Badge As He Wants to Be

This may be a strange time to release a thriller about the dangers of corrupt law enforcement, but Training Day — with no explosions, no cheap thrills, no international conspiracies — is about as distant from current East Coast realities as possible. Still, that doesn’t mean that it qualifies as…

Legally Bland

Back in her early teens, Reese Witherspoon proved herself a terrific actress in her big-screen debut, Man in the Moon, in 1991. Since then, she’s done first-rate work in critical hits like Pleasantville, cult faves like Freeway and Election and underrated gems like Best Laid Plans. So how is it…

Kicked Butt

Kiss of the Dragon — the latest vehicle for martial arts star Jet Li, a mainland Chinese talent who became a superstar in Hong Kong and has since succumbed to the blandishments of Hollywood — has a little of the best (and a lot of the worst) of Hong Kong…

Criminal Genius

Sexy Beast, the debut feature from British director Jonathan Glazer, is a riveting, scary and often funny foray into a traditional American genre: the gangster film. Like the western, the gangster film has always been predominantly American turf, but — unlike with the western — every decade or so the…

Gem Fatale

The current release of French director Nicole Garcia’s Place Vendôme — which was nominated for 11 César Awards when it debuted in France three years ago — is yet another sign that the drop-off in French imports that has plagued U.S. screens in recent years is reversing: This is roughly…

Cut to the Chase

Time and Tide — the latest action picture from producer/director Tsui Hark, one of the world’s great entertainers — is a compendium of many of the best (and a few of the worst) traits of Hong Kong action cinema. It’s relentlessly visceral, making you feel as if you’ve been shot…

Gauche Busters

The directorial debut of actress turned screenwriter Agnès Jaoui (Same Old Song, Un Air de Famille), The Taste of Others is a work of delicate observation, falling somewhere between romantic drama and comedy of manners.Mr. Castella (Jean-Pierre Bacri, the director’s husband and co-writer) is a wealthy businessman whose life leaves…

Guillotine Romance

French director Patrice Leconte is a chameleonlike talent: Among his films to reach American screens are the psychological thriller Mr. Hire, the period satire Ridicule and the offbeat comic romance The Girl on the Bridge. But, in truth, all of Leconte’s films are romances at heart, though they are often…

Little Buggers

As its title suggests, Spy Kids is an action fantasy aimed primarily at the preteen/early-teen audience. For all its thrills — and it has plenty — it’s strictly a PG film . . . which is all the more surprising when you consider its source: Robert Rodriguez, master of bloody…

Mushy Feely

Amidst the plethora of films with Freddie Prinze Jr., Mena Suvari, Chris Klein and Jason Biggs, it’s nice — in theory, at least — to see a contemporary romantic comedy, like Someone Like You, in which the characters, while hardly over the hill, are all over 30. In practice, however,…

Gai Lib

With In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai solidifies his stature as the subtlest and most idiosyncratic of Hong Kong directors. In an industry best known for its accessible, crowd-pleasing comedies and action films, Wong has turned out a series of increasingly risky dramas that make little or no concession…

Russe Hour

Director John Herzfeld’s last feature, the droll and underrated 1996 2 Days in the Valley, was a more than adequate counterbalance to the catastrophe of his first feature, Two of a Kind, a 1983 John Travolta vehicle which, together with Moment by Moment, put its star on the fast track…

Cold Cuts

Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, with a screenplay by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, is being released exactly 10 years after The Silence of the Lambs, the film that established Hannibal Lecter as an iconic villain in our culture, right up there with A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger, Friday the…

Sweet Seoul Music

Im Kwon Taek has long been the best-known Korean director in America; in fact, it would be fair to say that he’s pretty much the only even vaguely known Korean director, and even then, his renown is strictly among festivalgoers. The general distribution of his latest film, Chunhyang, should be…

Ang Has Sprung

For slightly more than a decade, Chinese martial arts films have — directly and indirectly — gained a growing audience in the U.S. Now the genre may find its greatest breakthrough coming from an unlikely source — director Ang Lee, best known for such comedy-dramas of social manners as Sense…

White Knuckler

Thirteen Days is a suspenseful look at the American government in the grip of a crucial, minute-to-minute, real-life crisis that threatens to destroy the country. No, it is not — as the relatively brief time span referenced in the title makes clear — about the recent election struggles . …

Good Will Hunting 2: The Revenge

Finding Forrester is the latest film from Gus Van Sant, one of the true American originals to emerge in the ’80s and ’90s. When Van Sant is at his best, he gives us stories and images we’ve never seen before. Finding Forrester, however, is not Gus Van Sant at his…

Still Fab After All These Years

Thirty-six years ago, at the height of Beatlemania — the phenomenon, not the stage show — some cynics pooh-poohed the notion that the unprecedented hysteria around the Four Lads from Liverpool would endure. (“What are you going to do when the bubble bursts?” a smug, apparently drunk Tallulah Bankhead sneered…

Bad Case of the Runs

At first glance, the new Japanese import Non-Stop seems to be a crude knockoff of German director Tom Tykwer’s wonderful Run Lola Run, but Non-Stop was released in Japan (under the title Dangan Runner) in 1996, two years before Lola was shot. Could Tykwer have seen the film at a…

Naval Gazing

November may mean Thanksgiving to most of you, but in the film biz it means a rush of “serious” films trying to gouge an impression into the short memories of Oscar voters. This shouldn’t be a bad thing, but since the relationship between “Oscar” and “actual interesting filmmaking” is nearly…

Drunken Masterpiece

The first thing to know about The Legend of Drunken Master is that there is no Legend of Drunken Master, not really. Miramax/Dimension’s new Jackie Chan release is a repackaging of the star’s 1994 Drunken Master II.This is not inherently a bad thing. Nearly all Jackie Chan buffs — count…

Tales of Tiara

It’s a sorry fact that what everybody in Hollywood really wants to do — writer, actor, best boy and caterer alike — is direct. This has led, over the years, to some embarrassing debuts and some unexpected triumphs. For many, the notion that Sally Field — after Gidget and Sister…