POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - If you’re following the Academy Award buzz and all the attendant Hollywood-awards news, you may have heard that Rachel Weisz, who has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in The Constant Gardener, is flummoxed by...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - It’s like indulging in a monastic retreat in itself, exquisitely calm and beautifully restorative and pointedly observant about human nature and circles of life. From the moment we fade in and move slowly across that placid lake in that remote mountain...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - It’s kinda like improvisational jazz, a riffing on the downbeats of movies, this collection of short films by Jim Jarmusch. And like jazz—sez me, who’s not a big fan of most of the form—it’s not always successful. Sometimes...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Oh, the promise! For just a minute there, they tease us with the prospect of something sophisticated and witty. Sure, it’s only the opening credits that ignite that spark of hope—images that pulse with the heat and the vitality of New York...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - You won’t stop expecting Tom Hanks to jump in and dance out “Chopsticks” on the oversized flat piano on the floor. There’s even a party scene in which you can just about glimpse him in the background, in his hilariously inappropriate...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - It’s ironic that at this very moment—when the devout are lining up like medieval penitents for two hours of self-flagellation led by Saint Mel, patron of martyrs—along comes another film about medieval people behaving in a particularly...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - So, it seems we’re to be subjected once again, this presidential-election season, to debates over Vietnam. And we should be talking about it, though not as it’s being framed. The relevant issues aren’t draft dodging and deserting—for...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - You simply can’t imagine how weird and wonderful and lovely this film is. I can go on and on about its odd beauty, how it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen and, at the same time, like a recurring dream you can always just barely remember...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - Reader: Didja see the film? Critic: Saw the film. Reader: Cuz I heard ya gotta see the film. Critic: Definitely seeable. Not great. Not great. Pretty damn good. Reader: Cuz I heard it’s very ... Critic: Mamet? Definitely...

POSTED // Jun 11,2007 - The problem with sex in the movies isn’t that there’s too much of it—it’s that’s there’s too little of it. There may be no shortage of nearly naked bodies, sweaty grunting and creaking bedsprings, but that’s just...