"Restless": a career nadir for Gus Van Sant

Gus Van Sant has made some terrific pictures, including several of his recent, more under-the-radar works: "Elephant," "Gerry," "Paranoid Park."

"Happy, Happy": Adultery in the outskirts of Oslo...

Ever been really into a movie, relating to it on an emotional level, when the idiots around you laughed in all the wrong places? That was my experience of "Happy, Happy,"

"My Afternoons with Margueritte": Sleep-inducing, go-nowhere...

The average foreign film we see in America is better than the average Hollywood production if for no other reason than the limited number of art-house screens and the resultant winnowing process that happens before a subtitled flick ever gets U.S. distribution.
That doesn't explain the sleep-inducing, go-nowhere "My Afternoons with Margueritte,"

Mr. Nice

Rhys Ifans gets a rare starring role in "Mr. Nice," the true story of Howard Marks, an accidental hashish dealer who in the 70s and 80s became a high-living, fun-loving, identity-morphing kingpin always just ahead of the law (and simultaneously an unacknowledged agent of MI6).

"Contagion": Come on in, the water's fine...

Steven Soderbergh would seem to have the right impersonal, clinical detachment required to make "Contagion" taut, gripping and seminal - the kind of issue movie that makes the cover of Time magazine. (Certainly the thought of a biological weapon such as the film's mutant bat-pig virus strain is deeply frightening.) Unfortunately, cinematizing even the most epidemic subject matter involves some choice of characters through whom to tell the story, and Soderbergh has created several uninteresting ones.

Littlerock

"Littlerock" takes place not in Arkansas but in the Antelope County freeway town of Littlerock, CA, population 1377, where a Japanese brother and sister stop on their way to Manzanar and San Francisco and stay a bit longer than expected.

"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."