After the excellent "District 9," Neil Blomkamp is back with "Elysium." This time around, it's not about aliens raising hell in a shanty but part of mankind just trying to survive on a planet that's been devastated while a few 1 percenters live comfortably in a space station.

In this new sci-fi feature film featuring piquant political subtext Matt Damon portrays the hero who accepts a mission which

Can anyone be considered absolutely unique in a field as crowded as cinema? Definitely, if you’re Esther Williams who died this week at age 91. Swimming is how the Californian brunette with the athletic body and easy smile made her mark and found her way into the hearts and lockers of innumerable servicemen. No one will remember any of her movies made in the 1940s and 1950s but to a public old enough to have been around in her heyday, her

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“Violet & Daisy” is more conceit than film. It steals a little from “Pulp Fiction” (both before and after a bloody hit, two nonchalant assassins discuss unrelated things, in this case bestiality), a tad from “Suicide Kings” (criminals in way over their head are outsmarted by their hostage), a smidgen from “The Professional” (a troubled girl finds a daddy figure in an older criminal). The soundtrack is, course, incongruously light and

Seen from the outside the situation in the Middle East conflict—the plight of Palestinians in the Territories, the sense of insecurity of Israelis, the second-rate status of Arab Israeli citizens--may seem both hopeless and distant. Hopeless it may be but distant it certainly is not for the millions who live it every day. The point is forcefully brought home by the excellent film “The Attack” by Lebanese-born director Ziad Doueiri, based on

During one of the tamer scenes of “Cleopatra” Elizabeth Taylor’s Queen of the Nile leads Julius Caesar to the tomb of Alexander the Great. Staring down at the (pretend) grave of Western Civilization’s greatest conqueror, what could Taylor be thinking? Is she thinking “Amateur!”? What Alexander tried and failed to take with force – the entire world – Taylor was accomplishing that moment with overwhelming fame and