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Two Brothers Review

By Annette Cardwell

Very Good

Set against the dramatic backdrops of the ancient temples of Angkor in Cambodia and the jungles of Cambodia and Thailand, Two Brothers is a gorgeously filmed fable centering on two tiger cub brothers that suffer at the hands of humans, only to rise up against their captors and overcome. Let's just say that if you sided more with the tiger in the Siegfried and Roy mauling, this is definitely the film for you.

Director Jean-Jacques Annaud (Enemy at the Gates, The Lover) returns to wild animal territory last seen in his film The Bear, choosing to focus his latest project - a children's movie - on two live, non-talking, non-CGI tigers. The result is a pleasantly sweet-natured and sometimes remarkable kids' film. Perhaps the biggest shocker is that, in these days of Babe and Pixar, Universal let this honest tale get out of the edit room without CGI-ing in even a single eyebrow-raise on these cubs' faces.

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Open Range Review

By Blake French

Weak

During a summer in which TV remakes, romantic comedies, sequels, and comic book movies overcrowd at the multiplexes, Open Range is the only Western scheduled for release. While I give kudos to Dances with Wolves auteur Kevin Costner -- who directs, produces, and acts in the film -- for broadening the range of this season's genres, I only wish that I could welcome the film's drastic change of pace. Frankly, I'd rather watch another stupid superhero flick.

It's 1882, and best friends Charley (Costner) and Boss (Robert Duvall) are cowboys who have lived on the open range for ten years, driving cattle in a world where nature makes the only laws. Roaming the West with them are rambunctious young cowboys Button (Diego Luna), Mose (Abraham Benrubi), and Charley's faithful dog. When a rainstorm strands their wagon, Charley and Boss send Mose to the nearest frontier town to gather additional supplies. When he doesn't return, they decide to take a visit to the town -- with their revolvers at hand -- to search for him.

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Sacred Planet Review

By Keith Breese

Good

It's pitiful to say it, but most Americans would rather blow a thousand dollars in Las Vegas than see the magnificence of coastal Alaska. Sacred Planet is a film to inspire us to leave the all-you-can-eat buffets, the shopping malls, and the dog tracks, and see the world's remaining wild places. It's a film designed to shake us from the urban jungles we've grown secure in and broaden our view, culturally as well as spiritually, through interaction with the splendor of nature. And it almost works.

There is, indelibly, a hint of New Age in Sacred Planet, the latest IMAX documentary film to be released to DVD. The producers play it up in the advertising, the tribal font of the title, the narration by Robert Redford, the world music score. Like Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi before it, Sacred Planet is a film designed to both transport us somewhere and teach us something. And the lesson is the same: we live in an interconnected world. However, unlike Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi, Sacred Planet demands very little from the audience.

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Grey Owl Review

By Christopher Null

Weak

Pierce Brosnan stars in this period epic (and I do mean epic - this movie is looooong) about a British guy in the early 1900s who took on the persona of a native American beaver trapper named Grey Owl. The beginning of the film sports Grey Owl trapping beavers then coming to his senses for the environmental damage its causing, then Mr. Owl crusades around the world preaching "Not enough beaver." (I'll say.) By the end of the picture, Grey Owl is outed as being the Brit that he is, but no one seems to care. I only fell asleep twice.

The Name Of The Rose Review

By Aaron Lazenby

Franciscan and Benedictine monks are dispatched to a remote monastery to resolve a dispute over doctrine in The Name of the Rose. When William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) and his novice Adso (a very young Christian Slater) arrive, they find the discussions have been stalled by the death of a young, talented scribe. The resident monks are all atwitter, wringing their hands and worrying that the murder is a sign of the apocalypse. Their fervor reaches a fever pitch as more of their brethren begin to turn up dead, describing some choice passages of Revelations. So William fires up his logic, ceaselessly name checks Aristotle and begins to piece together a mystery that involves secret secular knowledge, a labyrinthine library, and a struggle between wild religious superstition and cold reason.

Based on Umberto Eco's dense and demanding bestseller, The Name of the Rose, is basically a love letter to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unfortunately, the film version never passes up an opportunity to remind us of that fact.

Continue reading: The Name Of The Rose Review