BIG SCREEN Australia (PG-13) -- Director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) barely finished his epic drama about the wartime romance between a dainty aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) and a rough-and-tumble cattle herder (Hugh Jackman) in time to meet its release date. The 10-minute reel of footage distributor 20th Century Fox recently screened used snippets of music from Gone With the Wind, so you know Luhrmann is aiming for an Epic, capital E and all.
When filmmaker David Frankel showed a rough cut of his film The Devil Wears Prada to his boss, Fox 2000 Pictures president Elizabeth Gabler, she was so pleased that she handed him a copy of another best-selling book to adapt into a movie: Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog.
As if turkey recipes, Black Friday bargain hunting and year-end vacations weren't enough, here's something else to work into your busy schedule: The holiday film avalanche is upon us.
There are two sorts of modern-day Disney cartoons: The ones made by Pixar and everything else. Bolt, the studio's newest release, has traces of Pixar-ish humor and characterizations: The cast of talking animals includes a hamster named Rhino (voiced by Mark Walton) personable enough to have landed a job in Ratatouille's kitchen.
There are certain times in life when hearing the words ''You can tell me everything; you can talk to me'' is the greatest gift a person can receive. Juliette, the protagonist of I've Loved You So Long, is in the midst of a period of withdrawal, silence and great, unnamed inner torment. In a way, the entire movie is one long, expectant wait until Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) reaches the point at which she can build the courage to stop wielding her unspoken pain as a shield against the world...
BIG SCREEN Twilight (PG-13) -- The wait is finally over for the legions of fans who have been anticipating director Catherine (Thirteen) Hardwicke's adaptation of the first book in Stephenie Meyer's series of novels about a teenage girl (Kristen Stewart) in love with a vampire (Robert Pattinson). Sort of like Wuthering Heights, with fangs.
Quantum of Solace is the first James Bond picture that technically can be labeled a sequel -- and it feels like one, too. The plot of the 22nd 007 adventure picks up directly where the previous one left off, with Bond (Daniel Craig) looking to avenge the death of his beloved Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), who was killed at the end of Casino Royale.
For its first 20 or so minutes, Synecdoche, New York, the directorial debut of the Oscar-winning, mind-bending screenwriter Charlie Kaufman appears to be a meditation on death. We first meet its protagonist, theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), while he's lying in bed listening to a radio talk show host prattle on about how the arrival of fall announces the beginning of the death of everything that bloomed in the spring.
The Dark Knight may have ruled the box office this summer, but for sheer imagination and adventurousness, no comic-book adaptation could top Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Universal Home Entertainment, $30 single-disc DVD, $35 three-disc DVD, $40 Blu-ray). Writer-director Guillermo Del Toro's follow-up to 2004's Hellboy makes the first movie feel like a trailer.
SMALL SCREEN Dirty Money: The Business Of High-End Prostitution (10 p.m. Sunday, CNBC) -- The world's oldest profession is also one of the most lucrative, at least for one segment of the market. This documentary focuses on ''escorts'' -- women who make a staggering $12,000 to $100,000 a day. Which is even more than TV critics, and they don't even have to watch things like . . .
At this weekend's 2008 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, practically every movie being screened between Friday and Tuesday's closing night festivities will be accompanied by a famous face. Jane Lynch, who also stars in the Hollywood comedy Role Models, will attend Friday's screening of I Do & I Don't, followed by Superman Returns' Brandon Routh, who is coming to support his film Fling.
When Casino Royale opened in theaters around the world in November 2006, producer Barbara Broccoli -- daughter of original James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli and keeper of the 007 movie flame -- was a little nervous.
Role Models proves that a drab and formulaic Hollywood studio comedy can still make you laugh hard enough to choke on your popcorn. The casting is the key to the success of this absolutely hilarious crowd-pleaser, which is a spiritual throwback to the 1980s comedies that made Eddie Murphy a superstar by combining a simple premise with loads of ingeniously used four-letter words.
With The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, writer-director Mark Herman attempts to do on film what John Boyne did on the printed page in his 2006 novel: confront the horror of the Holocaust in a story aimed primarily at older children (the movie is being released under the Disney banner in the U.K.)
One of the best summer movies you probably didn't see, Transsiberian (First Look Pictures, $29 DVD, $35 Blu-ray) loses a bit of its widescreen luster on home video, but the movie's bruising suspense remains intact.
Brotherhood (8 p.m. Sunday, Showtime) If you're still lonely for Tony and Carmela and the gang, why not give Brotherhood a try? Kicking off its third season, this drama about a family of Irish Mafia and politicians (and yeah, it's hard to tell which is which) in Rhode Island is the most underwatched series on TV. Brilliantly written and acted, it's every bit as riveting as The Sopranos, and you don't need a dictionary of Italian swear words to watch it. As the season gets underway, the family pol...
Zack and Miri Make a Porno is writer-director Kevin Smith's funniest, sharpest and most polished movie to date. It also is his most mature and emotionally engaging picture, even if it happens to contain one of the grossest sight gags I've ever encountered in a mainstream Hollywood film -- a bit of business so breathtakingly vile I cannot even begin to describe it here.
The title of Clint Eastwood's new movie has a vague horror-flick vibe to it, and Changeling is, in large part, a horror film -- a fact-based story built around the notorious Wineville Chickenville Murders in late-1920s California. But the great darkness and evil at the heart of J. Michael Straczynski's script are not intended to make you jump in your seat and laugh nervously in the dark.
The problem with Hollywood movies about the Hollywood film industry is: You've seen one, you've seen them all. What Just Happened, which is based on the nonfiction book by veteran producer Art Linson (The Untouchables, Fight Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High), purports to be truer than most backstage tell-alls because its story was lived by someone who was actually there (Linson also wrote the screenplay).
You should know going in that you will not be able to digest the beautifully convoluted narrative of Ashes of Time Redux in one viewing, no matter how closely you're paying attention. Originally made in 1994 (the same year Wong Kar Wai made his U.S. breakthrough with Chungking Express), the film has been released in a number of alternate versions and cuts over the ensuing 14 years. This new edit is the director's definitive imagining of his martial arts fantasy, but that fact doesn't make this version...
After the turgid, creatively bankrupt mess of 2005's Revolver, I naturally assumed that writer-director Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch) had finally exhausted the tough-guy milieu that had launched -- and essentially sustained -- his filmmaking career.
Kevin Smith didn't have to push too hard to get Harvey and Bob Weinstein to bankroll his newest film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. All he had to do was tell them the title.
BIG SCREEN Zack and Miri Make a Porno (R) -- Writer-director Kevin Smith pushes the R-rating to its limits with this raunchy but also surprisingly tender comedy about a pair of longtime friends (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks) who decide to make an adult film in order to raise some quick cash.
Stressing out over your weekend spending? That's no fun. You can save a few bucks and still be entertained. Make fancy cocktails. Play a few games. Find new TV channels. Rediscover that being home doesn't have to be a bore.
In the weeks leading up to the election, a number of Hollywood movies and smaller independent productions have invaded theaters, arguing their points with the ferocious bias of Ann Coulter or Keith Olbermann. And viewers who disagree with the message of these zero-tolerance films may feel more accosted than challenged.
Heading into a screening of Pride and Glory, a fellow critic remarked the plot sounded suspiciously similar to We Own the Night, director James Gray's drama from last year about two embattled brothers -- one a cop, the other a miscreant -- whose father was a decorated NYPD veteran.
This past summer's reboot of the Marvel Comics mainstay The Incredible Hulk earned $134 million in the United States, which is only two million more than Ang Lee's much-maligned Hulk grossed in 2003. Although the new version, which starred Edward Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner and was directed by Louis Leterrier, generally received better reviews than its predecessor, the near-identical grosses imply there may be a built-in ceiling to the character's popularity as a movie star, no matter who is in front...
W. was not supposed to be Oliver Stone's new movie. Last November, the iconoclastic director was three weeks from commencing filming on Pinkville, a drama about the 1968 My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War starring Bruce Willis and Woody Harrelson, when the project was halted by the ongoing Hollywood writers strike and eventually dropped by United Artists.
SMALL SCREEN Stylista (9 p.m. Wednesday, The CW) -- Eleven young fashion-obsessed twits compete to see who's the most insipid and irrelevant to the universe. The winner gets a job at Elle magazine for a year. The losers are parachuted into North Korea and forced to dress Kim Jong Il. And the viewers put their own eyes out with sharpened chopsticks.
It was during the making of The Manchurian Candidate, his big-budget, star-studded remake of the 1962 political thriller about a presidential assassination, that director Jonathan Demme had a revelation that would ultimately lead him to Rachel Getting Married.
''Everyone in the house is looking at me like I'm a sociopath!'' complains the high-strung Kym (Anne Hathaway) in Rachel Getting Married. ``What do they expect me to do, burn the house down?''
Watching W., you get a sense of the scrupulous care and respect with which director Oliver Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser approached their movie about the troubled presidency of George W. Bush. This is, for Stone, an unusually restrained and well-behaved film, one that is going to confound viewers expecting a free-for-all demonization of the 43rd president of the United States.
The kind of movie so heartfelt and earnest it makes you feel like a grouch for not surrendering to it, The Secret Life of Bees emotes mightily but says precious little. There's something too perfect and precious about writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood's adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's bestseller, about a 14-year-old girl named Lily (Dakota Fanning) who flees her abusive father (Paul Bettany) in 1964 South Carolina.
Coyote, the opening night film of the 2008 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, offers a unique spin on the well-trodden subject of illegal immigration. Director/co-writer Brian Petersen also stars as Steve, a 31-year-old Arizona millionaire who made his fortune during the Internet boom and is now a little bored with his life, having nothing to engage him except his impending marriage to Katie (Carley Adams).
In many reviews that greeted Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, critics opined that Steven Spielberg's heart didn't seem to be into the fourth screen outing of the iconic adventurer, which explained the movie's sluggish feel. But on the extras-laden two-disc Special Edition sets of the film (Paramount Home Entertainment, $40 DVD and Blu-ray), there is plenty of proof to suggest that whatever the movie's faults, a lack of Spielberg enthusiasm was not one of them.
BIG SCREEN W. (PG-13) -- Director Oliver Stone promises this biopic about the life of President George W. Bush (played by Josh Brolin) will be a ''compassionate'' look at the man. Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Scott Glenn and Richard Dreyfuss make up Bush's cabinet, while James Cromwell is his dad.
The title Body of Lies sounds like something you might catch on Cinemax on a late weekend night -- a movie starring Heather Locklear as the sultry defendant in a scandalous murder trial. It's a generic, clunky title. The movie isn't quite as disposable, but it's not exactly memorable, either.
If the family-oriented fantasy City of Ember wasn't based on the 2003 novel by Jeanne Duprau, you'd swear it had been inspired by a theme-park attraction. Adapted by screenwriter Caroline Thompson (whose previous films include Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas), the movie is an exceedingly slight tale whose entire second half consists primarily of special effects and wonderful set designs.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, director David Zucker said distributor Vivendi Entertainment did not screen An American Carol in advance for reviews because 'those [who] don't like the politics will tend to label the film as `not funny.' '' The implication, of course, is that movie critics are a pitchfork-and-torch mob of raging leftist liberals who will tear down anything that opposes their personal ideologies.
When authors Rachel Cohn and David Levithan decided to collaborate on the novel Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, about two teenagers who meet and fall in love over the course of a single night in the New York City underground music scene, they took turns writing alternate chapters -- Cohn wrote Norah's and Levithan wrote Nick's.
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