Slow and "heavy" Americanization of an egghead detective novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Like a lot of actors-turned-director, Sean Penn is disposed to dump an emotional load on his actors and watch them stagger around under it awhile. Most of them -- Benicio Del Toro, Patricia Clarkson, Mickey Rourke, Vanessa Redgrave, …

Jamesian literary mystery in the vein of The Aspern Papers and The Figure in the Carpet. Two present-day scholars, an American male who specializes in a fictitious Poet Laureate to Queen Victoria and an English female who specializes in a lesser-known poetess known to be a lesbian, track down evidence …

Serial-killer thriller about (brace yourself) a serial killer of serial killers. That's not some figure of speech synonymous with the serial killer's serial killer, or the serial killer to beat all serial killers, or the mother of all serial killers, or some such. It means literally that he serially kills …

Satire with teeth, discolored though they may be. There is nothing exceptional cinematically about the directing debut of Jason Reitman, son of the mainstream comedy director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and the like), but from the opening credits -- the witty cigarette-pack graphic motif, Tex Williams's C&W; oldie, …

The directing debut of the screenwriter of American Beauty, Alan Ball, concerns itself, in a bland beige image, with the sexual experiences of an Arab-American eighth-grader in suburban Houston during the first Gulf War, and with little else. Sex and the Single-Minded Girl: pubic shaving, first period, girlie magazines, masturbation, …

Neil LaBute's encore to In the Company of Men is not as infuriating, though provoking nevertheless. Provoking of calmer discussion, that is, in place of fury. This response would be entirely appropriate, since the principal subject under consideration is the inability of men and women to communicate. (Not just man …