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Leonor Watling stars as Alicia in "Talk to Her"
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TALK TO HER
Love, death (and some near approximations of same) are writer-director Pedro Almodóvar's subjects, but he transcends those huge, enigmatic topics with the brilliant, utterly original structure of this sublime and humane film. |
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ABOUT SCHMIDT
Jack Nicholson gives the performance of his life in this portrait of a newly retired, emotionally inarticulate Midwestern insurance executive trying to get in touch with his feelings in Alexander Payne's heartbreaking comedy. |
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FAR FROM HEAVEN
Director Todd Haynes's acute tribute to the style and manner of 1950s domestic melodrama — see the collected works of Douglas Sirk in this era — somehow generates authentic dramatic power as we watch a marriage based on lies fall into shreds. |
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ROAD TO PERDITION
Tom Hanks gives an intense, almost silent performance as a mob hit man forced to run for his life — and take his son with him — in Sam Mendes' darkly atmospheric recreation of the Middle West in the 1930s. |
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MONSOON WEDDING
A vast and fractious Indian family succeeds — after many hilarious difficulties — in marrying off a reluctant daughter in Mira Nair's smart, funny and ultimately poignant comedy. |
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ABOUT A BOY
Hugh Grant hilariously redefines the word "playboy" in the first half of this film (directed with surprising tact by the Weitz Brothers, better known for American Pie), then gets human, without losing his comic edge, under the influence of the title waif. |
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ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
A socially well-mixed group of variously distracted Danes embark on the study of a romance language that turns into an embrace of the language of love in writer-director Lore Scherfig's sharp but sweet-spirited little comedy. |
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THE PIANIST
He's the last man you can imagine living through the five year horror of the Warsaw ghetto in World War II — a willowy, impractical, anti-heroic artist. But Adrien Brody's care, alertness and patience in the title role turns Roman Polanski's film into one of the great epics of survival. |
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8 MILE
All right, it's raw populism, but Curtis Hanson's semi-autobiographical life of Eminem has energy and conviction and the rapper's portrayal of someone very like himself has earthy authenticity — and star quality to burn. This kid could be a movie star — if he wants to be. |
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SAFE CONDUCT
The French continued to make movies during German's World War II occupation and Bertrand Tavernier's epic reconstruction of how they managed is a loving, lengthy tribute to the goofiness and gallantry of show folks soldiering on in impossible conditions. |
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TALK TO HER, directed by Pedro Almodóvar, Spain
Movie-making sends more young phenoms into early burnout than Olympic gymnastics. But Almodóvar defies the odds: the quirky melodramas of this one-time bad boy get better, richer, deeper. Talk to Her is about two young women, each in a coma, and the two men who love them. Where does devotion end and obsession take over? How can violation beget a miracle? How can a perfect ending seem like a perfect beginning? Pedro has all the answers in this unpredictable miracle of a movie. |
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GANGS OF NEW YORK, Martin Scorsese, U.S.
He's been dreaming of this project since 1970. Now the dream — which, being a Scorsese film, is an urban nightmare — comes true in a teeming tale of Anglo gangs vs. new Irish immigrants in 1863. Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio nurse their rivalry within a huge fresco of greed, ambition, betrayal and skull-cracking hatred. What did those roiling emotions create? The American city. And, here, a grand and brutal epic. |
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RUSSIAN ARK, Alexander Sokurov, Russia
If ever a movie demanded to be seen twice, this is it: a tour of the Hermitage Museum, for 150 years the Winter Palace of the czars. First time around, breathe in the atmosphere and intrigue, as the Romanov royalty scampers down the long corridors, dances at lavish balls (with 800 costumed extras) and doles out death sentences or is wiped out by them. The second time, concentrate on the camerawork — for virtually the entire film is a single, 87-min. Steadicam shot! It's perhaps the most breathtaking movie stunt ever attempted, and Sokurov aces it with the speed, grace and impossible equilibrium of the young Jackie Chan. What film could be more astonishing than Russian Ark? Only The Making of... |
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DEVDAS, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, India
There's no more colorful introduction to Bollywood than this all-singing, all-dancing, all-fired spectacle. The plot, based on a 1917 novel, is good-old family-values propaganda: rich boy (all-world charmer Shahrukh Khan) leaves home, abandons girl friend (former Miss World Aishwarya Rai), dallies with prostitute (worldly-wise Madhuri Dixit), suffers nobly. It's played with such commitment that the tritest plot twists seem worth believing — and singing about, in nine nifty production numbers. Beyond that, Devdas is a visual ravishment, with huge sets, fabulous frocks and beautiful people to fill them; it has a grandeur the old Hollywood moguls would have loved. |
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MINORITY REPORT, Steven Spielberg, U.S.
In this Mensa-smart fantasy epic, the year is 2054, but it might be 2002, with the government rounding up citizens before they can commit a crime. Instead of an Arab-American, the suspect here is Tom Cruise, who also happens to be the town's top mind-cop. Spielberg, jazzed by the plot-and-picture opportunities in opening up and updating Philip K. Dick's 1955 story, creates a gorgeous-grotty amalgam of the retro future. He also is faithful to the vision of a great SF writer, while entertaining the millions of ordinary moviegoers who don't know Dick. |
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TIME OUT, Laurent Cantet, France
When you're out of work you have to keep busy. That's what Vincent (the fascinatingly opaque Aurelien Recoing) does after he's laid off from his position as a white-collar drudge. He drives around, dallies in corporate conference rooms, dreams up a new company and sells shares in it to his family — all because he is loath to tell anyone he's been sacked. This dark, deadpan comedy plumbs the shallows of a man who has been defined by work, and loses his bearings when he loses his job. |
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BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, Michael Moore, U.S.
For once, this sure-of-himself agitator with a camera is of two, three, many minds on an issue. He hates gun violence, and shows through interviews, slide shows and cartoons how Americans pursue blood lust at the point of a rifle barrel. But Moore loves guns! He's an NRA member who won a marksmanship award in high school. This confliction, along with a born entertainer's skill at manipulating images (and statistics), makes Columbine Moore's richest tragicomedy yet — and the top-grossing documentary ever. |
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SPIRITED AWAY, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan
A lonely girl wanders into a bathhouse run by ghosts in this vigorous delight from the master of Eastern animation. Tyrannical queens, boy-dragons and a fabulously stinky river god populate the finest example of traditional cartoonery since Aladdin. It's sweet, scary and, like any good ghost story, perfectly haunting. |
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THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS, Peter Jackson, New Zealand
It's hard to say this one is even better than The Fellowship of the Ring. The first two episodes are so different in tone and scope. Towers, focusing on the siege of Rohan, is a very war-y war movie, with eerie reverbs of the West's current fear of spectral terrorists. But the film's real battle is within Frodo the Hobbit as he comes close to surrendering himself to the sick glow of the One Ring. Spectacle, romance, wizardly film craft: this superior sequel is about three-fifths of everything movies can do. |
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THE QUIET AMERICAN, Phillip Noyce, Australia-Vietnam
A cynic with a suitcase, Graham Greene roamed the world in search of human perfidy. He found plenty in Vietnam in the early '50s, where Americans and Europeans argued over who would get to run and ruin this beautiful country. Noyce is alert to all the nuances — as is Michael Caine, a weary revenger defending his right to a lovely Saigon mistress. The movie twins nicely with another fine Noyce effort, Rabbit-Proof Fence, a true story, set in the 1930s, about Aboriginal girls stolen from their families by the Australian government so they can be raised and "civilized" by whites. With crisp authority and deft artistry, both films speak sternly to would-be colonizers: Hands off these people! They're not yours. |
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