A Brighter Summer Day

Bearing in mind Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, this astonishing 230-minute epic by Edward Yang (1991), set over one Taipei school year in the early 60s, would fully warrant the subtitle “A Taiwanese Tragedy.” A powerful statement from Yang's generation about what it means to be Taiwanese, superior even to his recent masterpiece Yi Yi, it has a novelistic richness of character, setting, and milieu unmatched by any other 90s film (a richness only partially apparent in its three-hour version). more...

• by Jonathan Rosenbaum

U

A French children's animation by S. Ellisade and G. Solotareff. more...

• Tags: Animation

U-571

As if to justify yet another unironic war movie, the closing credits of this 2000 feature include dedications to real men in the Allied armed forces who managed to take coding devices from German submarines during World War II. more...

• by Lisa Alspector
• Tags: Drama, War

U, Me Aur Hum

Ajay Devgan directed and stars in the Bollywood romance. more...

U.S. Marshals

Not so much a sequel to The Fugitive as a lazy spin-off that imitates only what was boring and artificially frenetic about that earlier thriller; the little that kept it interesting—Tommy Lee Jones's Oscar-winning inflections, better-than-average direction—is nowhere in evidence. more...

• by Jonathan Rosenbaum

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

Another installment in the singer's deification, this one focusing on his career as an activist. more...

• by J.R. Jones

U-Turn

A fairly enjoyable piece of junk from Oliver Stone (1997) that occasionally recalls Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot—sleazy southwest burg seething with creeps, sexpots, and protracted grudge matches—and is limited only by its occasional pseudoexperimental tics (a carryover from Natural Born Killers) and by its determination to extend its hyperbolic noir plot beyond two hours. more...

• by Jonathan Rosenbaum

U23D

Live footage from the rock band U2's tour in South America. more...

UA 93: Newark to Nowhere

J.J. Walker uses audio recorded by air traffic controllers on 9/11 for his unsettling digital video. more...

• by Bill Stamets

Uforia

Written and directed by John Binder, this is a sweet-tempered, generous comedy on themes that usually get a snide, camp treatment, and it's a pleasant surprise. more...

• by Dave Kehr

Recommended

Ugetsu

The mood of Kenji Mizoguchi's 1953 masterpiece is evoked by the English translation most often given to its title, “Tales of the Pale and Silvery Moon After the Rain.” Based on two 16th-century ghost stories, the film is less a study of the supernatural than a sublime embodiment of Mizoguchi's eternal theme, the generosity of women and the selfishness of men. more...

• by Dave Kehr

The Ugly American

Marlon Brando stars in one of his more likable (if minor) mid-career performances as an American ambassador to a mythical Asian country called Sarkhan, which resembles Thailand, in a very loose adaptation by Stewart Stern of William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick's novel. more...

• by Jonathan Rosenbaum

The Ugly Dachshund

Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette are a husband and wife, each training a dog for a competition, in this 1966 Disney live-action comedy. more...

Ugly Ducklings

Fawn Yacker directed this video documentary about the staging of an LGBT-focused play at a girls' summer camp. more...

The Ugly Truth (R)

Far more ugly than truthful, this leprous romantic comedy stars Katherine Heigl (Knocked Up) as the uptight and overworked producer of a failing Sacramento TV news broadcast. more...

• by Cliff Doerksen
• Tags: Comedy, Romance