Fred Schepisi

The tang of good old-fashioned Westerns only improves with time. Appaloosa, a story of two lawmen who clean up the title town at some personal cost, goes down like a single-malt aged for 25 years - since that last defiantly traditional big-screen Western,...

Paul Newman was a stage actor who became a movie star. A sex symbol who celebrated 50 years of marriage with his second wife. A grieving father who turned to philanthropy after the death of his only son. A citizen activist who campaigned for liberal...

Ned Kelly is Australia's most famous outlaw, a 19th century Irish immigrants' son who resisted British colonial oppression and became a folk hero celebrated in books, plays, operas, paintings, reenactments, even the 2000 Sydney Olympics and films, with...

"Levity" is about as well-meaning as a movie can get, but that's never enough to ensure it comes alive on the screen, which is sadly the case here. A successful Hollywood screenwriter, Ed Solomon, has made his directorial debut with a story inspired by...

3 stars (out of 4) "It Runs in the Family" has the markings of a vanity project, what with Michael Douglas producing and starring; his stroke-stricken father, Kirk Douglas, playing his stroke-stricken father; his mother (and Kirk's ex), Diana Douglas,...

Michael and Kirk Douglas have taken more than 20 years to select a script that would enable them to act together on the screen. It was worth the wait. Jesse Wigutow came up with a screenplay that is tailored expertly not only for father and son but...

(PG-13). Here's a stretch: Kirk and Michael Douglas cast as father and son in a comedy-drama about an upscale Manhattan family that talks a lot, but isn't so hot at communication. Edgier and a lot less sappy than you'd expect, but there are way too many...

Anthrax. Hijackings. Terrorism. Israelis and Palestinians at each other's throats. Destruction and loss of life on a staggering scale. Had enough? Eager to flee to another world, a place far removed from our terribly troubled one, a parallel universe, if...

Michael Caine. Tom Courtenay. David Hemmings. Bob Hoskins. Helen Mirren. Ray Winstone. It's an exceptional cast, a gathering of some of the most impressive names in British acting, but it's part of the grace of "Last Orders" that it's not immediately...

At the moment, Hartford's movie-lovers can savor some of the best pictures of 2002, released at the end of the year in major markets and now spreading to the provinces. Still, it is a long way to the start of the next big movie season, which begins May...

1. HIGH FIDELITY (Stephen Frears; 2000) 3 stars John Cusack and his fellow Evanston co-writers D.V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink somehow managed to transplant Nick Hornby's London-set novel to Chicago without missing a beat. Cusack plays Rob, a list-making...

When they're done right, there's something almost foolproof about a good road movie. The best in recent years, and my favorite movie of 2002 so far, is Fred Schepisi's exhilarating adaptation of the Graham Swift novel "Last Orders." Set in 1989, this...