Only God Forgives

In 1956, Frank Sinatra released an instrumental album of twelve pieces he called "tone poems of color," and that's what "Only God Forgives," the newest collaboration between "Drive" director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling is, a tone poem of the color red.

In The House

François Ozon's "In the House" features a fascinating concept: Claude, a bright high-school student eager to learn to write, worms his way into a schoolmate's household, ostensibly to tutor him in mathematics, and writes about the real and imagined goings-on for his literature teacher, Germain, who finds the submissions inappropriate at first but soon can't get enough.

One Day on Earth, The Woman in the 5th, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

One Day on Earth

The Woman in the 5th

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

The collage film “One Day on Earth,” which consists of snippets of video footage shot around the world on a single day (10/10/10), follows on the heels of last year’s identically-conceived “Life in a Day.” I enjoyed the new film, which includes material from every country on Earth, more, but perhaps only for the fun of mentally ticking off 20 seconds in Andorra, and Djibouti, and Dominica, and Oman. Each film struck me as a solution in search of a problem – or, to the point, as mental masturbation. A day later, I’m at pains to remember a single moment from “One Day on Earth.” Nothing resonates. It’s all an exercise.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

The laughs are mostly unintentional in Lasse Hallstrom's "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen," a threadbare outline of a bad romcom aimed at the type of Kaballah-practicing Westside woman who found meaning and insight in "Eat Pray Love." Ewan McGregor plays a prissy ichthyologist in a loveless marriage entered into too young. Emily Blunt is typecast as the personal assistant to a Sana'a sheikh with billions to burn on the titular pipe dream. She taps McGregor to spearhead the project.

"Love Crime": Much More Fun than a Good Movie

Of Ludivine Sagnier's performance in the new howler "Love Crime," let me just say that I have not been so moved by an actress since Pia Zadora in "Butterfly." As a senior executive in the Paris office of an "ago-business" firm, Sagnier looks like a thirteen-year-old girl playing dress-up. Some of the dialogue from the business-world scenes has to be heard to be believed: "I speak for all of us," one male colleague tells Sagnier, "when I say you are the perfect woman."