008

Seattle Jewish Film Festival: No Politics, Please!

"For the 13th edition of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, let's ignore the politics of the Middle East, which are mostly absent from this year's documentaries. The films SJFF offered..."

By Brian Miller
Published: April 02, 2008

Bomb It: Waging a Jihad With Spray-Paint

"Graffiti taggers wearing masks, lurking in the shadows of our urban grid, watched by security cameras, and running from the police inevitably suggest a different kind of resistance fighter against..."

By Brian Miller
Published: April 02, 2008

Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness: A Scottish Road (Movie) to Whimsy

"Fitzcarraldo hoisted a steamboat over a Peruvian mountain so that a tiny village could experience opera. Not literally as high-reaching but no less passionate is the quest of Vincent (Magnus..."

By Aaron Hillis
Published: April 02, 2008

Caramel: Female Bonding in Lebanon

"The multiply blessed young Lebanese writer-director Nadine Labaki looks sublimely like Anna Magnani crossed with Penélope Cruz. She also has the brass and the chops not only to direct her..."

By Ella Taylor
Published: April 02, 2008

Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman: Six Hours Long, Yet Surprisingly Not Awful

"Jennifer Fox's Flying should be a supremely irritating movie. For starters, it's a six-hour meditation on the filmmaker's love life (screened in two three-hour blocks, thankfully). It's accompanied by an..."

By Julia Wallace
Published: April 02, 2008

The Grand: Woody Harrelson Leads Poker Spoof Crew

"As the convergence of two cooling trends—poker and the comic mock-doc—this largely improvised comedy set at a Texas hold 'em championship is itself somewhat the victim of a bum deal...."

By Jim Ridley
Published: April 02, 2008

Leatherheads: George Clooney Makes Like Preston Sturges

"On-screen and off, George Clooney is like a holdover from a time—which, admittedly, may only have ever existed in the movies—when men were witty gentlemen who knew how to dress,..."

By Scott Foundas
Published: April 02, 2008

Shine a Light: Stones Are Old, Wrinkly, Big

"Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film is not only a vanity project for everyone involved, it's a total tongue bath. The backstory: Scorsese has used Stones anthems in many of..."

By Camille Dodero
Published: April 02, 2008