In the world of Christopher Nolan’s latest mindbender “Inception,” thieves can steal secrets from the sleeping minds of their quarry by entering their dreams. A wealthy, mysterious industrialist named Saito (Ken Watanabe) approaches one such crew of mental mercenaries, led by the haunted and humorless Dom Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) and orders something a little off the menu: rather than stealing an idea, he wants the crew to implant one in the mind of a competitor. The initally reluctant Cobb only agrees to do the job after Saito offers to pull strings back in the United States and clear Cobb of…
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Writer-director Joe Wright’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel “Atonement” is a handsomely mounted bore, equally beautiful and unsatisfying.

The first third of the film is set in Merchant Ivory’s stolid version of England; everyone’s rich, beautiful and bored. Briony Tallis (Saorise Ronan), a precocious 12-year-old, wiles away her days on her family’s estate, writing plays and irritating the servants. Briony’s older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) lies around on a fainting couch, smoking and pouting, because the hunky gardener Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) has not responded to her advances. Will the spoiled, sullen Cecilia get to sleep with the handsome…
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In the Coen Brothers’ latest film, “No Country for Old Men,” a down on his luck hunter Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles across the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and finds two million dollars. At long last, the destitute man thinks, fate has smiled upon me. However, by taking the money, he unwittingly becomes the target of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) a relentless killer who sets out to find Moss and retrieve the money.

Fate’s a funny thing.

I went into “No Man” with some trepidation. Of late, the Coen Brothers’ movies have been nothing…
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In James Mangold’s stark new western “3:10 to Yuma,” Dan Evans (Christian Bale) and his son William (Logan Lerman) must transport a prisoner Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), the notorious leader of an outlaw gang, to a prison train in order to collect a reward and save the Evans family farm. Wade’s gang, led by Ben Foster’s prissy yet sadistic Prince, engage in a a scorched-earth campaign to get their boss back at all costs. Evans and Wades journey takes them across a grim, pre-PC Old West that more closely resembles a dry, lifeless moonscape than the green vistas of travelogue-style…
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In “The Kingdom,” an elite FBI unit led by Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) is dispatched to investigate a devastating terrorist attack on American oil workers living in a compound in Saudi Arabia. To find the killers, the investigators must learn to work with conservative Muslim locals who oppose the American presence in their Holy Lands.

Given the provocative premise and locale, I wondered going in whether to expect another entry in the recent spate of thoughtful meditations on terrorism (“Munich,” “Syriana,” etc.). Instead, director Berg and screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan serve up a paint by the numbers…
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This turbulent decade has borne out the old adage that good art arises out of bad times. While the peace and prosperity of the late nineties brought us toothless best picture winners like “Titanic” and “Shakespeare in Love,” (Damn you Bill Clinton!), today’s films roil with a new, bracing cynicism. The frenetically, paranoid “Syriana” held up a mirror to America’s addiction to oil and the Middle East entanglements that it has engendered. “Good Night and Good Luck” was a stinging indictment of the Post-September 11 press and its failure to confront a government running rough-shod over the rights of its…
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As Oscar Frenzy emerges from its hibernation and prepares for the upcoming awards season, I wanted to touch on some of the more promising films that were released earlier in 2007. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the films I’ve seen during that time (if there is a hue and cry for my thoughts on “Disturbia” or “The Hitcher” remake, I will gladly oblige). Rather, I thought I would be remiss if I did not give these films of Spring and Summer their due.

Breach (* and a 1/2 out of ****)

“Breach” is the…
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The documentary “Jesus Camp” is an all-access pass to the “Kids on Fire” summer camp for Evangelical Christian pre-teens. There, kids are trained to become “Christian Soldiers” on a mission to spread scorched-earth fundamentalism throughout what the organizers refer to as “this sick, old world.”

The camp’s children and adult counselors open up for the cameras with an unguarded (and often cringe-inducing) honesty. At a church service, eight-year-olds speak in tongues, their bodies vibrating, their eyes wet with ecstatic tears. Toe-heads cheerily pledge to bring the same fervor to their Christian faith that Muslim suicide bombers bring to theirs…
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It’s unfortunate that filmmakers feel the need to inject a white protagonist into any film exploring a non-Anglo culture. Want to make a film about 19th century Japanese Samurai? Okay, but there had better be a role for Tom Cruise in it. (See “The Last Samurai.” Or actually don’t.) The African diamond trade and its role in funding murderous rebel groups? Okay, but I better spend most of the film looking into Leonardo DiCaprio’s dreamy, blue eyes. (“Blood Diamond.”)

In “The Last King of Scotland,” we are treated to a biopic of the infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin as…
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