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 | Not Very Appetizing Over four decades, writer/director Robert Benton ([bThe Human Stain[/b], [b]Places in the Heart[/b], [b]Kramer vs. Kramer[/b]) has specialized in "adult" dramas, small-scale, intimate character studies that favor observation and emotional authenticity over the usual melodramatic flourishes we've come to expect from Hollywood-produced dramas. Not surprisingly, Benton’s old school filmmaking style and concerns have left him well out of step with contemporary Hollywood. Benton's latest, effort, [b]Feast of Love[/b], an adaptation of Charles Baxter's National Book Award-nominated novel, isn't going to change that, nor, to be frank, should it.More |  | Action Mixed with Politics Makes for Muddled Storytelling Part procedural, part action with contemporary politics as a backdrop, [b]The Kingdom[/b] is a semi-successful film directed by Peter Berg ([b]Friday Night Lights[/b], [b]The Rundown[/b], [b]Very Bad Things[/b]) and written by Matthew Michael Carnahan that unsurprisingly raises fascinating, if no less perplexing, questions about the “special relationship” between the Saudi Arabia, one of the richest, oil-producing countries in the world and the United States, whose presence in the Middle East even before the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 was, at best, controversial.More |  | The First Great Film about the Iraq War Over the last four years, documentaries about the war in Iraq War have never been in short supply, e.g. [b]No End in Sight[/b] and [b]Fahrenheit 9-11[/b]. Hollywood and independent filmmakers, however, have shied away from such depictions. No stranger to "social problem" or "social issue" films, writer/director Paul Haggis ([b]Letters from Iwo Jima[/b], [b]Crash[/b], [b]Million Dollar Baby[/b]), felt compelled to bring his talents as a storyteller to [b]In the Valley of Elah[/b], a film centered on Iraq or, rather, the servicemen coming back from their tours in Iraq. This may just be the first, great film about the Iraq war.More |  | A Neutered Billy Bob Thornton Ain’t Much Fun Remember, way back when you were in elementary school or high school and forced to endure an hour every day of so-called physical education. If you were athletic, you pretty much got a free pass from the gym teacher who was often a coach in the big three: baseball, basketball or football. If you weren’t athletic, chances are you quietly bided your time until the period was over and you could rush to your next class. Now imagine, years later, encountering the gym teacher who made you miserable. That’s the premise driving [b]Mr. Woodcock[/b], the latest Billy Bob Thornton vehicle.More |  | A Flawed, if Compelling, Crime Drama In four decades and more than twenty films, David Cronenberg's ([b]The History of Violence[/b], [b]Crash[/b], [b]Naked Lunch[/b], [b]Dead Ringers[/b], [b]Scanners[/b], [b]The Brood[/b]) obsessions with body modification, identity, illness and mental instability, have led to the creation of a sub-genre: "body-horror", that has since become synonymous with Cronenberg’s name. While the director has increasingly moved away from the horror genre, his obsessions have remained.More |  | A Compelling, if Flawed, Western Despite the sporadic, often misguided efforts by Hollywood to revitalize the Western genre, the Western has all but disappeared from multiplexes over the last fifteen years. From the sixties onwards, fewer and fewer westerns were made and those that fit squarely into the "revisionist" mold, were increasingly violent, skeptical and cynical about the nation’s foundational myths.More |  | A Latin Riff on Ocean’s 11 A Spanish-language feature made in the United States for Latino-American moviegoers and, to a lesser extent, aficionados of foreign films, [b]Ladrón que roba a ladrón[/b] (roughly translated as “thief who steals from a thief”), is a surprisingly entertaining, if no less formulaic riff on the heist genre. Think of [b]Ladrón que roba a ladrón[/b] as a Latin-American [b]Ocean’s 11[/b] on a modest budget.More |  | Enter the Randy What can you say about a film that spoofs Bruce Lee’s martial arts classic, [b]Enter the Dragon[/b], segues into a spoof of [b]The Karate Kid[/b] and is centered on the unsanctioned, underground world of extreme table tennis (a.k.a. ping-pong)? Well, for one, you can say that it’s almost as consistently hilarious as the television commercials suggest.More |  | A Lackluster End for a Beloved Character British comedian Rowan Atkinson ([b]Johnny English[/b], [b]Black Adder[/b]) first essayed one of his most well known characters, Mr. Bean, in 1990 for a limited half-hour television series that ran on British television for five years. Often described as a "child in a man's body," Mr. Bean is the genial, clueless, walking disaster whose addled antics usually leave innocent bystanders worse -- much, much worse -- for wear, but had all-ages laughing at his outrageous behavior.More |  | A Promising Debut Written, directed by, and starring Julie Delpy, [b]2 Days in Paris[/b], a romantic comedy/drama set in (where else) Paris, is a surprisingly effective, insightful exploration of romantic relationships, cultural differences, and how the two, when mixed together, can cause serious problems.More |
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