Cold Mountain adds significance to its shopworn narrative with several brilliant scenes that have only marginal relationship to the story line. That is not an altogether damning comment. Jean Renoir, the great French director, once expressed his admiration for American Westerns: “They’re

Whether we love or hate the "Lord of the Rings" films, we have to admire them: they are a monumental cinematic achievement. Shot over 274 days for $281 million and lasting 558 minutes, these films have, at the time of writing and in the United States alone, grossed over $897 million.

The Charles River is English tweed and cappuccino from Starbucks. It splits the twin campuses of Harvard University and hosts the Head of the Charles Regatta, a band shell for the Boston Pops and fireworks on the Fourth of July, marinas for modest but assertively picturesque sailboats and a lovely p

Given the choice between dental surgery without anesthetic and The Magdalene Sisters, call your dentist for an appointment immediately. In either case, pain may be salutary in the long run. The film raises too many important issues to be dismissed as just another skirmish in the vast anti-Catholic c

Symbolic landscapes shift during the years. For a century or more, starting perhaps with Mark Twain, American writers have looked to the South as a metaphor for failed expectations and ruinous nostalgia. William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Wolfe, Walker Percy and

God is a multiple choice quiz. Which God will we choose? One turns nosy old women into pillars of salt, slips serpents down the togas of Egyptians and sets Satan loose on his best friend just to see how he will stand up under the boils and windy advice of neighbors. Another rains down Wonder Bread i