The film What’s Cooking? (2000) features four families in Los Angeles celebrating Thanksgiving–African American, Jewish, Mexican, and Vietnamese. Although they live at the four corners of an intersection of two streets in South Hollywood, the adults do not know one another; only their children are friends, practicing multicultural awareness. Pieces of April, directed and written by Peter Hedges, […]

Raising Victor Vargas, written and directed by Peter Sollett, is a tragicomedy about the life of a sixteen-year-old Dominican in New York City and his family. Victor (played by Victor Rasuk) lives in a small apartment with his grandma, Mrs. Guzman (played by Altagracia Guzman), his fifteen-year-old sister Vicky (played by Krystal Rodriguez), and his

Open Range, based on the Lauran Paine novel The Open Range Men (1990), is the first major Western since The Unforgiven (1992) and Tombstone (1993). Most Westerns are in black and white with grainy sound, so the more recent technical advances in filmmaking bring many new dimensions to Open Range, notably postcard cinematography and the sharp sounds of rifles and thunderstorms. The

Japanese films often go back in time to an era in which political intrigue and supernatural feats, resulting from a mastery of balancing ying with yang, play an important role. Directed by Yojiro Takita and based on a novel by Baku Yumemakura, Onmyoji (marketed in the United States as The Ying-Yang Master) provides plenty of magic and treachery.

Based on a true story, No Turning Back (Sin Returno) is about a Honduran father and daughter in Southern California. On October 27, 1998, Professor Pablo Fernandez (played by Jesús Nebot) returned from teaching English at a university in Honduras, only to find that Hurricane Mitch destroyed his home, taking the life of his pregnant wife. Promising

National Security, directed by Dennis Dugan, is a comedy about two private security guards in Los Angeles who work for a company called National Security. The plot involves the pursuit of smugglers, including a crooked cop. However, the two security guards are an unlikely team. Earl Montgomery (played by Martin Lawrence) is booted out of

Ned Kelly, directed by Gregor Jordan, is a biopic about a legendary Australian hero who was born in 1855 and died by hanging in 1880. The film spans the years from his first arrest in 1871 and to final capture in 1880, with flashbacks to his boyhood days. Brief references in the film to the

  Retro films about the 1950s attempt to locate a defining moment when rigid traditions were broken, when everyone dressed nicely, spoke correctly, and women and minorities were in their place–a neoconservative’s utopia. The first was Dead Poets Society (1989). The second was Pleasantville (1998). The third was Far From Heaven (2002). This year’s Mona Lisa Smile is the fourth. The first exposed

Millennium Actress (Sennen joyu), directed by Satoshi Kon, is an animated film that takes the form of an interview in 2003 with a once-popular actress, now in seclusion at the age of seventy. Genya Tachibana (voiced by Shozo Iizuka), a documentary interviewer and his camera-holding assistant Kyoji Ida (voiced by Masaya Onosaka) arrive at her

Manic, directed by Jordan Melamed, depicts conditions in a mental institution for teenagers. The director, screenwriters, and actors interacted with teens in and out of mental institutions to provide the maximum authenticity; the filming location is an abandoned wing of Camarillo State Hospital. Although One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) played a role in efforts to