Insanity reigns supreme in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, a tale whose off-the-charts screwiness obscures virtually all shortcomings. Based on Patrick Süskind’s supposedly unfilmable novel, Tom Tykwer’s film concerns Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Ben Whishaw), a boy in 18th-century Paris who’s born (from the womb of a miscarriage-prone mother) underneath a filthy market stand, left to…

The Kite Runner is the type of film one would expect from Marc Forster – banal, trite and apt to ramrod simplistic symbolism down viewers’ throats. Having never read Khaled Hosseini’s acclaimed bestseller, I can’t speak to the faithfulness of Forster’s adaptation, but what he puts on screen is corny and/or offensive pap of the…

In Next, Nicolas Cage’s Cris boasts Tom Hanks’ haircut from The Da Vinci Code. He also can see two minutes into the future, but it’s debatable whether Cris’ supernatural ability is any more interesting than his strange coiffure, given the general silliness of this adventure. The special power Cris possesses makes him desirable to FBI…

James Gray is an old-school classicist whose two films – Little Odessa and The Yards – were archetypal crime dramas set in the director’s beloved New York City. We Own the Night is cut from the same cloth, as it once again finds Gray breathing gritty, electric life into a conventional tale, this time about…

Reeling from a break-up with girlfriend Desiree (Leslie Bibb), bereft Zia (Patrick Fugit) does himself in at the outset of Wristcutters: A Love Story. Rather than eternal peace, however, suicide merely lands the twenty-something in an afterlife that resembles a more mundane, dreary version of our own world. Based on Etgar Keret’s short story, Goran…