BEIJING Chinese helmer and thesp Jiang Wen earned a five-year ban for his film "Devils on the Doorstep" back in 2000. But the multihyphenate variously described as China's most important film director or his country's answer to Marlon Brando says making movies is in...

A much more problematic picture is Rising Sun, made by that pretentious director Phil Kaufman, based on a novel by Michael Crichton (trying for something even spookier than Jurassic Park), and shot by Michael Chapman, an able but often overreaching cameraman. Here the plotting...

The Phoenix Suns figured they'd have an easy time with the Houston Rockets, especially once they learned Tracy McGrady was out with a back injury. But the Suns struggled most of the game and didn't secure their 11th straight victory until the final minutes.Steve Nash...

Buruma is a Dutch-born American critic and editor who has written extensively about Japan and Japanese culture. In the following review of Rising Sun, he compares Crichton's negative portrayal of the Japanese to the German anti-Semitic film Jew Süss (1940) and to a contemporary Japanese anti-Semitic book, The Day the Dollar Becomes Paper.

Nathan is an American novelist, dramatist, and critic. In the following favorable review of Rising Sun, he contends that Crichton's presentation of Japanese-American economic relations raises important questions "about America's condition at the end of the American century."

In the following review of Rising Sun, Greenfeld faults the book for its stereotyping of the Japanese people and suggests that the novel's popularity may render legitimate criticism of Japan and Japanese society suspect.