The stodgy works of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, makers of Howards End and Jefferson in Paris, have encouraged the sad notion that costume dramas must be leaden and respectable. Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility helped rehabilitate the form, and now Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule ventilates it with yet more fresh…

In the golden age of Hollywood, no less than the likes of Frank Capra owned Christmas on the big screen. But if you want Proof Number 496 of how far things have fallen, consider that in the ’90s, holiday cinema is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chris Columbus–hired gun of…

Given his commercial success as a novelist, Kurt Vonnegut hasn’t seen many of his works translated to the big screen. And, given the results with the few that have been filmed, he may wish he hadn’t seen them, either. Counterbalancing George Roy Hill’s interesting and spiritually faithful version of Slaughterhouse…

Critics normally don’t spend a lot of time praising producers; in a medium that is both commerce and art, our job is to evaluate the art side of the equation. And the assumption is that while producers are raising, counting or raking in moolah, a movie’s aesthetics are in the…