Lee Tamahori

Who says preposterous junk can't be fun? Nicolas Cage, the very definition of the "uneven" Hollywood career, makes his latest venture into popcorn pictures pay off with a droll, tongue-in-cheek turn as a guy who can see two minutes into the future. Next...

When we first see Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage) in "Next," a confusing new thriller directed by Lee Tamahori, he's sitting alone in a diner sipping a martini and looking strikingly like Richard E. Grant after a terrible night's sleep. Cris, we soon learn,...

1½ stars (out of four) In "Next," the most dunderheaded film ever made from a Philip K. Dick story, Nicolas Cage plays a telepathic fellow who can see two minutes into the future. This quirk allows him to dodge sniper bullets or simply predict the next...

Absolute Power (1997) Clint Eastwood stars as the sensitive thief who can save the entire American political system from complete corruption. Too bad he wasn't around during the Reagan administration. Eastwood discovers presidential corruption during...

(PG-13). Ice Cube takes over as Triple X, replacing Vin Diesel, and proves right at home, recruited by the National Security Agency's Samuel L. Jackson to stop the overthrow of the government headed by a liberal president (Peter Strauss). Director Lee...

Revolution Studios needn't have worried that Vin Diesel would not be doing the sequel to the 2002 hit "XXX," because Ice Cube proves up to the task in "XXX: State of the Union." Cube has always been a natural in front of a camera, and he's as much at ease...

1 ½ stars (out of 4) "XXX: State of the Union" is one movie that, taken seriously, could put you in a real state gloom about the future. Not the future of the country, but of the movies. How is it possible for a major franchise picture starring Ice...

Vengeful Siths! Marauding Crusaders! Monster mother-in-laws! Outer-galactic space oddities! Not-so-wild wild animals! Political intrigue! And Allied pigeons! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, tots and tykes, it's spring at the multiplex, and there is, at...

He's described locally as a "genius masquerading as an ordinary person," a creative whirlwind, finan-cial powerhouse and folk hero rolled into one. Yet even that can't quite measure the effect "The Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson has had on...

Morgan Freeman said he didn't read James Patterson's novel "Along Came a Spider" before making the film of the same name. Freeman stars again as criminal profiler Alex Cross, whom he played in 1997's "Kiss the Girls," which also was adapted from a...

Friday April 6, 2001      There are both mysteries and surprises in "Along Came a Spider," a reasonably diverting albeit frequently improbable thriller, but the biggest mystery of all is hardly a surprise: How does star Morgan Freeman manage to give a...

Pierce Brosnan throws himself into his third outing as Bond, James Bond, in the 20th chapter in the eternally popular series spawned by the half-forgotten novels by Ian Fleming. This time, the chief Bond women, Jinx and Miranda Pike, are played by...