Satoshi Kon isn’t working on nearly the same level here as with Millennium Actress, even if this animated feature has its slight charms. Centering on a trio of homeless wanderers who stumble upon an abandoned baby at Christmas, Kon’s film relies heavily on coincidence and broad humor. The main characters – an alcoholic, a former

There’s more nuance, drama and genuine emotion in this animated tale than in half the live-action stories to come out of Hollywood. The multilayered movie follows a documentary filmmaker who tracks down an aging Japanese movie star and asks her to recount her past. What follows is a magical interweaving of flashback, re-enacted scenes from

The memorial statue as movie. From Joaquin Phoenix, as a family man and firefighter, to John Travolta, as his barking crew chief, to every firefighter down the line, these are all buff, burly men of honor – real-life action heroes with all the humanity of a piece of plastic. Technically it has nothing to do

Miracle positions itself as one of those uplifting, patriotic movies you could get thrown into jail for disliking. The film, which follows the Cinderella U.S. hockey team at the 1980 Olympics, models itself after Remember the Titans and The Rookie, but those pictures earned their tones of triumph by grounding themselves in genuine emotion, something

This drama directed by Robert Redford stars Matt Damon as a disenchanted professional golfer in 1930s Georgia who’s rejuvenated by a mysterious caddy (Will Smith). Both stars are good, but the story is a limp and contrived bore that vaguely grasps at spiritual uplift. I realize a lot of people take golf seriously, but Bagger

An Oscar-angling vanity project for John Travolta, this is one of those glamorous portraits of would-be losers in which a run-down shack appears to have benefited from a chic interior decorator. Travolta plays a disgraced professor drinking his life away untilhis past comes back in the form of a mysterious young woman (Scarlett Johansson). The