Broken Flowers needs no narrative. Bill Murray’s face says it all: unspeakably sad eyes that might once have had the twinkle of a comedian, pitted jowls and a mouth far too small and puffy for a face grown larger as his forehead nudges his hairline backwards. He stares intently at his huge pla

Can you find a connection between these three statements? 1. Hollywood complains that box-office is way down this summer. 2. When I was looking around for material for another film column that might interest America readers, I was driven to a month-old documentary about penguins. 3. Even with the ma

To qualify as a Hollywood blockbuster, historical epics have to have several things: an anachronistically modern hero, a ruthless villain, a contrived love story, cataclysmic battle scenes and, of course, beheadings. But historical epics also have to have something else: a Big Idea, typically an idi

They don’t make movies the way they used to, and Cinderella Man shows why. Before it opened, Universal thought it had a certain hit on its hands. The film features two of the most bankable names on any marquee in the world: Russell Crowe and Renée Zellweger. Its director, Ron Howard, had team

It’s hard. Reviews of Woody Allen’s new films generally break into two categories: The master hasn’t lost his touch, or the master is in decline. Those of us who have followed Allen’s career closely over the last 30 years and consider him the greatest American filmmaker of th

Most people drink in order to enjoy wine. Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) enjoys wine in order to drink. Surely there are as many definitions of alcoholism as there are drinkers, or even as there are people who have ever thought about it, but Miles has enough classic symptoms to give friends reason to