Harry Dean Stanton

Like so many HBO shows that air in the wake of "The Sopranos," "Big Love" got a little bit lost in the shuffle this spring, even though the first season of the polygamy-as-family-metaphor drama was every bit as satisfying at the most recent half-season of...

A man goes to work, builds his business, provides for his wife and children, tries to live a life in accord with his moral principles -- all good, right? But what if his moral principles say that instead of one wife, he has three? Still good? That's...

David Lynch's approved bio merely reads: "Born, Missoula, Montana. Eagle Scout." Needless to say, we'll hear a lot more than that when he's honored at the Venice International Film Festival. The festival will present the renowned filmmaker with the...

David Lynch is an auteur known for doing things his own way, so it's no surprise that he'll distribute his latest film himself. The director announced that he has secured the North American rights to his first digital video feature, "Inland Empire,"...

1. Visualize Harry Dean Stanton. Head north out of Detroit on I-75 past 8 Mile Road and you get to Bloomfield Hills, the wealthy suburb where Elmore Leonard lives. Although he was born in New Orleans in 1925, the 83-year-old novelist grew up middle-class...

With the deeply affecting "Sonny," Nicolas Cage displays the same sensitivity, emotional resonance and daring in his feature directorial debut that has characterized his splendid work in front of the camera. In bringing John Carlen's much-admired but...

Friday May 22, 1998      In his seminal '70s book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," acclaimed burnout Hunter S. Thompson wrote the epitaph for the drug generation and it serves as a pretty good review for Terry Gilliam's film adaptation of the book: "Buy...

Friday October 15, 1999      The equivalent of David Lynch doing "Little House on the Prairie," "The Straight Story" is a suspect enterprise for the creator of "Twin Peaks" and "Lost Highway." Can the Wizard of Weird successfully direct a heartwarming G-...

Friday October 15, 1999      Cedric Kahn's relentless "L'Ennui" is such a rigorous exploration of sexual obsession that it proves to be a most demanding film. Virtually devoid of eroticism and sensuality, it depicts with the utmost realism a 17-year-...

For our most romantic national holiday, Valentine's Day is so often reduced to easy gestures, whether they be roses, candlelight dinners, candy hearts or even the donning of black in mourning. Lost amidst the Hallmark cards is the sense that it's the...

Francis Ford Coppola has reworked somewhat and meticulously restored his ambitious 1982 romantic musical fantasy "One From the Heart," out of circulation for more than 20 years, but for all his efforts it stubbornly remains a bold experiment in style...

Friday January 19, 2001      In "The Pledge," his third film as a director, Sean Penn once again demonstrates that he is a gifted filmmaker whose abilities don't count for as much as they should because of how fanatically he clings to a narrow, reductive...