Culture 'Lust, Caution' September 28, 2007 • A troupe of thespians goes undercover in Hong Kong and Shanghai during the Japanese occupation, hoping their ingenue (Tang Wei) can get close enough to a collaborator (Tony Leung) to let them attempt an assassination.
Culture 'Feast of Love' September 28, 2007 • A would-be-wistful dramedy, with Morgan Freeman as a kind of village elder perched at an Oregon coffee shop, advising clueless locals on life and love. Director Robert Benton made Kramer Vs. Kramer, and ought to know better.
Culture 'The Darjeeling Limited': Self-Discovery, by Rail Fresh Air September 28, 2007 • Three brothers, privileged but bereft, go looking for themselves on a trek through rural India. Fresh Air's film critic says Anderson manages to sustain a sense of lyric melancholy — though he could use more perspective on his characters' over-entitlement.
Movies 'The Kingdom' Mirrors the Headlines September 28, 2007 • Set in Saudi Arabia, The Kingdom is a film about American good guys going toe to toe with followers of terrorist Abu Hamsa. The film opens with sounds of bombs going off in an American housing compound, killing and wounding hundreds watching a softball game.
Culture 'The Darjeeling Limited' September 27, 2007 • Three battling brothers — who haven't spoken in the year since their father's funeral — flail and rail and bond on a trek across India in the latest comic oddity from Wes Anderson (Rushmore, Royal Tennenbaums).
Culture 'The Jane Austen Book Club' September 21, 2007 • Graceful, smart and unselfconsciously literate, Robin Swicord's screen adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler's chick-lit novel traffics in satisfying parallels and comforting symmetries.
Culture In the Wild West, Death Becomes an Outlaw Icon September 21, 2007 • Exquisitely filmed Assassination of Jesse James lends the heft of Greek tragedy to an oft-told saga. Brad Pitt won an acting prize, but it's Casey Affleck's needy, creepy Robert Ford you can't take your eyes off.
Culture Penn Goes 'Into the Wild,' Spirits High Fresh Air September 21, 2007 • Fresh Air's film critic reviews the new Sean Penn film, adapted from the best-selling nonfiction narrative by Jon Krakauer.
Culture 'Into the Wild' September 21, 2007 • Jon Krakauer's chronicle of Christopher McCandless' fateful journey into the American wilderness gets filmed by Sean Penn; as McCandless becomes increasingly frail, the cinematography becomes increasingly grand, and the two mesh wrenchingly.
Culture 'The Assassination of Jesse James ... ' September 20, 2007 • An oft-told Wild West saga acquires the majesty of Greek tragedy in this exquisitely filmed character study — the full title of which is the wordy but revealing The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. (Recommended)
Culture 'December Boys' September 14, 2007 • Four Australian lads, who have spent their young lives in an orphanage in the outback, are offered a month's vacation at the beach. It's an experience Sparky, Maps, Misty and Spit (don't ask) will never forget, though it's treacly enough you'll wish you could.
Culture Tripping 'Across the Universe,' Just a Little Clumsily September 14, 2007 • With 30-odd Beatles songs, Frida director Julie Taymor tells a story about a guy named Jude, a girl named Lucy, and the helter-skelter '60s. Magical mystery tour, anyone?
Culture 'In the Valley of Elah,' Where Despair Lives Fresh Air September 14, 2007 • Fresh Air's film critic reviews Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah, which stars Tommy Lee Jones as a former military MP — and the father of a young soldier who's gone AWOL after returning from active duty in Iraq.
Culture 'Valley of Elah' a Drama of Post-War Trauma September 14, 2007 • A fall full of films with post-Sept. 11 themes kicks off with In the Valley of Elah. Director Paul Haggis takes on a subject rarely embraced by Hollywood: the pernicious effect war has on the young people we send to fight.
Culture 'The Brave One' September 13, 2007 • Jodie Foster as a vigilante public-radio personality; director Neil Jordan flirts with turning her character into a latter-day Travis Bickle, but doesn't take the flirtation quite far enough.