- Paris, 10 January:
 Release of Selon Matthieu (To Matthew), the latest film from Xavier Beauvois. Matthieu (Benoît Magimel) and Eric (Antoine Chappey) are two brothers who work at the same factory as their father (Fred Ulysse) in Normandy. When his father is dismissed for smoking on the factory floor, Matthieu is incensed and tries to have him reinstated, in vain. His brother has just got married and, with a child and mortgage on the way, is reluctant to stir up trouble. Likewise, Matthieu's fellow workers refuse to get involved. Then tragedy strikes; Matthieu's father is killed in a road accident. Convinced that his father was driven to suicide, Matthieu resolves to have his revenge. His plan is to lure his boss's wife, Claire (Nathalie Baye), into an affair and so make his boss a laughing stock. Seducing Claire proves easier than he could have imagined, but then the scheme goes awry. Matthieu and Claire fall in love.
 - Paris, 10 January: From Gabon comes first-time director Imunga Ivanga's Dôlé (aka L'Argent). This is a droll film that knows how to turn the tragic into candid satire. In the director's hands the narrative often takes on the demeanor of a documentary. Dôlé offers a Gabonese perspective on the global crisis facing today's youth. With familial and societal structures crumbling, young people are increasingly thrown back for support on each other and an all-encompassing international pop culture. This film reveals that, whether in Libreville or in our own inner cities and suburbs the underlying causes of youthful disaffection can be remarkably similar. Dôlé provides one of the most affectionate and affecting portraits of African youth poised precariously on the cusp of modernity. Winner of the first-place Gold Tanit at the 2000 Carthage Film Festival, It has already been widely compared to François Truffaut's iconic coming-of-age film -- a kind of Le Quatre cents coups in Gabon. -- Full story.
- Washington, DC, 11 January: The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously today to approve the sale of Time Warner to America Online, creating the world's largest media firm. The deal was okayed after AOL agreed to open up its Instant Messaging service to rivals.
- Los Angeles, 11 January: The Producers Guild of America has nominated Almost Famous, Billy Elliott, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich and Gladiator as the best movie productions of 2000. The Guild's 12th annual Golden Laurel Awards will be presented March 3.
- Paris, 17 January:
 French humor isn't exactly subtle --after all, Le Placard (The Closet), directed by Francis Veber, has a pretty broad premise: a nebbish (Daniel Auteuil) who works at a condom manufacturer learns he's about to be fired; with the help of his neighbor, he pretends to be gay so his boss can't fire him without seeming prejudiced. Then a bigoted coworker (Gérard Depardieu) tries to worm his way into the nebbish's good graces because he's afraid of being fired. In the wrong hands, Le Placard could be ham-fisted slapstick. What makes this movie truly delightful is the superb understatement with which every gag is handled; even the sight of Auteuil wearing a giant condom tip on his head has an impeccable deadpan grace. All the performances are excellent; Depardieu's smarm is particularly delicious. Each scene takes a new twist of social discomfort and befuddlement in this winning comedy. -- Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com
 - New York, 19 January: In The Pledge, Jack Nicholson is detective Jerry Black, a respected and well-liked veteran of the Reno police force retiring to a life of angling with more than a little apprehension. Thus he jumps into a murder case, the slaying of a little girl, a mere six hours from retirement and makes a promise to the grieving mother to catch the killer. As his partner (an effectively abrasive Aaron Eckhart) squeezes a confession out of the severely mentally handicapped suspect (a thoroughly unsettling performance by Benicio Del Toro), Jerry is convinced that they've got the wrong man. As in Sean Penn's previous work, this is an actors' piece. Nicholson plays Jerry with restlessness under his easy-going, smiling calm; his patient fisherman's heart leaps at every nibble while he casts for a murder suspect. And Del Toro, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, and Mickey Rourke make striking impressions in their single-scene appearances. Penn's ensemble of characters also includes Patricia Clarkson, Tom Noonan, Michael O'Keefe, Sam Shepard and Harry Dean Stanton. Penn is less concerned with the mystery than the emotional turmoil and Jerry's state of mind, interrupting moments of calm with jagged cuts and discomforting images (including some especially disturbing crime scene photos). Jerry's instincts and methods are sound and his sensitivity is real -- he takes in a battered single mom (Robin Wright Penn) and her little girl, and develops a rewarding family life -- but his passion for justice turns to unhealthy, destructive obsession. That's ultimately what we're left with at the conclusion of this often off-putting but ultimately fascinating film. The truth will not always set you free. -- Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com
 - Park Cities, 27 January:
 The juries for this year's Sundance Film Festival: (dramatic) Darren Arnofsky, Joan Chen, Kasi Lemmons, Gavin Smith and Bingham Ray; (documentary) Randy Barbato, R. J. Cutter, Anne Makepeace, Merata Mita and Freida Lee Mock. Grand Jury Prize winners were Kate Davis' documentary Southern Comfort and Henry Bean's dramatic feature The Believer. Special Jury Prizes went to Edet Belzberg for Children Underground (documentary) and to Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek for In the Bedroom. The documentary Director's Award was presented to Stacy Peralta for Dogtown and Z-Boys; John Cameron Mitchell won the dramatic Director's Award for Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Those two films were also honored with Audience Awards. Also honored with Audience Awards were Tom Shepard's documentary Scout's Honor and Wo de fu qin mu qin (The Road Home) by Yimou Zhang (world cinema). Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan won the Waldo Salt Screenwriten Award for Momento. This year's recipient of the Tribute to Independent Vision Award was actress Julianne Moore.
 - Paris, 31 January: If you crave an over-the-top historical kung fu-fantasy epic with a good dose of voluptuous nudity, bravura machismo, and passions so intense they verge on ridiculous, then Le Pacte des loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf), directed by Christophe Gans, is your movie. Based (loosely) on an 18th-century legend, this French film follows a hunky scientist (Samuel Le Bihan, who's sort of a second-string Christopher Lambert) and his Iroquois sidekick/spiritual partner (Mark Dacascos) as they pursue a monstrous wolf ravaging the French countryside. Along the way Le Bihan gets entwined with a beautiful noblewoman (Émilie Dequenne) and a gorgeous prostitute (Monica Belluci) with secrets. The plot grows more and more incomprehensible, but the mix of torrid emotions, outrageous action sequences, and lurid titillation is really what the movie is about. Ignore the highbrow philosophizing and confused political intrigue; just enjoy the sensual images. -- Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com
- New York, 9 February:
 Filmgoers have had to wait a long time for Hannibal, and now he's back, and he's still hungry. Ten years after The Silence of the Lambs, Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, reprising his Oscar-winning role) is living the good life in Italy, studying art and sipping espresso. FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore, replacing Jodie Foster), on the other hand, hasn't had it so good -- an outsider from the start, she's now a quiet, moody loner who doesn't play bureaucratic games and suffers for it. A botched drug raid results in her demotion -- and a request from Lecter's only living victim, Mason Verger (Gary Oldman, uncredited), for a little Q and A. Little does Clarice realize that the hideously deformed Verger -- who, upon suggestion from Dr. Lecter, peeled off his own face -- is using her as bait to lure Dr. Lecter out of hiding, quite certain he'll capture the good doctor. Taking the basic plot contraptions from Thomas Harris's baroque novel, Hannibal is so stylistically different from its predecessor that it forces you to take it on its own terms. Director Ridley Scott gives the film a sleek, almost European look that lets you know that, unlike the first film (which was about the quintessentially American Clarice), this movie is all Hannibal. Does it work? Yes -- but only up to a point. Scott adeptly sets up an atmosphere of foreboding, but it's all buildup for anticlimax, as Verger's plot for abducting Hannibal (and feeding him to man-eating wild boars) doesn't really deliver the requisite visceral thrills, and the much-ballyhooed climatic dinner sequence between Clarice, Dr. Lecter, and a third unlucky guest wobbles between parody and horror. Hopkins and Moore are both first-rate, but the film contrives to keep them as far apart as possible, when what made Silence so amazing was their interaction. When they do connect it's quite thrilling, but it's unfortunately too little too late. -- Mark Englehart, Amazon.com
- New York, 12 February: Despite the fact that 80 films were screened at the Sundance Film Festival last month, only eight filmmakers signed deals with major indie distributors, USA Today reports.
- Paris, 14 February:
 Release of La Faute à Voltaire (Blame It on Voltaire), which won the Cinema for Peace and the Luigi De Laurentiis Awards at last year's Venice Film Festival. Having pursued a successful career as an actor, Tunisian born Abdel Kechiche makes a promising debut as a film director with this good humoured yet poignant drama about an illegal immigrant and his socially excluded friends during his stay in France. Whilst the film has its faults -- some of the plot developments are totally unbelievable and some of the characters are far nearer to sitcom stereotypes than reality -- it manages to paint an engaging and generally convincing portrait of those social groups we rarely see in cinema -- namely the homeless, illegal immigrants, and people with mental illness. There are also some pleasing comic touches to offset some of the harsher realism which the film broaches but doesn't seem to have the courage to tackle too seriously. In the role of Jallel, Sami Bouajila confirms his standing as one of France's leading actors. Bouajila has both the physique and the personality to be convincing in this kind of role, and manages to bring out in the film its three strongest elements: its poetry, comedy and humanism. Élodie Bouchez is somewhat less convincing in her role -- indeed it is hard to see what exactly attracts Bouajila's character to hers -- but her skill in handling a very difficult part becomes apparent as the film progresses. The film's most touching moments are the scenes with Bouajila and Aure Atika in the first (and far superior) half of the film. As a social realist drama, La Faute à Voltaire doesn't quite make the grade, but that presumably is not its director's intention. The film does have any great political ambitions, although it may perhaps change slightly the way we regard illegal immigrants and homeless people. Rather, it's a touching and humorous portrayal of how people who literally have nothing form relationships and attempt to make a life for themselves in a society that offers them little in the way of support. -- James Travers, FrenchFilms
- Los Angeles, 1 March: Legendary child actress Margaret O'Brien has pulled her Oscar® from a charity auction, officials at the Sacramento AIDS Foundation said, at the request of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
- New York, 16 March:
 Like Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the Gates opens with a pivotal event of World War II -- the German invasion of Stalingrad -- re-created in epic scale, as ill-trained Russian soldiers face German attack or punitive execution if they flee from the enemy's advance. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud captures this madness with urgent authenticity, creating a massive context for a more intimate battle waged amid the city's ruins. Embellished from its basis in fact, the story shifts to an intense cat-and-mouse game between a Russian shepherd raised to iconic fame and a German marksman whose skill is unmatched in its lethal precision. Vassily Zaitzev (Jude Law) has been sniping Nazis one bullet at a time, while the German Major König (Ed Harris) has been assigned to kill Vassily and spare Hitler from further embarrassment. There's love in war as Vassily connects with a woman soldier (Rachel Weisz), but she is also loved by Danilov (Joseph Fiennes), the Soviet officer who promotes his friend Vassily as Russia's much-needed hero. This romantic rivalry lends marginal interest to the central plot, but it's not enough to make this a classic war film. Instead it's a taut, well-made suspense thriller isolated within an epic battle, and although Annaud and cowriter Alain Godard (drawing from William Craig's book and David L. Robbins's novel The War of the Rats) fail to connect the parallel plots with any lasting impact, the production is never less than impressive. Highly conventional but handled with intelligence and superior craftsmanship, this is warfare as strategic entertainment, without compromising warfare as a manmade hell on Earth. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
 - Los Angeles, 25 March:
 In one of the tightest Oscar® races in recent memory, Ridley Scott's epic sword-and-sandal revival Gladiator took home top honors Sunday at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards, winning five awards including Best Picture and Best Actor for its avenging, armor-clad hero, Russell Crowe. The film edged out Ang Lee's martial-arts romance Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Steven Soderbergh's gritty drug-war ensemble thriller Traffic, which both picked up four awards, including Best Director for Soderbergh and Best Foreign Film for the Mandarin-language Crouching Tiger. To the surprise of virtually no one, the Oscar® also belonged to Julia Roberts, who was named Best Actress for her title role as the push-up-bra-wearing legal crusader in Soderbergh's real-life tale, Erin Brockovich. Soderbergh, meanwhile, received Best Director honors for Traffic. It's only the fifth time in Academy history that the prize has gone to someone other than the winner of the Directors Guild's top prize (which went to Ang Lee earlier this month for Crouching Tiger). "Suddenly, going to work tomorrow doesn't seem like such a good idea," said Soderbergh, who was nominated for both Traffic and Erin Brockovich and initially sparked debate over whether Academy members might split their votes and leave him empty-handed. Traffic also picked up Best Adapted Screenplay honors for Stephen Gaghan and Best Supporting Actor for Benicio Del Toro. In one of the night's biggest surprises, Marcia Gay Harden was named Best Supporting Actress for Pollock. And Cameron Crowe won Best Screenplay honors (his first) for his most personal work yet, the semi-autobiographical rock nostalgia trip, Almost Famous. -- Full story.
- London, 4 April:
 Featuring a blousy, winningly inept size-12 heroine, Bridget Jones's Diary -- which premieres here today -- is a fetching adaptation of Helen Fielding's runaway bestseller. The normally sylphlike Renée Zellweger wolfed pasta to gain poundage to play "singleton" Bridget, a London-based publicist who divides her free time between binge eating in front of the TV, downing Chardonnay with her friends, and updating the diary in which she records her negligible weight fluctuations and romantic misadventures of the year. Things start off badly at Christmas when her mother tries to set her up with seemingly standoffish lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), whom Bridget accidentally overhears dissing her. Instead she embarks on a disastrous liaison with her raffish boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant, infinitely more likeable when he's playing a baddie instead of his patented tongue-tied fops). Eventually, Bridget comes to wonder if she's let her pride prejudice her against the surprisingly attractive Mr. Darcy. If the plot sounds familiar, that's because Fielding's novel was itself a retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, whose romantic male lead is also named Mr. Darcy. An extra ironic poke in the ribs is added by the casting of Firth, who played Austen's haughty hero in the acclaimed BBC adaptation of Austen's novel. First-time director Sharon Maguire directs with confident comic zest, while Zellweger twinkles charmingly, fearlessly baring her cellulite and pulling off a spot-on English accent. Like Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill (both of which were written by this film's co-screenwriter, Richard Curtis), Bridget Jones's stock-in-trade is a very English self-deprecating sense of humor, a mild suspicion of Americans (especially if they're thin and successful), and a subtly expressed analysis of thirtysomething fears about growing up and becoming a "smug married." The whole is, as Bridget would say, v. good. -- Leslie Felperin, Amazon.com
- New York, 6 April:
 Just because a film about drugs is not a scorching sermon, and includes scenes of happy party-goers smoking and sniffing an array of substances, does not necessarily mean that it is encouraging such habits. Indeed we don't need to be told that drugs are bad, since the decline and downfall of George Jung (Johnny Depp), the real-life subject of Blow, is example enough. As a bouncy, go-getting Bostonian who moves to California, the young Jung sold pot before becoming the key American figure who took powder cocaine from being an obscure illegal drug to a massive billion-dollar business. Jung had the Lear jets, the salivating women, the houses with maids, the untrammelled pleasure; yet Ted Demme's film -- littered with such illustration of indulgence -- also features the border-crossings, illicit flights, money-laundering, and murder. He does, however, know just when to drop in light-hearted, even frivolous, moments. Blow is also a metaphor for 30 years of American culture, so the innocence of the 60s, the decadence of the 70s, and the harshness of the 80s are all filtered through George. Furthermore, the film finally becomes a family-centred love-story, specifically about what happens when someone who can't afford to care about anyone finally discovers love. Jung, by the way, will be in jail until 2014. -- Full story.
- New York, 18 May:
 Shrek, a screwball fable from debuting directors Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson that opens nationwide today, also looks good enough to justify some preening. Based on a children's book by William Steig, the film represents a new peak in computer animation from PDI/ DreamWorks - the folks who brought you Antz. But this time they've added humans to the mix. Shrek, voiced by Mike Myers with the same Scottish burr he gave Fat Bastard in the last Austin Powers flick, is a big, green, stinking ogre who sticks close to his home in the swamps to avoid people who call him a big, green, stinking ogre. But then the badass Lord Farquaad (voiced by John Lithgow), a three-foot-tall bully with a giant ego, demands that Shrek rescue Farquaad's feisty intended, Princess Fiona (voiced by Cameron Diaz), from a fire-breathing lady dragon who has her mojo going for Shrek's pal Donkey (brayed to comic perfection by Eddie Murphy). Insiders will tell you that Farquaad is DreamWorks chief Jeffrey Katzenberg's revenge on his former Disney boss Michael Eisner. What, just because Farquaad's kingdom is a theme park with turnstiles and his subjects include Pinocchio, Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Forget the in-jokes, the moral messages about beauty being skin-deep (No! Really?) and the rock soundtrack. By the time Smash Mouth sing the Monkees' hit "I'm a Believer," you'll be a believer, too. What matters about Shrek is the wonder of the photorealistic animation -- only God can make a tree, but a million digital polygons come damn close -- the humor of the storytelling and the way the characters touch your heart without making you puke. Cannes judges might blanch at the product tie-ins (green ketchup from Heinz!), but Shrek is a world-class charmer that could even seduce the Academy when it hands out the first official animation Oscar® next year. A hermit hero whose farts kill fish, the first smart ass to talk onscreen since Ace Ventura, a hidden dragon of a princess who sings off-key and a villain based on Disney's CEO -- what's not to like? -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
 - Cannes, 20 May: Nanni Moretti's latest film, La Stanza del figlio (The Son's Room), which he also wrote and starred in, has won the coveted Golden Palm for features at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Winner for short films was David Greenspan's Bean Cake. The Grand Prize of the Jury went to Michael Haneke's La Pianiste, and the Jury Prize for short films was shared by Irvine Allan's Daddy's Girl and Kari Juusonen's Pizza passionata. Best acting awards went to the stars of La Pianiste, Benoît Magimel and Isabelle Huppert. Two Americans shared the Best Director Award: Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There and David Lynch for Mulholland Drive.
- Los Angeles, 25 May:
 Pearl Harbor isn't just another World War II movie -- it's three World War II movies. The first is a glossy romance for the "Dawson's Creek" set, dripping with cornball dialogue and tragic artifice. The second is little more than historical garnish, a factually questionable smattering of events surrounding the 1941 Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The third is a rip-roaring action-adventure -- over 40 minutes of exploding bombs, strafing planes, fire, smoke, and death. This last film is worth seeing -- the only problem is, you'll have to sit through the other two to watch it. -- Full story.
 - New York, 1 June: In a dazzling and yet frequently maddening bid to bring the movie musical kicking and screaming into the 21st century, Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! bears no relation to the many previous films set in the famous Parisian nightclub. This may appear to be Paris in the 1890s, with can-can dancers, bohemian denizens like Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo), and ribaldry at every turn, but it's really Luhrmann's pop-cultural wonderland, where everyone and everything is encouraged (in the third of Luhrmann's "red-curtain" extravaganzas, following Strictly Ballroom and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet) to shatter boundaries of time and texture, colliding and careening in a fast-cutting frenzy that thinks nothing of casting Elton John's "Your Song" 80 years before its time. Nothing is original in this kaleidoscopic, absinthe-inspired love tragedy -- the words, the music, it's all been heard before. But when filtered through Luhrmann's love for pop songs and timeless showmanship, you're reminded of the cinema's power to renew itself while paying homage to its past. Luhrmann's overall success is wildly debatable: the scenario is simple to the point of silliness, and how can you appreciate choreography when it's been diced into hash by attention-deficit editing? Still, there's something genuine brewing between costars Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman (as, respectively, a poor writer and his unobtainable object of desire), and their vocal talents are impressive enough to match Luhrmann's orgy of extraordinary sets, costumes, and digital wizardry. The movie's novelty may wear thin, along with its shallow indulgence of a marketable soundtrack, but Luhrmann's inventiveness yields moments that border on ecstasy, when sound and vision point the way to a moribund genre's joyously welcomed revival. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 15 June:
 In Sexy Beast, which opens here and in New York today, a retired British gangster (Ray Winstone) is trying to keep out of a London heist, despite the efforts of Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a goateed, shaved-headed pit bull of a gangster in this raw, startling film that grabs your attention and never lets go. Gary "Gal" Dove lounges at his villa on the Costa del Sol, with not a care in the world, until his Mediterranean paradise is interrupted by Logan, just arrived to recruit Gal for a burglary led by mob boss Teddy Bass (Ian McShane). Gal refuses the job; Logan won't hear it. He's human nitroglycerine, ready to explode at the slightest provocation, spewing Cockney profanities like armor-piercing bullets. Sexy Beast presents him as hilarious and horrifying, a soloist whose instrument is pure, bilious rage. Kingsley's volatile performance -- the polar opposite of his Oscar®-winning role in Gandhi -- expands the actor's range into startlingly unexpected territory. It's the white-hot center of Sexy Beast, but the feature debut of director Jonathan Glazer (after acclaimed TV commercials and music videos) is equally noteworthy for the performance of the lesser-known Winstone, and also for Glazer's brass-knuckle approach to what is, essentially, a conventional gangland thriller. Glazer's instincts aren't always sound (dream sequences involving a hideous man-rabbit prove a bit too peculiar), but with pugilistic rhythm and a humorous knack for combining well-chosen songs and a rough, kinetic visual style, Sexy Beast is a wild ride. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- Paris, 20 June:
 Pierre-Paul Renders, whose 1992 debut feature Les Sept péchés capitaux (The Seven Deadly Sins) received considerable audience appreciation, has released his next film, Thomas est amoureux (Thomas in Love) after its prize-winning showing at Venice last summer. This Belgian/French film is certainly different from anything else you are likely to have seen. The whole story is conveyed through what Thomas Thomas (yes, that's his name) sees and hears on his computer screen. Actually, it's called a visiophone in the film's not-too-distant future, and everyone seems to have one, regardless of their economic circumstances. Thomas suffers from agoraphobia and sociophobia. We never know what Thomas looks like; we only hear his voice as he interacts with the people that appear on his screen. So, two things are key to the success of the film -- Thomas's voice and the ability of the actors playing the characters on Thomas's screen to be convincing while they stare directly into the camera. Benoît Verhaert provides Thomas's voice and it seems to both capture and define the character in our mind as the film progresses. Thomas never gets really angry about anything, having seemingly resigned himself to having to put up with the failings of the system. It's easy for the viewer to listen to him and begin to empathize with his situation. And quite a situation it is for he must deal with a succession of prostitutes, would-be partners, an inquisitive mother, annoying doctors, insurance representatives, and incompetent repair people. All the actors who play these characters staring into the camera right at us do so with skill. Their characters all come across as real individuals, if a little bit larger than life. There seems to be something different about them all whether it's unusual dress and makeup, or quirky mannerisms, or provocative reactions. Most memorable are Micheline Hardy as Thomas's mother, Aylin Yay as Eva -- the prostitute whom he finds himself attracted to, and Frédéric Topart as his psychiatrist. Clara, Thomas's virtual cybersex partner, has to be seen in action to be appreciated. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 25 June: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences fine-tuned this year's Oscar® rules, including clearing the way for the first Feature Animation trophy and regulating the number of producers eligible for the Best Picture statuette.
- Los Angeles, 29 June:
 A.I. Artificial Intelligence, one of the most eagerly anticipated motion pictures of the year and which is opening nationwide today, turns out to be a dazzling, infuriating epic whose more fitting title would be "2001: A Sentimental Oddity." A bizarre meeting of minds between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, it will probably please neither lovers of the late film maker's cerebral work, or fans of the incorrigible populist's crowd-pleasing blockbusters. But while A.I. makes virtually no sense, loses its way more than once, and is far too long, it's still a genuine original that boasts more imagination and verve than any of this summer's other big releases. -- Full story.
- New York, 19 July: Bette Davis' 1939 Best Actress Oscar® for Jezebel fetched $578,000 at a Christie's auction -- more than twice what was expected. The buyer's name wasn't disclosed.
 - Melbourne, 26 July: Apparently the first ever feature film to be made in the Inuktitut (Canadian Eskimo) language, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is shown at the Melbourne International Film Festival today. This epic tale recounts the ancient Inuit legend of Atanarjuat. Set some thousand years ago in the settlement of Igloolik near the Arctic Circle, Atanarjuat relates how shamanic forces spark deep divisions within a community of nomadic Inuit. The sons of Tulimaq -- Amaqjuaq the Strong One (Innushuk) and Atanarjuat the Fast Runner (Ungalaaq) -- repeatedly clash with the loutish son of Sauri, Oki (Arnatsiaq). The latter is incensed by the fact that Atanarjuat has won the the heart of the beautiful Atuat (Ivalu), to whom he has been betrothed since childhood. Supported by his henchmen, Oki plans an ambush that will eliminate his rivals. Robustly acted by its Inuit cast, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner succeeds as a mythic drama of good versus evil, in which the desires of an individual have to take secondary importance to the harmony of the group. Yet it's also an impressively vivid and detailed depiction of a particular way of life: shelter is provided by carefully-constructed igloos, clothes are fashioned from animal skins, transport consists of husky-drawn sleds, whilst the staple food is walrus or seal meat. And director Zacharias Kunuk also includes ritualistic events, such as a grieving ceremony and a bizarre head-thumping contest between two adversaries, which immerse us yet further into Inuit culture. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 27 July:
 Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes opens nationwide today. This big budget "re-imagining" of the 1968 original departs somewhat from both that classic science fiction film and the source novel by author Pierre Boulle. Mark Wahlberg stars as Leo Davidson, an astronaut of the early 21st century whose unauthorized mission to rescue a chimp companion from a mysterious space storm goes awry when he and his ship are lost through a rip in the fabric of time. Leo crash-lands on a planet where intelligent, talking apes are the dominant species and humans a conquered slave class. Befriending both a chimpanzee activist named Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), who's sympathetic to humans, and a beautiful human rebel, Daena (Estella Warren), Leo quickly becomes a prominent figure of resistance to his fellow humans. This makes him an instant source of irritation for the militant and ambitious General Thade (Tim Roth) and his trusted adjutant, Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan), who intend to hunt Leo down and crush the burgeoning human uprising. War looms between ape and human as Leo and his band head for a sacred site deep in an off-limits desert, where secrets about the planet's ape and human ancestry wait to be revealed. This remake features the original film's star, Charlton Heston, in a cameo role as the dying father of Thade. -- Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
 - New York, 10 August: A welcome throwback to the spooky traditions of Jack Clayton's The Innocents and Robert Wise's The Haunting, Alejandro Amenábar's The Others favors atmosphere, sound, and suggestion over flashy special effects. Set in 1945 on a fog-enshrouded island off the British coast, the film begins with a scream as Grace (Nicole Kidman) awakens from some unspoken horror, perhaps arising from her religiously overprotective concern for her young children, Anne (Alakina Mann) and Nicholas (James Bentley). The children are hypersensitive to light and have lived in a musty manor with curtains and shutters perpetually drawn. With Grace's husband (Christopher Eccleston) presumably lost at war, this ominous setting perfectly accommodates a sense of dreaded expectation, escalating when three strangers arrive in response to Grace's yet-unposted request for domestic help. Led by housekeeper Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan), this mysterious trio is as closely tied to the house's history as Grace's family is -- as are the past occupants seen posthumously posed in a long-forgotten photo album. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 16 August: Five major movie studios -- MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. -- are teaming up for a joint on-demand Web-based movie service for broadband Internet users. The as-yet-unnamed service is due to launch in a few months.
- Great Barrington, 3 September: Pauline Kael, whose long and passionate reviews in the New Yorker won her a devoted following among filmmakers and fans and made her one of the most influential film critics in the world, has died at her home in Massachusetts. She was 82.
- Paris, 5 September:
 Premiere of Une hirondelle a fait le printemps (One Swallow Brought Spring, aka The Girl from Paris), the debut film from Christian Carion. The principal character in this film is decidedly not a girl, as its English title suggests, but a fully adult, thirty-year-old woman. The sexist (and surely, in this day and age, condescending) use of "girl," please assume, is that of the other principal character, Adrien (Michel Serrault), a crusty old farmer in the Rhone Alps whose conservative attitudes remain anchored somewhere in the nineteenth century. As her mother points out, Sandrine (Mathilde Seigner) has a successful career as an instructor in internet training, makes good money, gets to travel. But one night, when she is stuck in gridlocked Paris traffic, she realizes she is suffocating in the city and she decides to pursue her long-time fantasy of becoming a farmer. Off she goes to an agricultural course, with plans to buy a farm. Anchored by an intelligent and incident-rich script by Carion and Eric Assous, Une hirondelle a fait le printemps builds character, making both leads believable, three-dimensional and sympathetic. Seigner portrays Sandrine's determination without it seeming obstinate; she's strong and knows what she wants, but there's an underlying vulnerability as well. When an old boyfriend drops in on her at the farm, she has taken on a healthy glow, indicative of her outdoor work and her inner contentment. He tells her she is beautiful -- and indeed she is. Serrault, a veteran of 100 films, finds the right balance of gruff stubbornness, experienced wisdom, and lonely neediness. Both Adrien and Sandrine are changed by their shared experiences and the changes are rendered fully credible by the thoughtful screenplay as interpreted in subtle and expert performances. -- Full story.
- Paris, 5 September:
 Bavarian director Michael Haneke, best known for Funny Games (1997) and Code inconnu... (2000), is in traditional hard-hitting mode for La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher), a psychological drama based on a novel by Elfriede Jelinek. Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) is in her late 30s, teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory, and lives with her domineering mother (Annie Girardot). Theirs is a love-hate relationship, with the mother having a stranglehold on every aspect of her daughter's life. When one of her students, Walter Klemmer (Benoît Magimel), pursues her with the aim of beginning an affair, Kohut coldly rejects him. This only makes Klemmer more determined, however, and Kohut eventually relents -- but with conditions. She puts them down in a letter, the details of which lead to horrific consequences. Haneke's take on the psychological drama ditches the flashback devices that might explain Kohut's nature. Simply shot with clever use of close-ups, together with a score predominantly comprising Schubert, he carves out Kohut's grim reality: a failed concert pianist with more than just one skeleton in the cupboard. Haneke -- and Huppert -- skilfully present a woman who has no power in, or over, her life. The script has its flaws. While the isolated, stifled Kohut is credible, Klemmer's rapid transformation isn't plausible. However, take nothing away from the good performances by Huppert and Magimel, who both earned acting gongs at Cannes earlier this year. By opting for a bleak finale, Haneke ensures his film remains a dark, intelligent, and thought-provoking examination of female repression -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 12 September: Hollywood virtually shut down as a result of Tuesday's devastating terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Last night's Latin Grammys were canceled outright, and Sunday's Prime-Time Emmy Awards were indefinitely postponed. New York's entertainment epicenter, Times Square, virtually empty Wednesday morning, as Broadway shut down, movie theaters closed and Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week canceled its remaining events in nearby Bryant Park. The tents constructed for the fashion shows are expected to be used for emergency purposes. Production on most TV and movie projects halted in the wake of the incidents, which have left thousands dead. Collateral Damage, which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a man whose family is killed in front of him when a downtown skyscraper is hit by a massive bomb blast, has been indefinitely postponed from its October 5 release. The weekend junket for Big Trouble, the Tim Allen-led ensemble comedy, has been canceled and its release pushed back from next weekend to sometime next year. The film climaxes with a bomb at an airport. The Walt Disney Co., after closing all of its theme parks Tuesday, reopening Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California. Madonna and The Black Crowes also canceled Tuesday night concerts in Los Angeles. U2 has canceled its concerts scheduled for Friday and Saturday. And Janet Jackson, Tool, Godsmack, Maxwell and Ben Folds have also postponed dates. The Toronto Film Festival suspended screenings on Tuesday. David Angell, the Emmy®-winning co-creator of Frasier and Cheers and his wife, Lynn, were among the 58 victims on Flight 11, the first plane to be crashed into the World Trade Center. Actress-photographer Berry Berensen, sister of Marisa and widow of Anthony Perkins, was also on that flight. CNN legal commentator Barbara Olson also was on the ill-fated aircraft that hit the Pentagon. -- Full story.
 - Los Angeles, 19 September: Oscar might not be ready to move into his fancy new Hollywood digs. Security fears and squabbles with the developer are forcing Academy Awards organizers to consider moving next year's ceremony from the nearly finished Kodak Theater -- what's supposed to become the permanent Hollywood home to the Oscarcast -- back to the Shrine Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles. Talks of a switch come after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave an ultimatum to TrizecHahn Corporation, the developer of the 3,600-seat Kodak Theater, to answer all concerns over the site or face cancellation -- at least for this year. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 25 September: The governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted tonight to contribute $1 million to aid victims of the terrorist attacks. The gift is the largest in the non-profit organization's history.
- Los Angeles, 28 September:
 Charge your micro-mini cell phones and whip up some orange mocha Frappuccino, 'cuz Zoolander is on the runway, and you're gonna laugh your booty off! Based on a sketch created by writer-director Ben Stiller and co-writer Drake Sather for the 1996 VH1/Vogue Fashion Awards, Zoolander is a delirious send-up of New York's fashion scene as epitomized by male model Derek Zoolander (Stiller), a dimwitted preener who's oblivious to a The Manchurian Candidate-like plot to turn him into a brainwashed assassin. Tipped off by a reporter (Christina Taylor), Zoolander teams with rival model Hansel (Owen Wilson) to foil the poodle-haired fashion designer (Will Ferrell) who's behind the nefarious scheme. The goofy plot's only half the fun; with roles for Stiller's parents (Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara), dozens of celebrity cameos, endlessly quotable dialogue, and improvisational energy to spare, Zoolander is very smart about being very stupid, easily matching the Austin Powers franchise for inspired comedic lunacy. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
 - Paris, 10 October: Veteran French film maker Jacques Rivette was one of the original Cahiers du Cinéma film critics who turned director in the 1950s. And at 73, he shows he can still skilfully craft an intricate tale. Va savoir (Who Knows?) is a romantic comedy that follows the lives of six people in Paris. Each one of them is involved in two relationships, yet are still searching for that elusive love. At the core of this ensemble piece is Camille (Jeanne Balibar), who returns to Paris to play the lead role in Pirandello's play As You Desire Me. In Paris, she decides to meet her ex-lover, Pierre (Jacques Bonnaffé), thus setting off a series of coincidences that eventually throws all six characters together. Rivette's examination of the nature of relationships is witty and light-hearted. The plot is made more complicated with the play-within-a-play device (a recurrent theme in his films). By suggesting that there is a fine line between life and art, he makes the happy ending slightly more palatable. This only works because Rivette's characters are able to accept each other fully, warts and all. -- Full story.
- New York, 12 October:
 An award-winner at the Cannes, Toronto and New York film festivals, David Lynch's new film, Mulholland Dr. opens here and in Los Angeles today. Pandora couldn't resist opening the forbidden box containing all the delusions of mankind, and let's just say Lynch, in this film, indulges a similar impulse. Employing a familiar film noir atmosphere to unravel, as he coyly puts it, "a love story in the city of dreams," Lynch establishes a foreboding but playful narrative in the film's first half before subsuming all of Los Angeles and its corrupt ambitions into his voyeuristic universe of desire. Identities exchange, amnesia proliferates, and nightmare visions are induced, but not before we've become enthralled by the film's two main characters: the dazed and sullen femme fatale, Rita (Laura Elena Harring), and the pert blonde just-arrived from Ontario (played exquisitely by Naomi Watts) who decides to help Rita regain her memory. Triggered by a rapturous Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison's "Crying," Lynch's best film since Blue Velvet splits glowingly into two equally compelling parts. -- Fionn Meade, Amazon.com
 - Los Angeles, 22 October: K-PAX, the 1995 novel by Charles Brewer, becomes this film from director Iain Softley. After a mugging incident at New York's Grand Central Station, Prot (Kevin Spacey), a man who claims to be an alien from the planet K-PAX, is turned over to a public mental hospital and the care of Dr. Mark Powell (Jeff Bridges). When medication fails to alter Prot's insistence that he is visiting from another world on a fact-finding mission, Powell gets more involved with his patient, who seems to have a calming effect on the other residents of his ward. At first convinced that Prot is a delusional who can be treated, Powell begins to wonder if his bizarre patient's story is true, particularly after the hospital's doctors find that Prot possesses the baffling ability to see ultraviolet light. As the date grows nearer when Prot claims he must leave Earth (a "class BA-III planet"), Powell becomes increasingly concerned that a psychiatric breakthrough must occur by then. K-PAX co-stars Alfre Woodard and Mary McCormack. -- Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Los Angeles, 26 October:
 Already honored for its screenplay on the international festival circuit, Donnie Darko opens here today. This unclassifiable but stunningly original film obliterates the walls between teen comedy, science fiction, family drama, horror, and cultural satire--and remains wildly entertaining throughout. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Donnie, a borderline-schizophrenic adolescent for whom there is no difference between the signs and wonders of reality (a plane crash that decimates his house) and hallucination (a man-sized, reptilian rabbit who talks to him). Obsessed with the science of time travel and acutely aware of the world around him, Donnie is isolated by his powers of analysis and the apocalyptic visions that no one else seems to share. The debut feature of writer-director Richard Kelly, Donnie Darko is a shattering, hypnotic work that sets its own terms and gambles -- rightfully so, as it turns out -- that a viewer will stay aboard for the full ride. -- Tom Keogh, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 28 October: Hollywood TV, movie and commerical production was down to a four-year low last month, according to a study by the Entertainment Industry Development Corporation. The culprits: a slumping economy, the terror attacks and a glut of projects completed early due to fears of never-realized writers and actors strikes.
- New York, 2 November:
 Having opened in Europe and having toured the festival circuit to great acclaim, the French export Amélie (full title: Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain) opens here and in Los Angeles today. If not the most charming movie of all time, Amélie is certainly one of the top 10. The title character (the bashful and impish Audrey Tautou) is a single waitress who decides to help other lonely people fix their lives. Her widowed father yearns to travel but won't, so to inspire the old man she sends his garden gnome on a tour of the world; with whispered gossip, she brings together two cranky regulars at her café; she reverses the doorknobs and reprograms the speed dial of a grocer who's mean to his assistant. Gradually she realizes her own life needs fixing, and a chance meeting leads to her most elaborate stratagem of all. This is a deeply wonderful movie, an illuminating mix of magic and pragmatism. Fans of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's previous films (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children) will not be disappointed; newcomers will be delighted. -- Bret Fetzer, Amazon.com
 - New York, 2 November: After exploring the worlds of toys and bugs in the two Toy Story films and A Bug's Life, the award-winning computer animation company Pixar delves into the realm of monsters with Monsters, Inc., its fourth feature. Hulking, blue-furred behemoth James P. "Sully" Sullivan (John Goodman) and his one-eyed assistant Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) are employed by Monsters, Inc., a scream processing factory. It seems that the denizens of their realm thrive on the screams of kids spooked by monsters lurking under their beds and in their closets. It's the job of Sully, Mike, and their co-workers, including sarcastic Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi), crab-like CEO Henry J. Waternoose (James Coburn), and lovely snake-headed receptionist Celia (Jennifer Tilly) to keep the frights flowing. When Sully and Mike are followed back into the monster world by a very unafraid little human girl named Boo (Mary Gibbs), they are exiled to her universe, where they discover that such a modern-day mythological specimen as the Abominable Snowman is a fellow refugee. -- Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- New York, 2 November:
 A unique, peculiar, riveting experience, The Man Who Wasn't There is one of the best films of the year. The likes of A.I. and Moulin Rouge! will make more money, but in 20 years the Coen brothers' moving, funny, noirish tale will be held in higher regard. This is a film that delivers on its initial promise, with an Oscar®-worthy lead performance, an exquisite script (by Ethan and Joel Coen), and extraordinarily beautiful black and white photography (by Roger Deakins). Billy Bob Thornton is mesmerising as the constantly smoking small-town barber Ed Crane, mixed up in murder in 1949 Santa Rosa, when he tries to blackmail the affluent store owner (James Gandolfini) who's having an affair with his wife (Frances McDormand). This is a noir flick in as much as you can ever categorise the Coens' work, but as usual you get the feeling that the film makers aren't overly concerned with the story; they're not entirely sincere. The film -- heavily influenced by the bleak fiction of James M. Cain (Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice) -- superficially borders on pastiche, but the noir stylings provide only a frame around which they weave questions of identity, guilt, and redemption. This is their mid-life crisis movie. It's Dostoevsky for Hitchcock fans. Ed Crane is modern man. The Man Who Wasn't There is slow, certainly, maybe even meandering, but the emotional pull of the finale belies anything you might expect from a Coens movie, particularly after the disappointing end of O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Better than Fargo? Definitely. A masterpiece? Quite possibly. It's certainly worth seeing twice to find out. -- Nev Pierce, BBC
- London, 4 November:
 Possibly Hollywood's first bespectacled hero since Harold Lloyd, Harry Potter makes a satisfactory, albeit unspectacular, celluloid debut in Chris Columbus' $125 million movie about the young boy destined to be a great wizard, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Treating J.K. Rowling's debut novel with a reverence that wasn't even accorded to The Bible, Hollywood serves up a two-and-a-half hour fantasy that gets the introductions out of the way, paving the way for more plot-driven tales in what's sure to become the biggest franchise of all time. (On the big screen, incidentally, the story's similarities to Star Wars are even more pronounced.) If you've read the novel -- and if you haven't, why not? -- impeccable casting means you'll feel like you've met all of these characters already. The three young leads -- Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and especially Emma Watson -- deliver likeable, natural performances, while the film's biggest joy is watching the spot-on performances of their peers: Maggie Smith plays Professor McGonagall like Miss Jean Brodie with a pointy hat, while Robbie Coltrane steals the show as loose-lipped Hagrid. Alan Rickman, meanwhile, sneers for England as Professor Snape. Indeed, the whole film plays like an advertisement for historic old England -- if this doesn't get Americans buying our castles and cathedrals, or at least coming to look at them again, nothing will. Hell, even King's Cross station looks pleasant. The film's not flawless, though. It's half an hour too long and much of the book's humour is jettisoned. Still, it's refreshing to witness a big-budget movie where the impressive special effects complement the story, rather than merely compensate for the lack of one. Harry Potter may not leave you spellbound, then, but it'll definitely leave you wanting to discover the Chamber of Secrets. -- Adrian Hennigan, BBC
- Los Angeles, 23 November:
 After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January and making the rounds of the international festival circuit (Montréal, Deauville, Toronto and Vancouver), Todd Field's In the Bedroom opens here and in New York today. When a film with this much emotional resonance and visual poise makes it to the screen, it seems an unexpected gift meant to remind us of the medium's possibility for sensitivity and epiphany. First-time director Field, who adapted the film from a story by Andre Dubus, quietly observes the loss, rage, and inexorable desire for revenge that follows the murder of a 21-year-old son. The film opens with Frank (Nick Stahl), back from college for the summer, taking up with Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a slightly older, sexually alluring woman with two boys and an estranged husband prone to violence. It is the tender portrayal of love between Frank and his parents, even as Frank and Natalie's relationship reveals the prejudices of all involved, that makes the subsequent anguish of the film so acute. Matt and Ruth Fowler (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek), middle-class denizens of a Maine lobster town where everyone knows each other, toil through weeks of devastation and blame following Frank's murder before their outrage obliterates all else. Field's exact handling of jealousy, class division, and grief is abetted by career-highlight performances from Wilkinson and Spacek. In the Bedroom is, along with You Can Count on Me, one of the best American dramas to grace the new millennium so far. -- Fionn Meade, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 3 December:
 In I Am Sam, Sean Penn stars as Sam Dawson, a developmentally disabled adult who has been working at a coffee shop and raising his daughter Lucy (Dakota Fanning) for seven years. Sam receives help in his parenting duties from a circle of trusted confidantes, including his ADD-afflicted best friend Ifty (Doug Hutchison), the paranoid Robert (Stanley DeSantis), an agoraphobic neighbor (Dianne Wiest), and his other disabled pals, Brad and Joe (played by real-life developmentally challenged actors Brad Silverman and Joseph Rosenberg). Although he provides a structured and loving environment for Lucy that includes regular visits to IHOP, video nights, and karaoke, Sam's daughter is beginning to surpass him in mental acuity. When Lucy begins intentionally stunting her own growth so as not to hurt her beloved father, social worker Margaret (Loretta Devine) takes action, removing the girl from her home and placing her in the temporary care of a foster mother, Randy (Laura Dern). As the day of his hearing looms, Sam seeks out the aid of driven, obsessive lawyer Rita Harrison (Michelle Pfeiffer), who takes the case only to prove to her colleagues that she is willing to accept pro bono work. Opposed by county lawyer Turner (Richard Schiff) in court, Rita gradually comes to care for her client and his daughter, even as they force her to consider the limitations of her own abilities as a parent. Jessie Nelson directs. -- Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Los Angeles, 6 December:
 In a fitting follow-up to Rushmore, writer-director Wes Anderson and cowriter-actor Owen Wilson have crafted another comedic masterwork, The Royal Tenenbaums, that ripples with inventive, richly emotional substance. Because of the all-star cast, hilarious dialogue, and oddball characters existing in their own, wholly original universe, it's easy to miss the depth and complexity of Anderson's brand of comedy. Here, it revolves around Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), the errant patriarch of a dysfunctional family of geniuses, including precocious playwright Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), boyish financier and grieving widower Chas (Ben Stiller), and has-been tennis pro Richie (Luke Wilson). All were raised with supportive detachment by mother Etheline (Anjelica Huston), and all ache profoundly for a togetherness they never really had. The Tenenbaums reconcile somehow, but only after Anderson and Wilson (who costars as a loopy literary celebrity) put them through a compassionate series of quirky confrontations and rekindled affections. Not for every taste, but this is brilliant work from any perspective. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
 - Los Angeles, 13 December: Premiere of A Beautiful Mind, which manages to twist enough pathos out of John Nash's incredible life story to redeem an at-times goofy portrayal of schizophrenia. Russell Crowe tackles the role with characteristic fervor, playing the Nobel prize-winning mathematician from his days at Princeton, where he developed a groundbreaking economic theory, to his meteoric rise to the cover of Forbes magazine and an MIT professorship, and on through to his eventual dismissal due to schizophrenic delusions. Of course, it is the delusions that fascinate director Ron Howard and, predictably, go astray. Nash's other world, populated as it is by a maniacal Department of Defense agent (Ed Harris), an imagined college roommate who seems straight out of Dead Poets Society, and an orphaned girl, is so fluid and scriptlike as to make the viewer wonder if schizophrenia is really as slick as depicted. Crowe's physical intensity drags us along as he works admirably to carry the film on his considerable shoulders. No doubt the story of Nash's amazing will to recover his life without the aid of medication is a worthy one, his eventual triumph heartening. Unfortunately, Howard's flashy style is unable to convey much of it. -- Fionn Meade, Amazon.com
 - Los Angeles, 14 December:
 Richard Eyre's Iris is released here and in New York today. Judi Dench's extraordinary Indian summer continues with a heartbreaking performance as the late novelist Iris Murdoch. Her portrayal of a great mind succumbing to the ravages of Alzheimer's is unbearably moving, but it's let down a little by a lack of dramatic momentum and Eyre's unambitious direction. Bouncing back and forth between Murdoch's early days at Oxford and her deterioration four decades later, Iris tells of its heroine's enduring love for John Bayley, a fellow academic who wrote the memoirs upon which the script was based. Played by Kate Winslet, the younger Iris is a vivacious intellectual with penchants for nude swimming and casual sex. What she sees in the bookish, stammering Bayley (Hugh Bonneville) is a mystery, but that doesn't stop her taking him into her bed, and into her heart. The situation is reversed in the present day, with the now-elderly Bayley (Jim Broadbent) forced to become a virtual parent to his addled wife. Unfortunately, because we are asked to take Murdoch's genius on trust, the impact of her tragedy is reduced. Indeed, the ping-pong structure of the narrative unwittingly implies her condition might even be some karmic retribution for her adolescent promiscuity. Dench and Winslet inhabit the role of Iris with such intensity it's hard to take your eyes off them. But it would be an injustice not to recognise the contributions of Broadbent and Bonneville. In addition to their astonishing physical resemblance, they ensure the bumbling Bayley is no mere caricature of selfless devotion. -- Neil Smith, BBC
- Los Angeles, 18 December:
 Premiere of Ridley Scott's latest film, Black Hawk Down from Columbia. Scott's film conveys the raw, chaotic urgency of ground-force battle in a worst-case scenario. With exacting detail, the film re-creates the American siege of the Somalian city of Mogadishu in October 1993, when a 45-minute mission turned into a 16-hour ordeal of bloody urban warfare. Helicopter-borne U.S. Rangers were assigned to capture key lieutenants of Somali warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid, but when two Black Hawk choppers were felled by rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. soldiers were forced to fend for themselves in the battle-torn streets of Mogadishu, attacked from all sides by armed Aidid supporters. Based on author Mark Bowden's bestselling account of the battle, Scott's riveting, action-packed film follows a sharp ensemble cast in some of the most authentic battle sequences ever filmed. The loss of 18 soldiers turned American opinion against further involvement in Somalia, but Black Hawk Down makes it clear that the men involved were undeniably heroic. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
 - New York, 19 December: US premiere of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. As the triumphant start of a trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring leaves you begging for more. By necessity, Jackson's ambitious epic compresses J.R.R. Tolkien's classic The Lord of the Rings, but this robust adaptation maintains reverent allegiance to Tolkien's creation, instantly qualifying as one of the greatest fantasy films ever made. At 178 minutes, it's long enough to establish the myriad inhabitants of Middle-earth, the legendary Rings of Power, and the fellowship of hobbits, elves, dwarves, and humans -- led by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and the brave hobbit Frodo (Elijah Wood) -- who must battle terrifying forces of evil on their perilous journey to destroy the One Ring in the land of Mordor. Superbly paced, the film is both epic and intimate, offering astonishing special effects and production design while emphasizing the emotional intensity of Frodo's adventure. Ending on a perfect note of heroic loyalty and rich anticipation, this wondrous fantasy continues with Part II planned for a 2002 release.. -- Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com
- Los Angeles, 23 December: The Exorcist director William Friedkin and screenwriter William Peter Blatty filed suit against Warner Bros., accusing the studio of copyright violations and failing to compensate them for the 2000 version of the horror classic, which earned more than $40 million at the box office last year.
- New York, 26 December:
 Monster's Ball, the new film starring Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton, opens here and in Los Angeles today after premiering at last month's AFI Film Festival. Director Marc Forster, winner of Best Feature at Slamdance for his debut film Loungers (1996) and the "Someone to Watch" Independent Spirit Award for his indie drama Everything Put Together (2000), follows up those acclaimed projects with this intense, racially charged romance. Thornton stars as Georgia prison guard Hank Grotowski, a hard-drinking racist ex-cop whose father, Buck (Peter Boyle), is dying of emphysema and whose son, Sonny (Heath Ledger), works the execution detail at the prison's death row. When Sonny commits suicide, Hank is devastated and quits his job, spiraling into a deep depression until, one night, he comes to the aid of Leticia (Berry), a beautiful African-American woman whose son, Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun), has been hit by a car. When Tyrell dies, Leticia and Hank find themselves to be unexpected soul mates linked together by tragic grief. It's not long before Hank discovers that Leticia is the widow of Lawrence Musgrove (Sean Combs), the man whose execution by electric chair he and his late son helped to orchestrate. Monster's Ball is based on a screenplay by actors Milo Addica and Will Rokos, who spent five years developing their script into a feature. Their title refers to the name of an English tradition requiring jailers to throw a party for a condemned man on the night before his death. -- Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
 - New York, 26 December: Robert Altman's new film, Gosford Park, opens here and in Los Angeles today and it finds Altman in sumptuously fine form indeed. From the opening shots, as the camera peers through the trees at an opulent English country estate, Altman exploits the 1930s period setting and whodunit formula of the film expertly. Aristocrats gather together for a weekend shooting party with their dutiful servants in tow, and the upstairs/downstairs division of the classes is perfectly tailored to Altman's method (as employed in Nashville and Short Cuts) of overlapping bits of dialogue and numerous subplots in order to betray underlying motives and the sins that propel them. Greed, vengeance, snobbery, and lust stir comic unrest as the near dizzying effect of brisk script turns is allayed by perhaps Altman's strongest ensemble to date. First and foremost, Maggie Smith is marvelous as Constance, a dependent countess with a quip for every occasion; Michael Gambon, as the ill-fated host, Sir William McCordle, is one of the most palpably salacious characters ever on screen; Kristin Scott Thomas is perfectly cold yet sexy as Lady Sylvia, Sir William's wife; and Helen Mirren, Emily Watson, and Clive Owen are equally memorable as key characters from the bustling servants' quarters below. Gosford Park manages to be fabulously entertaining while exposing human shortcomings, compromises, and our endless need for confession. -- Fionn Meade, Amazon.com
- Berlin, 27 December: Germany celebrated the 100th anniversary of Marlene Dietrich's birth today by unveiling museum exhibits, musical galas, television documentaries, movie retrospectives and a tribute from the government -- including a formal apology issued by the city of Berlin for treating the Hollywood star as a traitor during World War II.
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Best Picture: A Beautiful Mind
16 February, Los Angeles, CA -- 
