Hal Holbrook

Friday March 24, 2000      "Waking the Dead" is a powerful story of love and politics in the '70s and '80s and their bittersweet aftermath. It is a film of uncommon intelligence and rigor that illuminates a complex era, and the romance at its center is...

Friday May 5, 2000      "Luminarias" takes us into a world all too rarely seen on the big screen: that of upwardly mobile Los Angeles Latinas.      Instead of barrio poverty, gangs and drugs, we're introduced to four women, longtime friends, whose...

Friday May 12, 2000      From "The Red Shoes" to "The Turning Point," dramatic films about the ballet world have begged the question: How is it that such a serious and disciplined performing art attracts such silly and chaotic people?      The callow...

Friday October 15, 1999      Cedric Kahn's relentless "L'Ennui" is such a rigorous exploration of sexual obsession that it proves to be a most demanding film. Virtually devoid of eroticism and sensuality, it depicts with the utmost realism a 17-year-...

Friday April 14, 2000      "Where the Money Is" takes its title from a famous reply legendary thief Willie Sutton gave when he was asked why he robbed banks. However, crooks would be ill-advised to stick up the box offices at theaters where this tepid...

Friday April 7, 2000      "Soft Fruit" asks us to spend 101 minutes with people most of us wouldtake pains to avoid in real life.      The difference between this film, a first feature for writer-director Christina Andreef, and works by her executive...

Friday April 28, 2000      For Kevin Spacey, "The Big Kahuna" is far from an ideal commercial follow-up to "American Beauty" in reaffirming his new star status. It's a small picture, its stage roots all too evident, and the role Spacey plays is...

Wednesday April 19, 2000      Salvador Carrasco's "The Other Conquest," or "La Otra Conquista," is a boldly imaginative and enthralling evocation of the bloody aftermath of the 1521 Spanish conquest of Mexico that has become the highest-grossing drama...

Friday November 10, 2000      In 1948, Harry Truman ended segregation in the armed forces, but it did not fade away overnight any more than it did in other American institutions. What Jackie Robinson endured in breaking the color line in baseball and...

A whole world can be fit into 76 minutes, and that's what the splendid documentary "OT: our town" manages to do. The story of how a high school in Compton put on a production of the Thornton Wilder play, this film, brief as it is, is a saga as heartening...

It is a gray day at Parker Center, the nearly 50-year-old headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department, and cops and customers alike shuffle glumly across a much-scuffed terrazzo floor. The place seems entirely glee-free on this recent morning...

With kindly and wicked monsters already on hand, and wizards young and old in the wings, fantasy rules in a holiday season shadowed by persistent mourning and pervasive fears. What better time for flying brooms and an all-powerful ring? The end-of-year...