It’s a bright March afternoon on the set of Rush Hour 3, and the mood is tense. After shooting last winter on location in Paris, the production has returned to Los Angeles behind schedule and over budget. The Supermarine Executive Air Terminal of the Santa Monica Airport has been transformed into the Paris–Le Bourget airport, […]

Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, who became an icon of arthouse cinema with films such as “L’avventura” and “Blowup,” died Monday in Rome. He was 94.

The enigmatic British-made drama “Blowup” (1966) took the Palme d’Or in Cannes, was Oscar-nommed for director and original screenplay and became a surprise international hit. 
A striking visual stylist who excelled at […]

 
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA
Starring: KenWatanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase and Shido Nakamura.
Written by: Iris Yamashita
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
142 mins
SUMMARY
Letters from Iwo Jima is the companion film to Flags of Our Fathers, both directed by Clint Eastwood, but from different perspectives on the war.  Iwo Jima , which won the Golden Globe for Best Picture […]

In 1974, I got a job interviewing movie directors with films premiering in New York for a magazine called Millimeter.  Over two years, I got to interview around two dozen active Hollywood pros - some great ones like Altman, Polanski, Rafelson, and Frankenheimer and some mediocre ones.  When I asked them, “Who’s your favorite director?” […]

SOMETHING fresh happens onscreen in “No Reservations,” the newest in that newly burgeoning genre, American foodie cinema, and it’s not the sea bass poached in a court bouillon with sautéed batonnet of carrots and zucchini (though that fish with vegetables cut into baton shapes looks pretty fresh). 
Beyond the batonnet, viewers may discern a sea […]

When director Paul Greengrass and the filmmaking team made Universal Pictures’ “The Bourne Ultimatum,” which opens Friday, there was a deliberate effort to create a departure from other movies of the action genre by avoiding cliches.The result was rapid cuts and a general sense of uneasiness in a high-octane thrill ride for the third and […]

 
Two-faced… Toby Jones (left) and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in, respectively, Infamous and Capote.

Spare a thought for the hapless representatives of the French wine industry, with their flared nostrils, unfocused gaze and maudlin air. It transpires that their greatest moment of shame - the blind tasting scandal of 1976, in which a panel […]