Technology
Sci-Fi High Tech Comes To Life
[22 min 26 sec]
Movies
All The Livelong Day: Zhang Qin, one of the principal subjects of Last Train Home, rides the railroad — just like her parents, factory workers who can afford to take the train to see their children only once a year.
A Family Torn Asunder Takes The 'Last Train Home'
()Frequently moving and quietly enlightening, the documentary Last Train Home is about love and exploitation, sacrifice and endurance. Director Lixin Fan follows a single Chinese family from 2006 through the financial downturn of 2008. The parents work at garment factories in Guangzhou city; their teenage children live in an impoverished village and see their parents only once a year. (Recommended)
Movie Reviews
'Noodle Shop': A Coen Brothers Tale Goes East()
September 2, 2010 Director Zhang Yimou takes on the Coen brothers, remaking Blood Simple and setting it in the 17th-century "Chinese outback." Adultery, bloody mishaps and Chinese superstition are just the appetizers in this colorful film.
Movie Reviews
Dog, Mad Englishman Grow Old In A Setting Sun()
August 31, 2010 My Dog Tulip is an animated film, but it's no Disney-style heartwarmer about a boy and his canine pal. Instead it's a film for adults -- based on a memoir by a grumpy British writer who lived with an unruly German shepherd for 16 years -- that manages to be touching without getting overly sentimental. (Recommended)
Movie Reviews
'The American': A Domestic Bond, Drawn In Miniature()
September 3, 2010 George Clooney's latest outing showcases a more internal performance -- as an assassin whose personal life threatens to further complicate an already hard-to-manage career. Kenneth Turan says Anton Corbijn's drama is impeccably composed and beautifully shot -- if a little lacking on the emotional urgency front.
Movie Reviews
'Takers': They Shouldn't Make 'Em Like This Anymore()
August 26, 2010 A crew of heist artists tries to do one last job -- with more money at stake than ever. The Wire's Idris Elba co-stars with Matt Dillon in an ensemble action flick that's slickly packaged but otherwise a by-the-numbers exercise.
Movie Reviews
Meet Mesrine: Half A Gangster Epic, Totally 'Killer'()
August 27, 2010 John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd -- Hollywood has long had a love affair with real-life gangsters. Now, says critic Bob Mondello, France's Jacques Mesrine gives his better-known American rivals a run for their cinematic money. (Recommended)
Movie Reviews
A Sword-And-Sandals Yarn, Emphasis On The Former()
August 26, 2010 Neil Marshall, director of horror movie The Descent, offers up a noisily bloody, new chase-sequence of a film set during the second-century conquest of Britain. Michael Fassbender and Dominic West star.
Movie Reviews
For These French Friends, A 'Change' Is Gonna Come()
August 26, 2010 Three sets of philandering middle-aged spouses converge for a dinner party in Change of Plans, a French film whose setup seems to promise an evening of bitter recriminations. Ah, but this is Paris, where they do cheating differently -- and Daniele Thompson's sharp comedy shows that adultery can be a tonic for the bourgeois marriage.
