V.A. Musetto

Soldini is able to take the shopworn theme and keep it interesting and fresh despite its lack of new ideas. He's assisted by strong performances by his two leading actors.

The fine cast, the elegant settings and the swoony title song somehow draw you in.

In this season of Hollywood blockbusters, small movies can get lost in the hype. Don't let that happen to Home.

Movies by Rob Zombie, the goth rocker turned cult filmmaker, aren’t for everybody. But he couldn’t care less. He makes movies exactly the way he wants to, with no thought of pleasing mainstream audiences. They can like it or lump it. His latest effort, The Lords of Salem, is true to form.

Moves along briskly, with several laugh-out-loud moments.

While the slow buildup won't bowl 'em over at suburban multiplexes, the film should please Fessenden's loyal followers and win him new ones.

The decade under discussion in this enjoyable documentary is the 1970s, a period that changed Hollywood forever.

Writer-director Erik Van Looy keeps the action moving briskly. Danny Elsen's cinematography is stylish and the acting top-notch.

The story, based on a best-selling novel, has familiar overtones; but Kormakur overcomes them with stylish direction - Iceland's natural beauty looks great - and a gripping performance by Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson.

Fonteyne doesn't have much use for words. He prefers to tell his story via facial expressions and body language, much as filmmakers did in the silent era.

Horvath has a sensitive eye and ear, mixing good-looking shots of the barren landscape with portraits of the land's eccentric inhabitants. It's a world (scary at times) that most New Yorkers have no idea exists. [25 Aug 2004, p.40]

The Holy Girl ends without resolution, but one isn't needed in this mature, thoughtful drama.

Lacks visual flair. But Kouyate elicits strong performances from his cast, and he delivers a powerful commentary on how governments lie, no matter who runs them.

Take the real-life 1979 assassination of Park Chung-hee, the despotic, hedonistic, seal-testicle-loving president of South Korea, and stage it as if the Marx Brothers were running the country, and you might get The President's Last Bang.

Dog Days has much in common with "Code Unknown" -- both dart among several characters who may occasionally cross paths.

One of Miike's most violent and sadistic movies, filled with squirting blood, throat-slashing, limb-hacking and other forms of mutilation too gruesome to describe here.

Does a first-rate job of remembering.

If you were among the many who thought highly of "A Prophet," the French prison drama that played here last year, you'll want to see the brutally realistic Danish thriller R.

Unless you are offended by a little female nudity, The Silence Before Bach will shock you not. But it will provide gorgeous lensing and art direction and some of the world's most beautiful music.

Should please die-hard fans as well as viewers who have never heard the band and its anthem, "Kick Out the Jams."

More than just a musical primer. It's also a valentine to the city on the Bosporus, the strait that separates Istanbul's Asian and European sides.

The result is a finely plotted, stylishly photographed and brilliantly acted whodunit that clocks in at 2 1/2 hours but never seems long.

It doesn't measure up to Schlondorff's 1979 Oscar winner, "The Tin Drum," but it's compelling nevertheless.

You just know something terrible is going to happen. But when it does, you're entirely unprepared

Lino Ventura is grand as a solemn resistance leader. He's backed by a knockout cast that includes Simone Signoret.

An original head trip definitely not recommended for kiddies.

The political intrigue behind the documentary would make for a great movie of its own.

A remarkable 179-minute meditation on the nature of revolution.