Just a single normal character would go a long way in Everything Is Illuminated, an aggressively quirky adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s hyperactively quirky novel. Both the book and the movie – which represents the directorial debut of actor Liev Schreiber – revolve around such fanciful conceits as an obsessive-compulsive Jewish-American (Elijah Wood) trying to

Writer-director Henry Jaglom, an icon of independent film, once again employs a very personal, quasi- documentary style, as he follows the intertwining, back-door negotiations involving two very different productions: a big-budget Hollywood prestige piece and an independent debut, both of which want to lure the participation of a legendary French actress. Greta Scacchi, Ron Silver,

One of those low-budget experiments Soderbergh likes to squeeze in between Ocean’s Eleven projects, this means to take a peek at a corner of America Hollywood usually stays away from: the poor, the unattractive, the Midwestern. Set in Ohio and featuring a nonprofessional cast from the area, Bubble centers around the odd friendship between an

The story of a drug-dealing military clerk (Joaquin Phoenix) at a poorly disciplined U.S. base in 1989 West Germany, Buffalo Soldiers was long delayed out of fear it would be deemed too unpatriotic during wartime. If only it were unpatriotic – that would have been infinitely more interesting than the wishy-washy, morally skittish movie we

This big-screen version of the cult Japanese television series takes its stylistic cue from its hero: a pathologically bored, futuristic bounty hunter who treats everyone as if he is a 15-year-old and they are his lame parents. That and the eclectic soundtrack lend an atmosphere of carefully cultivated cool to the otherwise familiar anime elements: