Audition (Odishon), directed by Takashi Miike and based on a novel by Ryu Murakami, is a film that may so shock viewers interested in kinky sex to abandon any thought of experimenting with sadomasochism. The story centers on Shigeharu Aoyama (played by Ryo Ishibashi), whose wife dies while his only child, a son, is nine years […]

The film Anti-trust clearly purports to be an exposé of someone more ruthless than Bill Gates; interestingly, Sun Microsystems and Linux were consulted for the movie. Directed by Peter Howitt, the protagonist is Milo Hoffman (played by Ryan Phillippe), who has followed up his graduation from Stanford to make a computer software breakthrough along with his partner

  Adoption can present significant psychological problems to the adoptee if handled incorrectly. In An American Rhapsody, the problems are explored in more depth than any previous film. The location for much of the film is Hungary, where Suzanne (later played as a teenager by Scarlett Johansson) is born to affluent parents as Communist rule descends

Megan Rose (played by Mika Boorem), the daughter of Senator Hank Rose, is kidnapped from Cathedral School under the vigilant security of Secret Service Special Agent Jezzie Flannigan (played by Monica Potter) in the film Along Came a Spider, based on a novel of the same title by James Patterson, the same novelist who wrote the

If you know that AIDS has your days numbered, what would you do before your seemingly inevitable death? In The Adventures of Felix (Drôle de Félix), the decision of Félix (played by Sami Bouajila) is to see the birthfather who abandoned his birthmother before his birth. When the film begins, Félix, a dark-skinned Arab, has learned

Gay-oriented films often take The Boys in the Band (1970) as a model and then construct bitchy dialog between characters that appear to have little in common except for their sexuality. All Over the Guy, directed by Julie Davis, falls into such a rut and never climbs out, though adapted from a stage play, “I Know You Are,

101 Reykjavík, directed by Baltasar Kormákur, is a film about angst among Icelanders in their twenties, based on a novel of the same title by Hallgrimu Helgason. What used to be called the “Danish solution” is very much present in Iceland: a fatherless child grows with up a mother, who gets state support; after completing

In Goya in Bordeaux, filmviewers are treated to an artistic vision of the Spanish genius, democrat, and libertine who was Goya. The film (in Spanish, Goya en Burdeos) begins in the final year of his life, 1828, at the age of eighty-two, when we immediately know that Goya (played by Francisco Rabal) is near death. He

  Women who stand behind men throughout history have not been recognized for their contributions and their sacrifices. Bruce Beresford, a director who has given proper recognition to illustrious but unacknowledged women in many of his films, has now surpassed his Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Paradise Road (1997) with Bride of the Wind in providing an autobiographical sketch of Alma

Films have been based on novels, stage plays, true stories, operas, and even comic books. Now comes, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, based on a video game, with Simon West as director. The first Hollywood feature film shot in Cambodia since Lord Jim (1965), with a few scenes in England and Iceland, the movie mostly consists of