There’s a famous Hollywood joke about how you can describe any action movie over the past twenty years as something like ”Die Hard in an orbital maximum-security prison.” That would be the one that applies to the very entertaining Lockout, a movie that is Die Hard by way of Star Wars by way of Blade Runner by way of La Femme Nikita by way of The Fifth Element by way of Escape from New York by way of Big Trouble in Little China.

Who would've thought that James Cameron, an action movies filmmaker par excellence (Aliens, Terminator and True Lies, to name a few) would direct one of the most spectacular movies of all time? An avid deep-sea diver, Cameron had always shown a great interest in the Titanic story. But before the movie could see light of day it took no less than eight months of filming, a reconstitution of the doomed cruise liner in a specially-built

Yaron is part of an elite group of police officers belonging to an anti-terrorist unit of the Israeli police. He and his companions are the weapon pointed by the state at its opponents, "the Arab enemy." Yaron loves the male camaraderie and his own muscle-bound body. His wife is about to give birth and he could become a father at any moment. But his meeting a group of violent radicals will force him to suddenly confront a new kind of revo-

I saw Lee Hirsch’s documentary Bully (previously called The Bully Project) at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, before the sound mix was officially finished; shortly after it was purchased by the Weinstein Company. There may have been a few changes made before its release last Friday so I am writing, as it were, from memory. Bully couldn’t have been timelier. In the thirteen years since Columbine, America has seen an alarming uptick in suicides

The Hunger Games will sap up comparisons to science fiction. That’s what happens with stories about futuristic dystopias and freaky hovercraft. The better comparison is to Roman or Biblical epics of the fifties. Its story, of the youth of twelve outlying provinces exploited for the bloodsport of a wealthy and perverse capital, is reminiscent of Ben Hur. It even has a grand chariot parade, with crowds adoring Katniss Everdeen, a coal-haired

Claudio, Orlando and Leonardo Villas Boas are spirited young brothers in search of a path in life in 1943, during a period of historic industrial and agricultural growth in newly-democratic Brazil. They sign up as to travel to the Xingu region of the Amazon to help build a landing strip near indigenous tribes. But in order to do this, they must gain the natives' trust. Xingu, based on true events, is directed by Brazil's Cao Hamburger. His previous

Homer’s memorized recitals of the stories of the heroes and gods certainly required a attention span. The Wrath of The Titans certainly does not. It demands only the attention typically demanded by modern Hollywood blockbuster screenwriting. But would Homer, in all his “As I lay dying, the woman with the dog face wouldn’t close my eyes as I descended into Hades”-ness, been better served by less longwindedness and more