It's been a few years since I watched Don Siegel's 1971 adaptation of Thomas P. Cullinan's novel The Beguiled, a Civil War hothouse drama about a wounded Union soldier finding shelter in a Southern girls' school. I recall that film, starring a young Clint Eastwood just months before reteaming with Siegel to make Dirty Harry and history, as being surprisingly… read more!

Meandering comedy-drama about two lonely Americans stuck in a Tokyo hotel, with nobody to talk to but each other. Bill Murray plays a fading Hollywood star who's been brought to Japan to film a Suntory Whiskey commercial for a couple million dollars. Scarlett Johansson plays the young wife of a hotshot photographer (Giovanni Ribisi) who's in town to shoot some… read more!

I want to like Sofia Coppola's films. I really do. A female studio director is rare enough in the first place. But to have a female American auteur – well, at the moment, Coppola stands alone. I think it's important to have women helming big-budget films, and equally important to give them credit where it's due (despite the fact that… read more!

Sofia Coppola went to CalArts with me for a year. One day in film history class, she sat behind me, annoying me throughout The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with her incessant popcorn munching. A friend later suggested that I should have turned around and shouted "You sucked in Godfather III!" Regardless of her past, can she cut it as a… read more!