Articles by John Anderson

Among the grazing herd of young, virtually transparent Hollywood heartthrobs, Josh Hartnett could probably be voted Least Likely to Have a Reflection in a Mirror. Read more

It’s impossible to know whether Milarepa, the real-life, 11th century mystic at the center of director Neten Chokling’s “Milarepa: Magician, Murderer, Saint,” ever met the director – Chokling has been recognized by some as the reincarnation of Tibetan yogi Chokgyur Lingpa, and his past lives allegedly go back centuries. Read more

At heart, the sweet if undernourished looking-for-love comedy “I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With” is writer-director-star Jeff Garlin’s way of saying, it’s hard out there for a blimp. Read more

That Americans worship their children only makes Billy Bob Thornton more deliciously, subversively funny as a tormenter of the young. Read more

At the outset of Isidore Rosmarin’s “Blood and Tears: The Arab-Israeli Conflict,” we learn that “the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a very complicated one.” Read more

Toss a little Arthurian legend, some J.R.R. Tolkien, a few stalks of “I, Claudius” and some sliced “Star Wars” in a vegetable spinner and you get the Caesar salad of “The Last Legion,” whose cast is almost distractingly rich (and thick) and whose sense of history is, shall we say, convenient to the narrative. Read more

No one’s going to confuse “Marigold,” Willard Carroll’s raga-flavored romcom, with state-of-the-art Bollywood. Read more

If the sons of famous men live under shadows of expectation, and expectations of failure, what about the son of a saint? Read more

“Transformers,” the summer’s other toy-based movie, seems like an exercise in Reichian minimalism compared with the symphonic awfulness of “Bratz.” Read more