Israeli writer-director Amos Gitai’s last film, Kadosh, was a claustrophobic tale of two sisters living in an ultra-Orthodox religious community in Jerusalem. The 1999 picture moved at a snail’s pace and turned an already rigid, divisive belief system into a completely alienating experience. In contrast the director’s most recent work,…

Aimée & Jaguar would be an unusual film under any circumstances, but that it was made in Germany proves somehow especially unexpected. Set in Berlin in 1943 and based on a true story, the movie concerns the love affair between two women: one a Jew passing as a Gentile while…

For his directorial debut, the British actor Tim Roth (The Legend of 1900, Pulp Fiction) has chosen a most disturbing subject matter: incest. And he presents an unflinching portrait of it. The War Zone isn’t easy to watch; uncompromising in its depiction of child abuse, it demands from its audience…

I never imagined the day would come when I would cringe to see Ralph Fiennes onscreen. Not only is he shamelessly good-looking but, whether playing the brooding, remote figure doomed by love in The English Patient or the bloodless commandant of a Nazi death camp in Schindler’s List, he projects…

Jane Campion’s 1992 film The Piano was an intoxicating work of art, a film of such beauty and power that it literally took my breath away. Nothing the New Zealand-born writer-director has done before or since even comes close to matching it in form, content, or sensibility. And her latest…

La crème de la coiffure! A mock documentary about, of all things, a Scottish hairdresser who travels to America to compete in an international hairstyling tournament, The Big Tease is a mildly amusing romp that benefits enormously from an ingratiating performance by Scottish actor Craig Ferguson, who also co-wrote the…

Sharon Stone doesn’t appear onscreen until halfway through this tale of three lives unraveling, but when she does, she makes quite an impression as Rosie, the third player in a horse-racing scam. Adapted from a play by Sam Shepard, Simpatico jumps back and forth in time between present day and…

The War Zone opens with a black screen and the sound of waves gently crashing against the shore. The methodical ebb and flow of the water produces a soothing rhythm and a sense of tranquility. The film’s first visual image is equally evocative — a beautiful section of seashore, buttressed…

Some people really are crazy, but then crazy is a relative term. Does it apply to someone who thinks he might spin off into outer space and never be able to get back down to Earth? Or is it only crazy when you have to cling to the nearest table…

It is rare to find a movie that is as accomplished, multilayered, and rewarding as the novel from which it was adapted, but The Cider House Rules is such a film. Directed by Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?), the film displays the kind of…

Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, growing up in Baltimore during the 1950s would prove to be filmmaker Barry Levinson’s smartest career move. First in Diner, then in Tin Men, Avalon, and now Liberty Heights, he has drawn on the specific time, place, and culture of his…

A tangible sense of sadness and longing hangs over The Legend of 1900, the mesmerizingly beautiful and poetic new film from Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, best known in the United States for his Academy Award-winning Cinema Paradiso. Based on a dramatic monologue by contemporary Italian novelist Alessandro Barrico but filmed…

The spirit of Fellini hovers over Train of Life, the third so-called Holocaust comedy to come down the pike. Far superior to either Life Is Beautiful or Jakob the Liar, the French-language production has a silliness and a buffoonish humor reminiscent of Fellini’s Amarcord and Roma, yet somehow it feels…

Less a documentary than a memoir, the absolutely enchanting film Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember features Mastroianni reminiscing about his life and career, his extensive travels, the people with whom he worked (directors Fellini, Visconte, De Sica) and, above all, his love for the cinema. You don’t have to be terribly…

Welcome to Happy, Texas, the town without a frown. Yes, apparently there really is a Happy, Texas. No, they didn’t actually shoot the movie there. But director/co-writer Mark Illsley’s feature directorial debut is still a fun, funny way to spend an hour and a half of your time. Steve Zahn…

Am I a traitor to my gender because I didn’t find this unabashed film about female sexuality erotic, brave, or even — can I say it — interesting? The ironically titled Romance, directed by the audacious French filmmaker Catherine Breillat (36 Fillette), has become something of a cause célèbre wherever…

There is something fairy-talelike, but also deeply human, about Twin Falls Idaho, a gentle, beautifully realized tale of love and intimacy that marks the feature-film debut of Mark Polish and Michael Polish. Identical twin brothers, Mark Polish wrote the script, Michael Polish directed it, and both brothers star. It is…

Ten-year-old Fraser Pettigrew leads an idyllic existence. He lives on a bucolic estate in Scotland with five siblings, four dogs, his gentle mother, Moira (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), eccentric inventor father, Edward (Colin Firth), and indomitable grandmother, Gamma Macintosh (Rosemary Harris). For Fraser (Robert Norman, making his professional acting debut), life…

London-born novelist-screenwriter Hanif Kureishi doesn’t have Margaret Thatcher to kick around anymore, as he did so incisively and effectively in My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, but his concerns have not wandered too far afield. Rather the hard edges merely have been softened. Universal issues still inspire…

Pretentiousness masquerading as profundity; self-indulgence masquerading as art. The Loss of Sexual Innocence, the dreadful new film from writer/director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, One Night Stand), joins the ranks of the worst films ever made. A statement that may, on the surface, seem harsh and heartless but that will…

Twice Upon a Yesterday seems almost too geared for the Sliding Doors crowd. By relying on the same kind of conceptual sleight of hand as that recent Brit hit (which owed a giant debt of its own to Groundhog Day), this romantic fable’s sense of originality and wit is greatly…

Even English actresses of a certain age have a difficult time finding good roles, so it’s understandable that Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Joan Plowright might jump at the chance to star in Tea with Mussolini, Franco Zeffirelli’s new film about a group of English expatriates living in Florence during…