Michael Madsen

"Strength and Honor" is a boxing movie both relentlessly dismal and dismally predictable -- "Rocky Goes to Ireland," with a side trip past "Million Dollar Baby." In an opening set seven years in the past, a young boxer, Sean (Michael Madsen), kills a friend during practice with a freakishly fatal punch.

There's a certain shaggy, 1970s-era charm to "Loosies," a crime-with-a-side-of-romance (or perhaps it's the other way around) trifle written by and starring Peter Facinelli (the "Twilight" pictures, TV's "Nurse Jackie") as an essentially decent Manhattan pickpocket "working" to pay off his late father's enormous debt. This nicely acted, atmospheric gambol, directed with a light, occasionally random touch by Michael Corrente ("Outside Providence," "Brooklyn Rules") puts Facinelli's sexy, charismatic Bobby at the center of a handful of raggedy story strands that engage even if they never fully coalesce.

Like it or not (and many people will have their doubts), writer-director Quentin Tarantino has arrived, in your face and on the screen. His brash debut film, "Reservoir Dogs," a showy but insubstantial comic opera of violence, is as much a calling card as a movie, an audacious high-wire act announcing that he is here and to be reckoned with. Strong violence is Tarantino's passion, and he embraces it with gleeful, almost religious, fervor.

Like it or not (and many people will have their doubts), writer-director Quentin Tarantino has arrived, in your face and on the screen. His brash debut film, "Reservoir Dogs," a showy but insubstantial comic opera of violence, is as much a calling card as a movie, an audacious high-wire act announcing that he is here and to be reckoned with. Strong violence is Tarantino's passion, and he embraces it with gleeful, almost religious, fervor.

For Herman Melville in "Moby Dick," the white sperm whale was a vast, mysterious monarch of the seas, a Godlike being dispensing destiny to the puny humans trying to catch it. For the makers of "Free Willy" (citywide), the Orca or "killer" whale, a more predatory cetacean, becomes their symbol of nature exploited, ultimate victim of man's greed and rapacity.

In Olivier Assayas' stylish thriller "Boarding Gate," the plot may be murky, but actress Asia Argento is a clear and commanding force throughout. Argento's Sandra is a slinky, darkly seductive former prostitute who visits an ex-lover, Miles (Michael Madsen), in his Paris office. Although Miles had hired Sandra to cement some deals with his investment company that ensnared her in some very nasty sex scenes, she did it out of love for him.

Richard Chamberlain, still fit and dashingly handsome at 73, describes himself these days as a "beach bum who paints and occasionally acts." But in fact, the star of the 1960s medical drama "Dr. Kildare" and such popular miniseries as "Shogun" and "The Thorn Birds" has been venturing away from his home in Maui for acting gigs regularly of late.