- New York, 7 January: The National Society of Film Critics has picked Mulholland Drive as the Best Picture of 2001. The film's star, Naomi Watts, was named Best Actress. Gosford Park received three awards: Best Director (Robert Altman), Supporting Actress (Helen Mirren) and Screenplay (Julian Fellowes).
- Paris, 8 January:
 The latest film from François Ozon, 8 femmes (Eight Women) premieres in the capital today. Ozon adapted his screenplay from the stage play by Robert Thomas. In a home in the snowy French countryside, an industrialist has been murdered. There are eight suspects, all women: his wife, Gaby (Catherine Deneuve); their two daughters, Suzon (Virginie Ledoyen) and Catherine (Ludivine Sagnier); Gaby's neurotic sister, Augustine (Isabelle Huppert), and greedy mother (Danielle Darrieux); the industrialist's floozy sister, Pierrette (Fanny Ardant); the cook, Chanel (Firmine Richard), and the new maid, Louise (Emmanuelle Béart). The phone is dead, the car has been damaged, and the house is isolated because of a snowstorm. So it's up to these eight women to discover who among them is the killer, as well as uncover various hidden secrets from each other that include greed, jealousy, pregnancies, adultery, theft, hidden love, and, perhaps even, murder.
 - Paris, 9 January: During the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, the nation's movie studios continued to operate; some filmmakers and technicians simply went along with what their new leaders demanded in hopes keeping themselves and their families safe, while others sought to subvert the messages of their captors through their work. Laissez-passer (Safe Conduct), directed by Bertrand Tavernier, is a fact-based period drama which examines two men working for a Parisian film company during 1942 and 1943, as well as their friends, family, and loved ones. Jean Devaivre (played by Jacques Gamblin) is an assistant director for Continental Pictures, a studio which has recently been taken over by the Germans and is headed by Dr. Greven (Christian Berkel), a self-styled aficionado of French filmmaking. With a wife (Marie Desgranges) and a newborn son to support, Devaivre feels he has little choice but to continue with his work, though as he rises from assisting to becoming a full fledged director thanks to the efforts of Maurice Tourneur (Philippe Morier-Genoud), he struggles to work his own views into his pictures as much as he can. Screenwriter Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydes), a man who lives for wine, women and song (not necessarily in that order), refuses to work for Greven, and as he bounces between his many lovers -- actress Suzanne Raymond (Charlotte Kady), no-nonsense streetwalker Olga (Marie Gillain), and soft-hearted Reine (Maria Pitarresi) -- he struggles to find a way to make a living with his words. Both Devaivre and Aurenche were real-life figures in the French film industry during the occupation, as were many of Laissez-passer's supporting characters; the real life Aurenche went on to write the screenplay for Bertrand Travernier's first feature film. -- Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Madrid, 11 January:
 "No one ever died of having a lesbian mother," says a character in the breezy Spanish comedy, A mi madre le gustan las mujeres (My Mother Likes Women). Even though that may be true, the three sisters in the film have a tough time processing the news that their long-divorced mother Sofía (Rosa María Sardá) has a special lady friend named Eliska (Eliska Sirová). Their homophobia is compounded by the feeling that Eliska is not right for Sofía -- she's a Czech pianist in danger of being deported and, worse yet, not much older than they are. The most neurotic of the trio, Elvira (Leonor Watling), reacts by asking her therapist whether her man problems are the result of her own latent and heretofore undetected lesbianism. The more conservative Gimena (María Pujalte) is nervous about how this news will affect her husband and child. Sol (Silvia Abascal), a flamboyant pop singer, initially makes light of the situation but later divulges her real feelings at a concert attended by the family. "I felt like committing suicide," she sings over an incongruously peppy tune, "when she told me she had a woman licking her belly." The song goes over great with the crowd, less so with the relatives, and the sisters' growing mistrust of Eliska imperils the relationship.
The presence of two stars of Pedro Almodóvar's films -- Watling was the comatose beauty in Talk to Her and Sarda appeared in All About My Mother -- raises expectations for something wilder than My Mother Likes Women turns out to be. Instead, it's a very conventional comedy with a premise that might've been considered risqué 20 years ago but is now the stuff of even the most banal sitcoms. Thankfully, filmmakers Daniela Fejerman and Inés Paris (a screenwriting team making its directorial feature debut) keep the proceedings so lively that the movie's timid treatment of the subject seems like less of a liability. Watling also emerges from her Talk to Her slumber as a comic actor with great skill and charm. It's a crush-worthy performance no matter what your sexual orientation. -- Jason Anderson, eye
- Park Cities, 20 January:
 This year's Sundance Film Festival has come to its conclusion, and winners of the Grand Jury Prizes are Gail Dolgin and Vincente Franco's Daughter from Danang, in the documentary division, and Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity: Three Portraits for dramatic films. In the dramatic division, Special Jury Prizes went to Manito, Real Women Have Curves and Secretary. How to Draw a Bunny and Señorita extraviada won documentary Special Jury Prizes. Director's Awards went to Rob Fruchtman and Rebecca Cammisa for Sister Helen (documentary), and to Gary Winick for Tadpole (dramatic). Audience Award winners were Amandia! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony (documentary), Bloody Sunday and l'Ultimo bacio (world cinema), and Real Women Have Curves (dramatic). Gordy Hoffman won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for his script for Love Liza. This year's Tribute to Independent Vision Award was presented to Benicio Del Toro.
- Los Angeles, 25 January: Actor-director Robert Redford will be presented with an Honorary Academy Award at this year's Oscars® for being an "inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere."
 - Paris, 25 January: Legendary French director Jean-Luc Godard's all-star adaptation of King Lear, featuring Woody Allen, Burgess Meredith, Peter Sellars, Molly Ringwald, Norman Mailer and Julie Delpy among others, finally premieres in French movie theaters 15 years after it was made. Godard left Cannes in 1985 with a contract for a Shakespeare adaptation, drawn up on a napkin, to be delivered to Hollywood in a year's time. What he delivered was a maddening yet fascinating weave of celebrity cameos and literary false-starts, underpinned by his own outrageous turn as 'Professor Pluggy.' -- Full review.
- Los Angeles, 30 January: Hollywood icon Kirk Douglas and his wife, Anne, donated $2.5 million for renovation of the historic Culver Theater in Culver City, California. The refurbished venue will be reopened as the Kirk Douglas Theater in 2004.
- Los Angeles, 10 February: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is suing a company that's selling anatomically correct Oscar® statues. Pipedream Products is being targeted for the Oscar®, which has a penis and is titled "Stud of the Year."
- Los Angeles, 22 February:
 Premiere screening of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, directed by Joel Zwick and written by Nia Vardalos. One woman's rocky road to the altar gets played for laughs in this comedy, adapted from Vardalos' one-woman off-Broadway show. Toula (Vardalos) is a Greek-American woman who is in her early thirties and single, with no immediate prospects of changing that status any time soon. This bothers Toula a bit, but not half as much as it distresses her mother (Lainie Kazan) and father (Michael Constantine), who want to send her to Greece in hopes of finding a husband in the old country. Toula isn't interested in leaving the country to find a man, but since she works in the family business -- a Greek restaurant in Chicago called Dancing Zorba's -- she has to hear about it whether she likes it or not. One day, after seeing a handsome stranger in the restaurant and not having the courage to talk to him, Toula decides she needs a bit of self-improvement. Despite her dad's misgivings, Toula signs up for a night-school class studying computers, trades in her glasses for contact lenses, gets a different job at a travel agency, and spruces herself up with a new look and a new attitude. To her very pleasant surprise, she once again encounters the handsome stranger, who soon asks her out on a date. Schoolteacher Ian Miller (John Corbett) is seemingly perfect -- he's tall, handsome, smart, good-natured, and soon in love with Toula -- except for two little things: he's not Greek, and he's a vegetarian, both of which horrify Toula's family. When Ian pops the question (and Toula says yes), the bride-to-be has to negotiate a reasonably peaceful meeting between Ian's upper-class parents and her own working-class extended family. There's also the matter of the wedding, which Toula's mother is planning around the notion that quantity IS quality. My Big Fat Greek Wedding also features Ian Gomez (Vardalos' real-life husband), Louis Mandylor, Andrea Martin, and Joey Fatone (from the pop group *NSYNC). Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson helped produce the film through the auspices of their production company, Playtone. -- Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Los Angeles, 15 March:
 20th Century-Fox releases Ice Age, the latest animated feature from Oscar®-winning director Chris Wedge, whose unique lighting software (called "Ray Tracing") sets his visual style apart from earlier CGI efforts. Twenty thousand years ago, the Earth is overrun by freezing temperatures in an Ice Age that is sending all manner of critters scattering in the path of encroaching glaciers. When a lost human infant is discovered, an unlikely quartet of misfits forms to return it to its mother: Manny, a depressed woolly mammoth (Ray Romano); Sid, a fast-talking sloth (John Leguizamo); an acorn-crazed squirrel named Scrat (Wedge); and the devilish saber-toothed tiger named Diego (Denis Leary). Before they can complete their mission, the reluctant compatriots will brave pits of boiling lava, dangerous caverns of ice, and even a traitorous plot within their midst. Ice Age also features the voices of Jack Black, Cedric the Entertainer, Stephen Root, Diedrich Bader, Alan Tudyk, Lorri Bagley, Jane Krakowski, and Goran Visnjic. -- Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
 - Los Angeles, 24 March:
 It was a Beautiful night for Oscar® and a history-making night for Hollywood diversity, as Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind was named Best Picture and Halle Berry and Denzel Washington scored top acting honors at the 74th Annual Academy Awards. Mind, the controversial biopic of schizophrenic Nobel laureate John Nash Jr., joined Peter Jackson's epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in winning a field-best four honors apiece Sunday night in a marathon ceremony staged at the new Kodak Theater in Hollywood.
But on a night in which Hollywood handed an honorary Oscar® to groundbreaking African-American actor Sidney Poitier, the Best Picture win was overshadowed by Berry and Washington as they helped mark Academy Awards history. Berry became the first African-American to ever win Best Actress, scoring for her role as a death-row widow who becomes romantically involved with a prison warden in Monster's Ball. Washington, meanwhile, became the second African-American to win Best Actor for his role as a corrupt cop in Training Day. A stunned Berry openly bawled onstage as she accepted the award, saying, "This moment is so much bigger than me. This moment is for every nameless, faceless woman of color that now has a chance because the door tonight has been opened." In the heat of that emotional moment, she neglected to thank her co-star, Billy Bob Thornton. Washington, meanwhile, looked up to Poitier in the balcony and dedicated his trophy to the Academy's only other black Best Actor winner. Poitier won for 1963's Lilies of the Field. "Two birds in one night," Washington joked. "Forty years I've been chasing Sidney, and what do they do? They give him one on the same night. [But] there's nothing I'd rather do, sir."
Meanwhile, Hollywood lifer Ron Howard won his first Oscar® for Best Director for A Beautiful Mind. His film, which topped fellow Best Picture nominees Moulin Rouge!, Gosford Park, In the Bedroom and The Lord of the Rings, also won Best Adapted Screenplay for Akiva Goldsman's big-screen adaptation of the book by Sylvia Nasar. Jennifer Connelly was named Best Supporting Actress for her role as Nash's wife, Alicia, opposite Oscar-nominated star Russell Crowe. Jim Broadbent picked up Best Supporting Actor for his performance with nominee Judi Dench in Iris. Scribe Julian Fellowes took home Best Original Screenplay for Robert Altman's British whodunit Gosford Park.
Shrek made some history of its own, winning the inaugural Oscar® for Best Feature Animation over Monsters, Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Also in the better-late-than-never department: Songwriter Randy Newman received a standing ovation when he broke his Susan Lucci-like losing streak, winning his first Oscar® for Best Original Song for "If I Didn't Have You," from Monsters, Inc., after 16 nominations. Along with Poitier, Robert Redford received an honorary Oscar for his achievement as an actor, director, producer and creator of the Sundance Film Festival. And the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award went to Love Story director Arthur Hiller for his charity work. -- Full story.
 - Paris, 27 March: Premiere of Laetitia Colombani's À la folie... pas du tout (He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not). Those of you enchanted by the cute title of this film, along with a poster featuring Amélie pixie Audrey Tautou's smiling face beaming out over a lush rose, stop right there. Your beloved Audrey is not starring in a sweet romantic comedy this time around. In fact, À la folie... pas du tout is about as far from a comedy as it gets, a latter-day Fatal Attraction (1987), albeit one with little suspense and a very mean-spirited plot. Sure, with movies like À ma sœur! (Fat Girl) and L'Emploi du temps (Time Out), France has gotten about as cynical as it gets, but mowing down a pregnant woman with a scooter and causing her to have a miscarriage -- all while the ultra-cute Tautou smiles at us so innocently -- well, we've got to have some limits, don't we? If À la folie... were intended as a black comedy, we might think differently. But newcomer writer/director Colombani just doesn't know what she wants this movie to be. -- Full review.
- New York, 29 March:
 They should call it a "Don't Panic Room" -- an impregnable burglar-proof chamber that is fast becoming the must-have accessory in every well-to-do American household. But what happens if the very thing the intruders want is in there with you? That's the case in David Fincher's slick new thriller, Panic Room, a perfectly constructed recipe for buttock-clenching, palm-sweating tension. Newly divorced Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) is spending her first night in a spacious New York house with her young daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart), unaware that three ruthless criminals are intent on robbing the previous occupier's secret safe. With seconds to spare, the two women -- one claustrophobic, the other diabetic -- enclose themselves in the panic room, setting in motion a brutal game of cat and mouse and a dangerous race against time. A journeyman director might feel limited by a film where all the action takes place in a single house, but David Fincher takes up the challenge with dazzling visual flair. His camera prowls up stairs, glides through walls, and, in one amazing computer-assisted tracking shot, follows the villains from inside the building as they inspect the exterior for weak points. Foster -- who took over the role after Nicole Kidman pulled out, despite being four months pregnant -- is endlessly resourceful as the imprisoned heroine, while Forest Whitaker is convincingly conflicted as the most sympathetic of the bad guys. Only the film's eagerness to cut to the chase -- there's little time to get to know the characters before they are plunged into peril -- mars an otherwise hugely accomplished slice of Hitchcockian suspense. -- Neil Smith, BBC Films.
- Santa Monica, 15 April: Amelia Bacheler, the actress who held the torch aloft in Columbia Pictures' logo, has died at the age of 94. Although she was paid only $25 for the original shoot in 1936, it assured her of the record for appearing in more motion pictures than any other individual.
- Los Angeles, 19 April:
 Former "Baretta" star Robert Blake was arrested Thursday evening and charged with the May 2001 slaying of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. Blake will remain jailed until a Monday court hearing. Police also arrested the actor's bodyguard, Earle Caldwell, charging him with conspiracy to commit murder, though he was out of town the night of the Bakley's slaying. Police searched the homes of Blake and Caldwell Friday, removing boxes of evidence that included computers, guns and files. Police will ask a judge to seal the evidence until the case goes to court.
 - London, 26 April: Premiere of About a Boy from Chris and Paul Weitz, the film-making duo responsible for American Pie. This shrewd, ironically amusing adaptation of Nick Hornby's best-selling novel is the perfect star vehicle for Hugh Grant, allowing him to finally move away from his usual bumbling, tongue-tied screen persona. Sporting a wardrobe of designer casual clothes and a stylishly short haircut, he plays Will, a wealthy, single thirtysomething in North London. He doesn't work as such -- the royalties from his late father's novelty number one hit provide him with a handsome income -- but he's not idle: he buys CDs, watches television, and goes out to lunch ("How do people manage to fit in a full-time job?", he wonders). Claiming that he has a child in order to make himself more attractive to single mothers, Will meets the troubled 12-year-old Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), whose own hippy mum Fiona (Toni Collette) has tried to commit suicide...
About a Boy may chart its central character's emotional awakening through an unlikely friendship, yet much of its humour derives from Will's profound immaturity: he's a congenital liar who makes inappropriately childish comments in grave situations, with his eyes seemingly glazing over during any "serious" conversation with another adult. He regards his own life as "the Will Show", not an "ensemble drama", although falling in love with beautiful illustrator Rachel (Rachel Weisz) causes him to reassess some of these deeply-held certainties. Capturing Will's surface charm and inner hollowness, Grant gives an immaculate comic performance, and he's ably supported by Hoult, who resists the easy option of making Marcus overly likable. The brothers Weitz take few risks in their æsthetic choices: more importantly, they smoothly oversee a procession of humorous scenes, culminating in the improbable sight of Grant rocking out with his electric guitar at the school concert. -- Tom Dawson, BBC Films.
- Paris, 30 April:
 Une affaire privée may as well be called L'Adieu longue, so proudly does it brandish its allusions to The Long Goodbye. Once again, we have a hang-dog, anachronistically (even laughably) old-school private-eye who gets much more than he bargains for when he takes on a missing-persons case -- the characters even at one point fuzzily debate the legendary 'coke-bottle' scene from the 1973 Altman classic. In the Elliott Gould role, it's a pleasure to find Thierry Lhermitte breaking free from the shackles of Francis Veber farces to become François Manéri, a chain-smoking, womanising, fortyish divorcé, hired to investigate the disappearance of 22-year-old Parisian student Rachel. As Manéri questions Rachel's relatives and friends -- including seductive best-pal Clarisse (Marion Cotillard) -- what gradually spirals out is a double (or even triple?) life of Laura Palmer-style complexity and darkness. But as the clues, leads and connections pile up, it eventually becomes clear that writer-director Guillaume Nicloux has higher ambitions than simply crafting yet another sexy, twisty crime thriller: this isn't a film about detection, but deconstruction. In the final act, he stages an audacious coup which effectively throws the whole investigation back in Manéri's face -- and ours. Nicloux chides him (and us) for thinking that 21st-century lives are tidy things that can be decoded, unravelled and understood by conventional forms of narrative closure. -- Full review.
 - Los Angeles, 3 May: It's taken a long time for Spider-Man, Marvel's web-spinning superhero, to reach the big screen, and the film's tortuous history is a tangled web in itself. With all the behind-the-scenes wrangles, it's a minor miracle that Sam Raimi's comic book caper is such a stylish, exciting, and ingenious thrill-ride. Its trump card is the inspired casting of Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, the high school geek who acquires amazing powers after being bitten by a genetically mutated spider. Where other actors might have been dwarfed by the cartoonish spectacle, Maguire brings a touching pathos to his diffident hero which roots the outlandish fantasy in human emotions and failings. Kirsten Dunst is also fabulous as Mary Jane, the beautiful neighbor whom Peter secretly adores. Oddly, their halting romance proves far more engaging than the explosive action scenes, which find Maguire's suited-and-booted Spider-Man nimbly swinging through Manhattan's concrete canyons doing rather unimaginative battle with Willem Dafoe's cackling Green Goblin. Dafoe is the movie's weak point. Trapped behind an immobile mask and sporting a risible emerald costume, his two-dimensional villain is no match for Maguire's soulful subtlety. But that's a small cavil in a summer blockbuster that, just for once, lives up to the spin. -- Neil Smith, BBC Films
- New York, 6 May: Spider-Man snared $114.8 million at the box office, the highest opening weekend in history. The Tobey Maguire flick also racked up $43.6 million Saturday -- the biggest single-day total ever -- and its three-day tally made it the fastest flick to reach $100 million. -- Full story.
- New York, 8 May:
 The inaugural Tribeca Film Festival, founded by Robert De Niro and business partner Jane Rosenthal, opens today in New York with the premiere of About a Boy, starring Hugh Grant. The festival runs through Sunday with some 100 screenings and a comedy/rock concert Friday featuring Sheryl Crow and Jimmy Fallon. Breakfast at Tiffany's has been voted the Best New York Film in an online poll sponsored by the Tribeca Film Fest. The Audrey Hepburn classic, which beat out runners-up Taxi Driver and Annie Hall, will be screened on the final day of the festival, May 12 at 8 p.m. -- Related story.
 - Los Angeles, 10 May: Diane Lane is a wayward wife and Richard Gere is her suspicious husband in Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful. Connie (Lane) leaves her suburban home on an errand, venturing into Manhattan during a wicked windstorm. On a trash-strewn Soho street, she literally runs into Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), a handsome young Frenchman carrying a huge stack of books. Connie has a bad scrape on her knee, and is unable to get a cab, so Paul invites her up to his apartment. Paul is quietly flirtatious as he gives Connie some ice and a bandage for her knee. Connie phones home and explains to her son, Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan), that she's running late. Before she leaves, Paul gives her a book of Persian poetry, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. She mentions the encounter in passing to Edward (Gere), her husband, but it's clear that she's obsessing about Paul, and soon she's back in the city, with a pretext for calling him up. Soon, they are lovers, and they grow bolder and bolder in their passion. Edward begins to suspect, and eventually gets a private investigator (Dominic Chianese) to follow Connie. His worst fears confirmed, Edward decides to confront Paul, a decision that will come to haunt him. While the screenplay for Unfaithful is credited to Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr., the inspiration for Lyne's film came from Claude Chabrol's acclaimed 1969 film La Femme infidèle. -- Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Los Angeles, 16 May:
 Worldwide premiere of George Lucas' Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Forget the triviality, clumsiness, and blatant corporate synergy of The Phantom Menace. The great news is that Attack of the Clones is a far more focused and richly dramatic entry in the "Star Wars" canon. Picking up ten years after The Phantom Menace, Anakin Skywalker (a surprisingly believable and sympathetic Hayden Christensen) is the precocious, rebellious Jedi apprentice to Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, more comfortable second time round). When an assassination attempt on Senator Amidala (Natalie Portman) fails, Obi-Wan investigates the peace-threatening conspiracy by Separatists, while smitten kitten Anakin is charged with protecting Amidala. The film echoes the structure of franchise peak The Empire Strikes Back, and co-writer Jonathan Hales' contribution is keenly felt, with better defined characters and an altogether smoother story. Shot digitally, Clones looks gorgeous, with CGI superbly realising LucasÕ imaginative galaxies and alien lifeforms (including, for the first time, a computer-generated Yoda). Consistently thrilling and massively enjoyable, Clones redeems Lucas' reputation after Menace. And while Episode II doesn't match the cliffhanger ending to Empire, it does climax with an expertly subtle sense of approaching doom that - George willing - should lead to a magnificent conclusion. -- Full review.
- Cannes, 23 May:
 Premiere of Gaspar Noé's Irréversible at the Cannes Film Festival. Cinema doesn't come more distressing than this unsparing drama. Both fêted and hated at the Festival -- where it has prompted walkouts from even this hardened arthouse crowd -- it is not to be approached flippantly. This is a brutal, disturbing piece of work. "There are no bad deeds, just deeds," says a character in the opening scene, calling to mind Oscar Wilde's assertion that "there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written." It's a salient quote for a movie that shocks with its explicit depiction of sexual violence and murder. Certainly the rape scene, which has so offended many viewers, is the most uncomfortable few minutes you'll ever spend in a cinema (even counting Martin Lawrence movies). Not that the preceding 40 minutes will be easy viewing either. From the first frame Noé attacks the audience, his restless, revolving camera spinning over a crime scene -- the aftermath of a (literally) breathtaking assault. The action then spools backwards, Memento-style, tracing how Pierre (Albert Dupontel) and Marcus (Vincent Cassel) were driven to their extreme actions. The scenes play out in long, uninterrupted takes -- a feat of impressive technical and astonishing acting prowess -- and we discover more about their relationship with each other and the beautiful Alex (Monica Bellucci). Don't see this if you are easily scared or offended. Irréversible is a terrifying film -- a raw dose of fatalism, which suggests not only the futility of revenge, but perhaps of existence. "Time destroys all things," says an unnamed man, nailing the theme. It won't destroy the memory of this. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
- Los Angeles, 24 May:
 Insomnia is the kind of movie you rarely see in summer: thoughtful, gripping and steeped in action that defines character. The fact that this superior thriller stars three Oscar winners -- Al Pacino and Hilary Swank as cops and Robin Williams as the psycho they're chasing -- and is directed by Christopher Nolan, 31, the innovator who made us all think backward in Memento, only adds to the film's hypnotic allure. It's taut, tense and terrific. Pacino, in one of the high points of his remarkable career, plays Will Dormer, an LAPD whiz sent to the Alaskan town of Nightmute to investigate the murder of a teenage girl. From the opener, with Will and his partner, Hap (Martin Donovan), flying over a glacier, an atmosphere of unease is firmly established. The tension between the partners is palpable -- evidence-tampering on past cases can bring down both their careers if Hap spills what he knows to Internal Affairs. Will, whose last name, Dormer, evokes sleep, isn't getting any. And the Alaskan light is relentless. A sharp-eyed local cop, Ellie Burr, incisively played by Swank, tells Will this is the season of the midnight sun, when darkness just doesn't fall. Even when sleepless Will yanks the drapes shut in his hotel room, the light glares. In Hillary Seitz's script, loosely based on an austere 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, the sun is a metaphor for a conscience that won't sleep. Such windy attitudinizing could break the spirit of a movie and an audience.
Not here. Nolan matches his Memento achievement with another triumph of style and substance. Setting a trap for the killer on a misty beach, Will accidentally shoots Hap. Or is it an accident? Will registers the fear in Hap's eyes before he dies. So does the killer, who watches in hiding. As Walter Finch, a novelist who befriended the murdered girl, Williams doesn't enter the film until near the midpoint, but he brings a scary intensity to the role that's electrifying. Trying to establish a bond with Will, first by phone, then in a meeting on a ferry, Walter talks with calm reason: "Killing changes you, Will. It's like awareness." Nolan stages a thrilling chase for cop and suspect across moving logs, but it's Walter's psychological pursuit of Will that makes this one of the year's best movies. As Will goes sleepless for six days, Pacino -- looking more ravaged than he ever has onscreen -- lets us see this alert, quick-witted cop slowly, wrenchingly come unglued. It's a brilliant performance in a film that will keep you up nights. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone.
 - Cannes, 26 May:
 David Lynch chaired the jury for dramatic films at this year's Cannes Film Festival. That jury also included Sharon Stone, Michelle Yeoh, Bille August and Régis Wargnier. The short films jury was chaired by Martin Scorsese, and included Judith Godrèche, Tilda Swinton, Abbas Kiarostami and Jan Schütte. Roman Polanski's The Pianist won the coveted Palme d'Or for features; best short film was Péter Mészáros' Eso utan (After Rain) from Hungary. The Grand Prize of the Jury went to Aki Kaurismäki's Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past). Jury Prizes were awarded to Elia Suleiman's Yadon ilaheyya (Divine Intervention) (feature) and two short films -- Jesse Rosensweet's The Stone of Folly and Manish Jha's A Very Very Silent Film. In the face of stiff competition from worldwide heavyweights, the acting awards were surprisingly won by Olivier Gourmet for Le Fils (The Son) and Kati Outinen for Mies vailla menneisyyttä. The Best Director award was shared by Kwon-taek Im [Chihwaseon (Painted Fire)] and Paul Thomas Anderson (Punch-Drunk Love). Paul Laverty won Best Screenplay for his script for Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen. Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine was the unanimous choice for the 55th Anniversay Prize.
- Long Beach, 1 June: Director Steven Spielberg received his bachelor's degree in film and electronic arts on Friday at California State University at Long Beach where he dropped out more than 30 years ago. -- Full story.
- Los Angeles, 2 June: A study by the Center for Entertainment Industy Data and Research reports that runaway production is on the rise. The amount of money spent to produce films in Canada has grown by 144 percent while the amount spent on production in the U.S. has dropped 17 percent from 1998 to 2001.
- Los Angeles, 6 June:
 A Los Angeles judge has ordered Winona Ryder to stand trial on charges stemming from her alleged shoplifting incident at the Beverly Hills Saks Fifth Avenue. The ruling came after testimony from Saks security staffers who say they witnessed the actress trying to take about $6,000 in merchandise. Ryder is due back in court June 14 for arraignment. -- Full story.
 - Los Angeles, 17 June: Premiere of Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. It's 2054 and Pre-Crime law enforcement has prevented all murders in Washington for the last six years. Using the premonitions of Pre-Cogs -- three psychic humans -- Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) and his team are able to foresee crimes and arrest the perpetrator before harm is done. Anderton is a man driven by the righteousness of Pre-Crime, mainly in an attempt to reconcile himself with the disappearance of his own son. That is until the Pre-Cogs see images of a murder where he is the killer, sending him on the run and throwing his belief in both Pre-Crime and himself into turmoil. With Minority Report, Spielberg has ditched the romanticism of A.I. in favour of the paranoid creepiness of futuristic noir. Instead of robotic children in desperate need of love, we have a haunted and embittered cop who uses drugs to escape his emotional pain. Sparing us another visual re-hash of Blade Runner futurism, Minority Report presents instead a believably advanced landscape where cars are like Scalextric, but shopping centers still look the same. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski creates a powerfully simple landscape of icy blues and greys, a sleek yet bleak backdrop for the philosophical musings. The film is consistently thrilling, if a little over-explanatory towards the end, and is given its human side largely by an authentic performance from Cruise. He is convincingly lonely and needy whilst giving a full dose of action-man bravado against some stunning visual effects. With CGI that remains integral to the plot, the film's futuristic vision is dazzling yet remains unnervingly dark, wowing the eyes whilst challenging the mind. Whoever thought paranoia could look so good? -- Laura Bushell, BBC Films
- Los Angeles, 1 July: The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voted last week to explore moving the annual Oscar ceremonies from mid-March to late February starting in 2004. Academy officials are considering the ways to shorten the Oscar® campaigning season.
- London, 10 July: Britain's acclaimed FilmFour studio -- the producers of Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Crying Game and Trainspotting -- is shutting down due to financial woes. Recent efforts like Charlotte Gray failed to be profitable.
- New York, 12 July:
 20th Century-Fox releases Road to Perdition, the new film from Sam Mendes. The acclaimed graphic novel by crime writer Max Allan Collins becomes this big budget Dreamworks drama from Mendes and screenwriter David Self. Tom Hanks stars as Michael Sullivan, a morally conflicted Depression-era hit man committing murder in the name of his employer, John Rooney (Paul Newman). A kindly, aging Irish crime boss who raised Sullivan as his surrogate son, Rooney is affiliated with Al Capone in Chicago and thus wields great power in the "Tri-Cities" of Moline, IL; Rock Island, IL; and Davenport, IA. Curious about his father's mysterious profession, Sullivan's son, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), stows away in his father's automobile one night and witnesses the execution of a man at the hands of Sullivan and Rooney's biological son, Connor (Daniel Craig). Although Michael keeps his promise to remain silent about what he's seen, the paranoid and unstable Connor tries to wipe out the entire Sullivan clan anyway, succeeding only in killing Sullivan's wife, Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and youngest son, Peter (Liam Aiken). Enraged at this and another surprise betrayal by the Rooneys, Sullivan embarks on a path of bloody retribution, Michael in tow. Although he intends to leave his boy with relatives in the rural town of Perdition once the coast is clear, he ends up exposing Michael to the goriest aspects of his talents, slaughtering former associates as he dodges contract assassin Maguire (Jude Law) and cripples the cash flow of the Rooney and Capone organizations through a series of bank robberies, attempting to force either mob family to offer up the sequestered Connor as a sacrifice. Inspired by the popular Japanese comic book series "Lone Wolf and Cub" and based loosely on an episode from the life and career of notorious real-life crime figures John and Connor Looney, Road to Perdition also features Stanley Tucci as legendary Chicago mobster Frank Nitti. -- Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- New York, 12 July:
 To honor its 75th anniversary, Kino International has restored Fritz Lang's 1927 classic Metropolis and released to theaters here and in Los Angeles. Perhaps the most famous and influential of all German silent films, Metropolis had been seen only in shortened or truncated versions. Now, restored in Germany with state-of-the-art digital technology, under the supervision of the Murnau Foundation, and with the original 1927 orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz added, the film can be appreciated in its full glory. It is, as A. O. Scott of The New York Times declared, "A fever dream of the future. At last we have the movie every would-be cinematic visionary has been trying to make since 1927." Metropolis takes place in 2026, when the populace is divided between workers who must live in the dark underground and the rich who enjoy a futuristic city of splendor. The tense balance of these two societies is realized through images that are among the most famous of the 20th century, many of which presage such sci-fi landmarks as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner. Lavish and spectacular, with elaborate sets and modern science fiction style, Metropolis stands today as the crowning achievement of the German silent cinema.
Link to four QuickTime scenes from the restored film.
- Los Angeles, 17 July: 20th Century-Fox has announced plans to produce three Hindi films, making it the first foreign studio to jump into the Indian market. The first film, Ek Hasina Thi (Once There Was An Attractive Woman), will start production in August.
- Paris, 24 July:
 Michel Reilhac's Polissons et galipettes (aka The Good Old Naughty Days) is released in theaters today. Reilhac has compiled this series of 12 single-reel French films, most of which are from the 1920s, but one of which was made in 1905. These movies were the first adult movies, most of them made to be shown in the waiting rooms of brothels in order to explain how sex works to inexperienced young men before their first liaison with a prostitute. -- Full review.
 - New York, 2 August: Following the smash hit The Sixth Sense (1999) and the under-performing follow-up Unbreakable (2000), directing phenom M. Night Shyamalan returns to the summer box office landscape that served as the backdrop for his cinematic breakthrough. In Signs, another paranormal outing for the writer-director, Shyamalan explores the eerie implications of a 500-foot crop circle that mysteriously appears on the Bucks County, PA farm of reverend Graham Hess (Mel Gibson). As Hess and his family (Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin) try to take stock of what the sign means, and how its message incorporates into their faith, they start to get the feeling they are not alone in the fields behind their house. Shyamalan re-teams with producers Frank Marshall, Sam Mercer and Kathleen Kennedy, and produces the project in association with his Blinding Edge Pictures banner and Touchstone Pictures. -- Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide.
- Los Angeles, 6 August: Movie theater concessions account for $4.5 billion in worldwide revenue, providing 50- to 100-percent of a theater's profit and account for more revenue than ticket sales, according to a report by Screen Digest.
- Paris, 28 August:
 Premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and named as one of the best films of 2002 in the Film Comment poll of 59 international film critics, Être et avoir (To Be and To Have) provides an insight into the learning process of thirteen children, ages 4 to 10, in a one-room schoolhouse during a seven-month period. The film is a tribute to the innocence of childhood and to the dedication of their teacher, 55-year old George Lopez. Director Nicolas Philibert selected Lopez' rural schoolhouse in the Auvergne region of southeast France from a list of 300 schools. Filming almost 600 hours of the children's daily activities with a crew of four, Philibert allows us to re-experience the long forgotten frustrations of learning how to trace letters, express our feelings verbally, count until we run out of numbers, and get along with our classmates. Mr. Lopez has taught in the same school for twenty years and has a unique ability to simply be with and respect children for who they are and what they say. He is a model of patience and an example of how to listen without making moral judgments or instant evaluations. Mr. Lopez works closely with each child, showing sensitivity in the way he handles problems as when he asks two fighting students to imagine the effect their behavior has on others. Être et avoir celebrates the dedication of teachers whose unacknowledged labors make a profound difference in the lives of our children. A film of warmth and humanity, it is the highest grossing French documentary of all time. Job well done, Mr. Lopez and Mr. Phlibert. -- Full review.
- Paris, 28 August:
 Premiered at the Cannes festival in May and shown at the Japanese festival of French films in June, Nicole Garcia's L'Adversaire (The Adversary) opens in theaters in the capital today. The magnificent Daniel Auteuil is ... well ... magnificent once again in this study of a common man whose world turns unaccountably pear-shaped, and who is powerless to get out of the increasingly large hole he's dug for himself. The sequencing of the film is very neatly done - we know from the word 'go' that Faure has done something horrendous, we're pretty sure what it is, and we are led to find out why through a complex series of flashbacks. The art of Auteuil is in his ability to make Faure a sympathetic character, despite his many flaws and the gruesome crime he commits. The painstakingly constructed portrait of a man in torment may get painted on a little too thickly at times, but Auteuil's descent from mixed-up family-man to lethal psychopath is gripping stuff. -- fiozinho, IMDb.
 - Rio de Janiero, 30 August: Release of Fernando Meirelles' Cidade de Deus (City of God), a sweeping tale of how crime affects the poor population of Rio de Janeiro. Though the narrative skips around in time, the main focus is on Cabeleira who formed a gang called the Tender Trio. He and his best friend, Bene (Phelipe Haagensen), become crime lords over the course of a decade. When Bene is killed before he can retire, Little Ze attempts to take out his arch enemy, Sando Cenoura (Matheus Nachtergaele). But Sando and a young gangster named Manu form an alliance and begin a gang war with Little Ze. Amateur photographer Buscape (Alexandre Rodrigues) takes pictures of the brutal crime war, making their story famous. Cidade de Deus was screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. -- Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- New York, 6 September:
 Past the Road to Perdition lies City by the Sea, Michael Caton-Jones's equally rote tale of father-son friction. Very loosely based on a 1997 Esquire article titled "Mark of a Murder" by the late NYC Cop Land columnist Mike McAlary, Ken Hixon's screenplay emphasizes, then reemphasizes, the distance between Queens cop Vincent LaMarca (Robert De Niro) and his junkie son Joey (James Franco). The effect is like a broken record. Dialogue from any given scene has been seemingly recycled from the same half dozen wails of filial chaos ("I'm not walking away," "Don't walk away from him again" and "He's got nothing!" are on especially heavy rotation). Key events from the real life LaMarca's life have been distorted to ensure optimum sympathy for the film's otherwise fictional characters. Vinny's estranged wife Linda (Patti LuPone, priceless in a dated green jumpsuit) damns her husband for leaving the family -- in reality, Linda left her husband for another man and refused to let him see little Joey for ten years. Creative liberties like these are to be expected but Hixon's disingenuous experiment has nothing in mind besides an after-school special warning to distant fathers. De Niro gets teary-eyed for a change while Frances McDormand bears the brunt of the script's queasy comedic moments. A ghostly Franco is the standout here, elegantly wasted as a young man fighting to get clean despite a dilapidated milieu and a cloying family past that'd turn anyone to drugs. Though the film's moody, retro-looking exteriors successfully evoke the decaying, impoverished section of New York's Long Beach (a.k.a. "The City by the Sea"), it takes one O.J. reference to place the film's events on a 90s timeline. -- Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
- Copenhagen, 6 September:
 Susanne Bier's latest film, Elsker dig for evigt (Open Hearts), opens here today. Made according to the austere filmmaking guidelines laid down by a group of Scandinavian filmmakers in the Dogme manifesto (eg "The film must not contain superficial action", "Genre movies are not acceptable"), it fails to match the series' one truly great film - Festen - but steers well clear of the contrived, pretentious, pseudo-intellectual bilge of The King Is Alive. This is a powerful, true work. Love and existential angst is the order of the day, when a malign act of fate draws the happily married Niels (Mads Mikkelsen) towards a lonely twentysomething girl named Cecile (Sonja Richter). As their relationship deepens, his wife (Paprika Steen) remains blissfully ignorant, but their teenage daughter begins to suspect. Originally planned as a romantic comedy, Open Hearts evolved into something altogether darker as Anders Thomas Jensen and Bier scripted. There are still a couple of chuckles - a brutally blunt doctor proves unintentionally amusing, and Cecile's bitter fiancé has a fine line in profanity - but a fluffy laugh-in this is not. There's a warmth and humanity to the characters that softens the bleakness, but it's still gruelling. "You can't have everything you want. You just can't. You have to choose", Niels tells his greedy children, even as he tries to have his cake and eat it. It's worth the gloom, however. Mikkelsen is an impressive, hangdog lead, and Steen is a terrific actor - giving a nuanced, emotive performance in a sometimes ragged, always affecting picture. A tribute to humans, in all our faded glory. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
- Paris, 11 September:
 Eleven international filmmakers were asked by French producer Alain Brigand to come up with a short film relating to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. The only artistic restriction was that each individual film must last precisely 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame. The resulting collaboration, 11'09"01 - September 11, offers some diverse geographical, cultural, and artistic perspectives on those tragic events. But it benefits from prior knowledge, on the part of the viewer, towards the previous work of the various contributors.
· Samira Makhmalbaf presents a female teacher, at an Afghani refugee camp in Iran, organising the children for a minute's silence. Meanwhile the adults express fears of an American bombardment.
· Danis Tanovic shows the women of Srebrenica (a town where Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred in their thousands by Serbs on 11 July 1995) continuing their monthly protests, despite the loss of life in America.
· Idrissa Ouedraogo shows a young boy in Burkina Faso on the trail of an Osama Bin Laden lookalike, hoping for the reward of $25 million.
· In the episodes by Sean Penn and Claude Lelouch, individuals are so preoccupied with their own personal problems that they remain oblivious to the television footage of the collapsing towers. One of the connecting threads, throughout this portmanteau, is how television enabled the whole world to experience the horrors of that fateful morning.
· Shohei Imamura makes the most baffling of the various contributions, with a story set in 1945 Japan where a man believes he's a snake. The veteran director concludes with the statement: "There is no such thing as a holy war."
· Alejandro González Iñárritu's effort is the most abstract. It incorporates flashes of images of bodies falling from the World Trade Centre, accompanied by religious chanting.
· Best of all is Ken Loach's segment, in which a Chilean refugee offers his condolences to the American victims. He then, in an open letter, remembers an earlier September 11 when a CIA-sponsored coup d'état installed the dictatorship of General Pinochet. It's a moving, persuasive reminder of a calamity the West would callously prefer to ignore.
· Youssef Chahine (Egypt), Amos Gitai (Israel) and Mira Nair (India) also contributed segments filmed in their native lands. -- Tom Dawson, BBC Films
- Los Angeles, 13 September:
 MGM releases Tim Story's Barbershop. Good-natured fun when it isn't stale, which is most of the time, this talky comedy set in a Chicago barber shop is a sitcom pilot disguised as a movie. Ice Cube is appealingly low-key as Calvin, who sells his dad's business to a loan shark, only to want it back when he realizes the barbershop is a vital meeting place for the black community. The barbers, including an old-timer (Cedric the Entertainer), a smartass college kid (Sean Patrick Thomas), one woman (Eve) and even one jive-ass white guy (Troy Garrity, son of Jane Fonda), seem like TV stereotypes waiting for more than one note to play. Final verdict: You've seen it all before. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
 - New York, 20 September: Hayao Miyazaki's Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away) opens in limited release in the US today. The master animation director follows up on his record-breaking 1997 opus Princess Mononoke with this surreal "Alice in Wonderland"-like tale about a lost little girl. The film opens with ten-year-old Chihiro riding along during a family outing as her father races through remote country roads. When they come upon a blocked tunnel, her parents decide to have a look around -- even though Chihiro finds the place very creepy. When they pass through the tunnel, they discover an abandoned amusement park. As Chihiro's bad vibes continue, her parents discover an empty eatery that smells of fresh food. After her mother and father help themselves to some tasty purloined morsels, they turn into giant pigs. Chihiro understandably freaks out and flees. She learns that this very weird place, where all sorts of bizarre gods and monsters reside, is a holiday resort for the supernatural after their exhausting tour of duty in the human world. Soon after befriending a boy named Haku, Chihiro learns the rules of the land: one, she must work , as laziness of any kind is not tolerated; and two, she must take on the new moniker of Sen. If she forgets her real name, Haku tells her, then she will never be permitted to leave. -- Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Washington, DC, 1 October:
 The U.S. government has turned down a visa request by famed Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who wants to attend the New York Film Festival. Kiarostami, one of the world's leading filmmakers, had visited the U.S. numerous times before without a problem, but now the government says post-September 11 restrictions will keep him out. Meanwhile, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki has announced he will boycott the Festival in protest of Kiarostami being denied a visa. "If international cultural exchange is prevented, what is left? An exchange of arms?" the filmmaker told the New York Times.
 - Paris, 2 October: Winner of the Audience Awards for best actor (Jean Rochefort) and best director (Patrice Leconte), L'Homme du train (The Man on the Train) opens in the capital today. In this comedy-drama, two men from two different walks of life develop an unexpected friendship. Weary from his trip and in anticipation of the heist he's about to perform, Milan (French rock star Johnny Hallyday) steps off the train after arriving in the small town where he's to meet his co-conspirators and heads straight to the town pharmacy. After accidentally buying the wrong product, Milan makes the acquaintance of retired teacher Manesquier (Rochefort), who offers to help the traveler and then promptly begins talking ad nauseum. Milan, after paying partial attention to the old man's ramblings, excuses himself to find accommodations -- only to run into Manesquier once more after learning that the hotel has closed for the night. As the two men talk, they develop a respect for one another, as well as a secret longing to live the type of lifestyle the other man lives based on the desire to escape their own. -- Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide
- Los Angeles, 4 October:
 Nationwide release of Brett Ratner's Red Dragon. After the slurpy-slurp suspense of The Silence of the Lambs and the okey-dokey panto horror of Hannibal, Anthony Hopkins returns as iconic serial killer Dr. Lecter in a prequel that promises to explore the "origin of evil". It doesn't, of course. When we meet cinema's favourite psycho here -- in a bloody, edgy prologue where he's captured by FBI Agent Will Graham (Edward Norton) -- he's the same fecund, frightful cannibal we know and love to hate. But he's very, very angry. And when Graham seeks his help to track down family-slaying freak, "The Tooth Fairy" (Ralph Fiennes), Lecter spies an opportunity for revenge. Cat 'n' mouse confrontations ensue, with the good doctor offering elliptical advice from within his cell. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Red Dragon resurrects the sweaty intensity of Silence, while the source material, Thomas Harris' eponymous first novel, has already been filmed by Michael Mann as Manhunter (1986). A sense of déjà vu pervades Brett Ratner's picture and even if you aren't familiar with the story it'll be hard to suppress frustration at Graham's painfully slow deductions (Norton - so astounding in Fight Club -- is a vacuum here, his callow features totally at odds with Graham's veteran status). But, despite these flaws, Red Dragon isn't simply a cash cow being milked by producer Dino De Laurentiis. Compensating for Norton is Hopkins' relish at playing his indelible creation incarcerated again, plus mesmerising supporting turns from Emily Watson as a blind potential victim and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a tabloid hack. Fiennes excels too, transcending his character's limitations to create a pitiable loner who both frightens and resonates. Hannibal Lecter gourmets may feel a long-digested movie is repeating on them, but if this really is your first time, savour the taste. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
- Hollywood, 7 October: My Big Fat Greek Wedding took in an estimated $8.2 million over the weekend to bring its dowry to $147.7 million. That makes the romantic comedy the highest grossing independent movie ever, surpassing the $140.5 million scared up by The Blair Witch Project.
- New York, 11 October:
 The latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love, opens here and in Los Angeles today. The winner of several awards and a popular entry on the international film festival circuit, the film concerns Barry Egan (Adam Sandler), who is the owner of a small warehouse business, with seven sisters. The abuse he takes from his sisters cause him to have an anger problem, which causes constant rage fits. One night, wanting someone to talk to, Barry calls a phone sex line, and is tricked into giving away all of his personal information, including his credit card number, and phone number. Meanwhile, Barry's sister is trying to set him up with a strange, mysterious woman from work, named Lena (Emily Watson). He starts dating her. But later, the woman from the phone sex line calls him, and asks for money. Barry doesn't give it to her, and she constantly calls, threatening him. Scared, Barry cancels his credit card. After that, the woman from the phone sex line sends her criminal brothers after Barry to collect the money from him. Now Barry has to fight the criminals, an also protect Lena, while keeping the phone sex call a secret.
 - Chicago, 13 October: Phillip Noyce's Australian feature Rabbit-Proof Fence is shown today at the Chicago Film Festival. Based on true events, Noyce's film is a moving story of racial prejudice, agoraphobic desert vistas, and amazing endurance as three girls walk 1,500 miles to find their mothers in 1930s Australia. These are the shocking facts behind the movie: during the early years of the 20th century, white Australians panicked about the supposed disaster of an "unwanted third race" of "half-caste" Aborigine children. Special detention centers were set up across the continent to keep the mixed race children from "contaminating" the rest of Australian society, and orders were given to forcibly remove "half-caste" children from their families. It was a disastrous, racist policy that brought about the misery of the so-called "stolen generations". In Rabbit-Proof Fence, Noyce gives us a perceptive, uplifting drama that highlights -- and overcomes -- that racist policy. Having been forcibly separated from their natural mothers, three girls -- Molly (Everlyn Sampi), Daisy (Tianna Sansbury), and Gracie (Laura Monaghan) -- escape from the Moore River Native Settlement, presided over by A.O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh). With an epic journey ahead of them, the girls set out to find their way back home by following the rabbit-proof fence that stretches across the Outback. Cutting back and forth between the children's journey and Neville's increasingly desperate attempts to capture them, Noyce's sensitive dramatization swaps angry politics for emotional sympathy, concentrating on the plight of the children instead of ranting against the authorities. By highlighting the realities of this hidden genocide (unbelievably, the policy continued until the early 1970s), Rabbit-Proof Fence stands as a powerful, worthy testimony to the suffering of the stolen generations. -- Jamie Russell, BBC Films
- London, 18 October:
 Mike Leigh's new film, All or Nothing, opens here today. Leigh may be Britain's leading poet of cinematic miserabilism, but he always has enough ironic detachment from his awkward and socially inept characters to see the comedy underlying their little tragedies. Set on a rundown South London housing estate, his latest exercise in feelbad follows exhausted minicab driver Phil (Timothy Spall) and his wife Penny (Lesley Manville), who works in a supermarket. The film charts the couple's attempts to try and make ends meet, raise their overweight kids, and find some sort of meaning to the drudgery of their everyday lives. Exuding the sweaty despair of a man whose existence has become one crushing defeat, Phil's awareness of "the fickle finger of whatsit... fate" weighs down heavily upon him: "We're all born alone. We die alone. There's nothing we can do about it," he gloomily reflects. Played to the hilt by Spall (the scene in which he quietly ransacks the house for small change to pay off his minicab hire bills is a masterpiece of seat-squirming embarrassment), Phil is one of Leigh's most brilliantly observed characters. Anchored by this excruciatingly accurate central performance, All or Nothing is a heartbreaking, yet curiously uplifting, film. With fantastic supporting turns from the wide-ranging cast, and some of the most hilariously obscene bad language you're ever likely to hear in the cinema, this is terrific filmmaking - and one of Leigh's best movies since Naked. Resisting the temptation to slip into outright caricature and mockery, Leigh combines misery with warmth, the tragic with the funny, and the sad with the joyous. Few directors could pull off such a tricky balancing act, but Leigh succeeds in delivering a dramatic slap in the face that's simultaneously painful and refreshing. -- Jamie Russell, BBC Films
 - New York, 18 October: The pickings are slim for scares this Halloween season (Ghost Ship, Below), so The Ring wins first prize by default. Gore Verbinski's Hollywood remake of Hideo Nakata's Ringu -- a 1998 cult smash in Japan -- creeps you out in high style, even if Nakata did it better. The plot is the same: There's this cursed videotape (no, it's not a bootleg of Madonna's "Swept Away"). You watch it. The phone rings. A voice says, "Seven days." That means you have a week to live. Seattle reporter Rachel Keller decides to investigate. Luckily, she's played by Mulholland Drive sorceress Naomi Watts, who keeps you glued to the screen even when Verbinski lets the suspense slacken and screenwriter Ehren Kruger gives her nothing to play. Rachel's weird, Haley Joel Osment-ish son (David Dorfman) and techie boyfriend (Martin Henderson) feel like filler. But the tape itself, featuring a longhaired girl child, is the stuff of nightmares. You have seven days. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
- New York, 25 October:
 In Frida, which goes into limited release in the US today, Salma Hayek gives it her all playing Frida Kahlo, the Mexican artist known for her bisexual appetites, her substance abuse, her back injuries sustained in a bus accident, her stormy marriage to fellow painter Diego Rivera (a scruffy, splendid Alfred Molina), her affair with Leon Trotsky (a pinched Geoffrey Rush) and her refusal to tweeze her eyebrows. With a script partly written by Hayek's boyfriend, Edward Norton (who does a cameo as Nelson Rockefeller), the film crams it all in. That's the trouble. Director Julie Taymor (Titus, Broadway's The Lion King) keeps everything lively and colorful, but this maverick is hamstrung by a script that seems determined to stop at all the big moments in Frida's life (she died in 1954 at age forty-seven) without giving anything time to resonate. Hayek fought hard for the role (J. Lo and -- yikes! -- Madonna wanted to play Frida), but her passion fights a losing battle with biopic conventions. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
 - London, 1 November: Winner of several awards, including the Prix jeunesse at this year's Cannes festival, Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar opens here today. With her auspicious debut Ratcatcher (1999), Ramsay demonstrated that she thrived on atmosphere, favoring a hauntingly sensual visual style over dialogue and an over-explained plot. Now with her second film, she is back on equally uncluttered and mesmerising turf. Capturing the mood and visuals of Alan Warner's eponymous novel, she's faithful rather than slavish to its spirit -- no mean feat for this cult and allegedly unfilmable book -- and the results are dazzling. The film opens with Morvern (Samantha Morton), bathed in the intermittent glow of her Christmas tree lights, sensually caressing the body of her boyfriend, who has committed suicide on the kitchen floor. Numbed by his death, she pretends that he's left town. Then, after discovering his unpublished novel, she decides to pass it off as her own. Not so much a discredit to her boyfriend but her ticket to a new life, Morvern uses the money from her beau's bank account to take herself, and her best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), to Spain. But while Lanna opts for partying, Morvern retreats from the tourist areas and negotiates a book deal that enables her to escape her former life. As with Ratcatcher, Ramsay doesn't hanker for mainstream appeal in Morvern Callar. Neither does she spoon-feed the story to the audience. Instead she has the confidence to let the film out quite slowly, allowing the imagery and carefully selected soundtrack to take over. The story itself is an unusual string of events, and it's because of this that we can feel distanced from Morvern, just when we're getting to know her. Samantha Morton's ethereal looks make her a perfect canvas for Ramsay, but there's an enigmatic energy behind her wide-eyed expression that's intriguing way beyond the end of the film. -- Laura Bushell, BBC Films
- London, 3 November:
 Premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, in which director Chris Columbus bows out of the "Harry Potter" franchise with a competent, workmanlike effort that retells J.K. Rowling's plot but fails to capture the novel's spirit or essence. The second film in the cinematic cash cow sees Hogwart's students Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) try to uncover the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets. As a series of students become petrified -- turned to stone, that is, although very young audience members might find themselves equally scared by some intense set-pieces -- everyone wants to know who's leaving mysterious messages about the imminent arrival of the "heir of Slytherin". As panic starts to spread, the wand of suspicion points directly in Harry's direction... In fairness to Columbus, the special effects here will have you reclining in your seat, admiring the spectacle. Unfortunately, the film's pedestrian pacing won't get you on the edge of it. As with Sorcerer's Stone, the main pleasure comes from the all-star adult cast: Kenneth Branagh is note-perfect as vain Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart, while Jason Isaacs camps it up to great effect as the villainous Lucius Malfoy. Another success comes with the CG Dobby (voiced by Toby Jones), a self-flagellating elf whose attempts to help Harry only hinder. Alas, while the elder thesps shine, some of the younger actors have a mugging rate rivalled only by your average inner-city. The one exception is Emma Watson, who captures know-it-all Hermione's character perfectly. Ardent fans of the book -- especially those under 16 -- will find much to enjoy here, with the Death Day Party and a sub-plot about Percy's love life the only major cuts from the novel. The less committed, however, may find the magic failing to do the trick second time round. -- Adrian Hennigan, BBC Films
- New York, 8 November:
 Universal releases Curtis Hanson's latest feature, 8 Mile, in which Eminem cements his position as the noughties Madonna. A new parent-worrying icon for disaffected youth, he already bosses pop music with his infectious rapping and controversial lyrics. Cinema is next. Not that his celluloid bow is anywhere near as incendiary as the London Daily Mail thinks his music is. Rather, in the hands of Hanson, it's a solidly built, rather old-fashioned yarn about a plucky underdog who triumphs in the face of adversity. Think Rocky with rapping. The bouts in this setting are rap battles -- in which rival rappers insult each other in turn, using the most imaginative and funny rhymes they can manage.
8 Mile opens with Jimmy "Rabbit" Smith (Eminem) freezing in his first such contest at the Shelter (where the Detroit-born star used to perform in real life). Humiliated, he returns to the drudgery of his menial job and living with his trailer trash mom (Kim Basinger, too glamorous for the role) next to the 8 Mile Road, which separates the white suburbs from the largely black inner city. The following week's battle could offer a chance of redemption, but will he take it? Not hard to predict, obviously, but Eminem's semi-autobiographical drama at least manages not to embarrass its star or the audience (so the Madonna comparison ends here). Scott Silver's script garnishes its clichés with effective social commentary. The former Marshall Mathers, meanwhile, is fine, if somewhat self-conscious, as he skulks about wearing his trademark look of wounded insolence. The rapping is the real star. When Eminem takes centre stage, he's back in an arena he knows, and his charisma and remarkable linguistic dexterity make these profane, clever and funny scenes the best of the movie. "Off the hizzies, no doubt, nomsayin?", as they say in Hertfordshire. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
- New York, 8 November:
 Todd Haynes' new film, Far from Heaven, goes into limited release today. Maverick director Haynes embraces the look and feel of classic Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s in this period drama. Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) and her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) are a seemingly perfect couple; living in a handsome suburban neighborhood in Hartford, CT in 1957, Cathy and Frank have a beautiful home and two happy, healthy children, while Frank pursues a successful career in sales and Cathy cares for the home. But Cathy has begun to sense something isn't quite right in her marriage, as Frank begins working late, spending less time with her, and seems cold and distant. One day, Cathy visits Frank's work and discovers something she never expected -- her husband is kissing a man. At Cathy's urging, Frank undergoes psychotherapy, but as she tries to keep up a brave face, the emotional trauma takes a great toll on her, and she finds there are very few people she can talk with. Cathy strikes up a friendship with Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), an African-American gardener who works for the Whitakers, and as she discovers how intelligent and compassionate Raymond is, she finds herself drawn to him. However, Hartford is in many ways still a small town, and when Mona (Celia Weston) sees Cathy and Raymond alone together, it sets off a wave of vicious gossip that threatens to make the Whitakers' many secrets public knowledge. Far from Heaven premiered at the 2002 Venice Film Festival last month, where Moore's performance won the prize for Best Actress. -- Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Los Angeles, 19 November:
 Premiere of Steven Soderbergh's latest film, Solaris from 20th Century-Fox. Put George Clooney in a space-suit and you expect Star Wars heroics, aliens, massive FX. Get over it. And don't assume jumbo epic because James Cameron produced it. Solaris is a hypnotic blend of psychological thriller and love story that is only incidentally set in space. It's the landscape of the mind that interests writer-director Soderbergh. Clooney stars as Kris Kelvin, a psychologist sent to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris to find out why certain crew members are missing and others -- Snow (Jeremy Davies) and Helen (Viola Davis) -- are hiding in their cabins in fear. Kris' biggest surprise is running into his wife, Khari (Natascha McElhone), mostly because she had killed herself back on Earth after Kris threatened to leave her. Now she's naked and in his bed. Based on a Stanislaw Lem novel filmed in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris teems with ideas (perhaps too many) about illusion and reality that Soderbergh handles with spare, unhurried grace. Clooney brings raw intensity to his role; his scenes with McElhone are rooted in a fierce romantic yearning. Solaris is a mind-bender in the best sense of the word: The spell it casts follows you all the way home. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
 - Los Angeles, 4 December: American premiere of Roman Polanski's The Pianist. Polanski, who as a boy growing up in Poland watched while the Nazis devastated his country during World War II, directs this downbeat drama based on the true story of a privileged musician who spent five years struggling against the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is a gifted classical pianist born to a wealthy Jewish family in Poland. The Szpilmans have a large and comfortable flat in Warsaw which Wladyslaw shares with his mother and father (Maureen Lipman and Frank Finlay), his sisters Halina and Regina (Jessica Kate Meyer and Julia Rayner), and his brother, Henryk (Ed Stoppard). While Wladyslaw and his family are aware of the looming presence of German forces and Hitler's designs on Poland, they're convinced that the Nazis are a menace which will pass, and that England and France will step forward to aid Poland in the event of a real crisis. Wladyslaw's naveté is shattered when a German bomb rips through a radio studio while he performs a recital for broadcast. During the early stages of the Nazi occupation, as a respected artist, he still imagines himself above the danger, using his pull to obtain employment papers for his father and landing a supposedly safe job playing piano in a restaurant. But as the German grip tightens upon Poland, Wladyslaw and his family are selected for deportation to a Nazi concentration camp. Refusing to face a certain death, Wladyslaw goes into hiding in a comfortable apartment provided by a friend. However, when his benefactor goes missing, Wladyslaw is left to fend for himself and he spends the next several years dashing from one abandoned home to another, desperate to avoid capture by German occupation troops. The Pianist was based on the memoir of the same name by the real-life Wladyslaw Szpilman; the book was first published in 1946 as Death of a City, but was banned by Polish Communist officials and went out of print until 1998, when a new edition was issued as The Pianist. -- Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- New York, 5 December:
 Time and repeat viewing will tell whether The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the second part of Peter Jackson's magnum opus, is truly better than its illustrious predecessor. It certainly surpasses The Fellowship of the Ring in terms of wit, action and narrative drive. What it lacks -- at least until the climax -- is the first film's wow-factor. We are now accustomed to the environs and inhabitants of Middle-earth. Without an explanation for trilogy newcomers, the story picks up where Fellowship left off. Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are journeying to Mordor to destroy the world-threatening One Ring. They are joined by the avaricious, reptilian Gollum (an astounding, computer-generated creation, brilliantly voiced by Andy Serkis). Meanwhile, Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) are pursuing Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd), who have been kidnapped by orcs... The following action is too densely-layered to explain here, which makes the achievement of Jackson and his co-writers all the more impressive. This is a compact, flab-free adaptation of JRR Tolkien's complex, lengthy book, and it suffers little from following three simultaneous adventures. The special effects, too, impress. Gollum is the first believable CG character, while the battle of Helm's Deep is one of the finest, most expansive combat sequences ever filmed. The cast do well not to be swamped by the spectacle. Mortensen again excels as the square-jawed hero, while Rhys-Davies' dwarf provides welcome comic relief. Unfortunately, with his every attempt at sincerity, Wood's Frodo still looks as though he's going to make a pass at his fellow hobbit Sam. However, Astin rises above this to give a standout performance. It's his moving delivery of the inspirational, climactic monologue that gives heart to the spectacle and elevates a film it's easy to admire into one it's possible to love. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers opens in UK cinemas on Wednesday, 18 December. -- Nev Pierce, BBC Films
- Los Angeles, 6 December:
 Spike Jonze's Adaptation goes into limited release today. Screenwriting this smart, inventive, passionate and rip-roaringly funny is a rare species. So all praise to Charlie Kaufman, working with Jonze to create the most original and outrageous film comedy since the two first teamed on Being John Malkovich, in 1999. But how to describe it? Nicolas Cage, back from hell or wherever it is good actors get sucked under by muck such as Captain Corelli's Mandolin, plays Kaufman. And he's terrific, portraying Charlie as a balding, paunchy, self-loathing introvert who can't get laid. Wait -- the star of the film plays the writer of the film? What's up with that? What's up is that Adaptation is the story of how Charlie, following his Oscar® nomination for Malkovich (a flashback to the set of that film is piss-yourself hilarious), takes on a job adapting The Orchid Thief, a nonfiction, nonlinear book by New Yorker writer Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) about John Laroche (Chris Cooper), a toothless Florida flower breeder in search of a rare "ghost orchid." These are real people, not the stuff of boffo fantasy, which is fine by Charlie. He tells a studio exec (a smashing Tilda Swinton): no sex, no guns, no car chases -- "Why can't there be a movie simply about flowers?" Yeah, right.
As Charlie sits at his typewriter, promising himself coffee and a muffin if he can cough up ideas, Jonze runs amok with the visuals: time travel, a cameo from Charles Darwin, a quickie nature lesson about how flowers adapt and Charlie's decision to put himself in the script. Not just Charlie but his twin, Donald (Cage again), also fat and balding but -- it's a sweet joke -- hugely successful with women. Donald easily seduces Caroline (Maggie Gyllenhaal), while Charlie can't show his feelings to Amelia (a solid Cara Seymour) or even say a word to Susan in an elevator. In real life, Kaufman has no twin. Donald is Charlie's livelier, crasser alter ego; he's fresh from a seminar with screenwriting expert Robert McKee (also real, but played here with priceless mischief by Brian Cox). McKee teaches that a script without conflict or crisis will "bore an audience to tears." So the twins collaborate on an adaptation that is pure Hollywood nightmare and too delicious to reveal. Few scripts toss more challenging balls in the air, and Jonze juggles them all with artful, light-stepping ease. It's magic. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
- New York, 9 December:
 Premiere of Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. The violent rise of gangland power in New York City at a time of massive political corruption and the city's evolution into a cultural melting pot set the stage for this lavish historical epic, which Scorsese finally brought to the screen almost 30 years after he first began to plan the project. In 1846, as waves of Irish immigrants poured into the New York neighborhood of Five Points, a number of citizens of British and Dutch heritage who were born in the United States began making an open display of their resentment toward the new arrivals. William Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis), better known as "Bill the Butcher" for his deadly skill with a knife, bands his fellow "Native Americans" into a gang to take on the Irish immigrants; the immigrants in turn form a gang of their own, "The Dead Rabbits," organized by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson). After an especially bloody clash between the Natives and the Rabbits leaves Vallon dead, his son goes missing; the boy ends up in a brutal reform school before returning to the Five Points in 1862 as "Amsterdam" (Leonardo DiCaprio). Now a strapping adult who has learned how to fight, Amsterdam has come to seek vengeance against Bill the Butcher, whose underworld control of the Five Points through violence and intimidation dovetails with the open corruption of New York politician "Boss" Tweed (Jim Broadbent). Amsterdam gradually penetrates Bill the Butcher's inner circle, and he soon becomes his trusted assistant. Amsterdam also finds himself falling for Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz), a beautiful but street-smart thief who was once involved with Bill. Amsterdam is learning a great deal from Bill, but before he can turn the tables on the man who killed his father, Amsterdam's true identity is exposed, even though he has conceiled it from nearly everyone, including Jenny. Gangs of New York was the first film in two years from actor Leonardo DiCaprio; ironically, it was at one time scheduled to open on the same day as Catch Me If You Can, the Steven Spielberg project that DiCaprio began filming immediately after Gangs wrapped. -- Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Los Angeles, 10 December:
 Rob Marshall's Chicago premieres today. Adapted from Bob Fosse's stage musical, Chicago harks back to the jazz age of the 20s. Flirty flappers, chaps in spats, and art deco visuals all lend Marshall's movie a slick, sophisticated feel. Shame, then, that it's only concerned with the razzle-dazzle. It'd be unfair to liken the film to a cheap card trick. It's more on the scale of a David Copperfield illusion, distracting from you from dull mechanics with dazzling visuals.
The plot is scant. Aspiring singer Roxie Hart (Renée Zellweger) longs for the limelight hogged by vampish Velma Kelley (Catherine Zeta-Jones). By some facile conceit, both end up on Death Row competing for headlines, aided in their efforts by hotshot attorney Billy Flynn (Richard Gere). That's it. The choreography is polished to perfection, but that's little to do with director Rob Marshall. He'd have done just as well taking a camcorder along to the Adelphi Theatre. The singing hits the spot, but it's the one saving grace for a cast otherwise burdened with an inert script. Zellweger flits between nauseating and mildly irritating. Richard Gere is the definitive shyster, doing what he does best, being smarmy. Zeta-Jones' natural charisma threatens to surface, but never enough that it outshines the glare of sequins. Only Queen Latifah offers a wink of mischief, but any light relief is buried in a celebration of cynicism. John C. Reilly, Christine Baranski, Taye Diggs, Dominic West and Lucy Liu round out the cast. Since Chicago comments on the superficial nature of fame, it's no wonder everyone should prove to be so shallow. But here the film trips over itself. Ultimately, it's as hollow as Roxie's heart. We're left with a lazy assemblage of set-pieces that fail to add up to anything much. Frankly, you won't be all that jazzed. -- Stella Papamichael, BBC Films
- New York, 13 December:
 New Line Cinema releases Alexander Payne's new film, About Schmidt, in theaters here and in Los Angeles. Get this: Jack Nicholson -- still the epitome of cool at sixty-five -- starring as an unhip, unhappy Nebraska actuary. There's no bad-boy DNA in Warren Schmidt. He's recently retired and stuck in Omaha with Helen (June Squibb), his dowdy wife of forty-two years: "Who is this old woman living in my house?" This is Nicholson without the devilish glint, without the raised eyebrow. It is also Nicholson at his bravest and riskiest. By banking his fires and staying alert to the smallest details, he delivers a monumental performance that blasts your expectations and batters your heart. About Schmidt may well win Nicholson his fourth Oscar®. But the real fun comes in watching him work with Payne, who is a major talent but also an off-Hollywood director (he's from Omaha, like Schmidt) who cooks up blistering satires (Citizen Ruth, Election) with his writing partner, Jim Taylor. Both are gloss-free mavericks, not given to coddling audiences. The laughs sting in this film, which is basically a road movie as Schmidt reacts to Helen's death by taking to the highway in a Winnebago. His eventual destination is Denver, where his only child, Jeannie (Hope Davis), will marry Randall (Dermot Mulroney), a mullet-headed water-bed salesman who Schmidt believes is beneath her. Kathy Bates is a nonstop pleasure as Randall's full-bodied mom, a force of nature who drops her clothes to jump in a hot tub with Schmidt, the one scene (and it's a pip) where Nicholson gives his eyebrow a hilarious workout. For all the laughs, About Schmidt cuts deepest when it stays most intimate: in the letters Schmidt writes to Ndugu, a six-year-old Tanzanian orphan he helps support; in the wedding speech he delivers without expressing the resentment he feels; in the final release that leaves him (and us) devastated. Nicholson's acting sets a new gold standard, making Schmidt a movie you won't forget. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
- Los Angeles, 15 December: The Los Angeles Film Critics on Saturday selected About Schmidt as their pick for the best flick of 2002. The film's star, Jack Nicholson, tied for top actor with Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York). Actress props went to Julianne Moore for her roles in Far from Heaven and The Hours.
- Los Angeles, 15 December: Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, about gun culture in America, was honored as the best documentary of all time from the International Documentary Association. Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line came in second, followed by Moore's first documentary hit, 1989's Roger & Me. The Columbine director is planning to bring his one-man stage show, Michael Moore--Live, to New York in March for a 10-week Broadway run. Moore is currently performing the show in London's Roundhouse Theater.
- Paris, 18 December:
 Agnès Varda enjoyed making her scavenger film in 2000 so much she went out with her handi-cam and did it again. The whopping great distribution can't have slowed her down either. In Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse... deux ans après (The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later), one of the subjects says she shouldn't have been in the first one so much, so she minimizes her presence -- ineffectively because the winning, quirky first person author is still the star. Varda's segment on the character who lives off garbage and runs in the Paris marathon is particularly intriguing. The insets of the first film, the hand made movie from the early years or the withered heart shape potato that should get at least a mutter of recognition from her fans, all liven up the film. These films are like spending time in the company of a great raconteur. The fact that she's turned out to be possibly the most accomplished Nouvelle Vague director is a bonus. Hope she does another twenty.
 - New York, 18 December: Premiere of The Hours, the latest film from director Stephen Daldry. Nicole Kidman de-glams herself with a fake nose to play suicidal author Virginia Woolf, but there's nothing fake about her performance. Kidman's acting is superlative, full of passion and feeling. Woolf is the focus of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel, which David Hare has adapted into a film that sometimes stumbles on literary pretensions. In the 1920s, Woolf lives in the London suburbs with her protective husband (the superb Stephen Dillane) and battles demons of the mind as she writes Mrs. Dalloway. That novel will affect the lives of Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a housewife and mother living in 1950s Los Angeles, and Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), a modern New Yorker planning a party for a former lover (an off-key Ed Harris), a poet dying of AIDS. Daldry interweaves these stories with uncanny skill. Kidman's moment at a train station is devastating. Moore is wrenching in her scenes with Laura's son (Jack Rovello, an exceptional child actor). And Streep is a miracle worker, building a character in the space between words and worlds.These three unimprovable actresses make The Hours a thing of beauty. -- Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
- Los Angeles, 25 December:
 After the philosophical constipation of A.I. Artificial Intelligence and pseudo-seriousness of Minority Report, Steven Spielberg rediscovers his sense of fun with Catch Me If You Can, a funny, frivolous con caper. He also revives the irony that's lain dormant since his Indiana Jones days, revelling in his most throwaway, endearing entertainment since 1989's The Last Crusade. Catch is a light, fizzy confection -- from the sprightly animated credits to John Williams' enjoyable, Henry Mancini-esque jazz score (his best work in years). Leonardo DiCaprio is a perfect fit for the role of callow, charismatic grifter Frank Abagnale Jr -- a real-life con artist who made the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list before his 21st birthday. He's utterly convincing as a precocious liar, using dud cheques to bounce around 60s America, trailed by Tom Hanks' dutiful G-man. The star's charm, Spielberg's slick visuals, and a couple of well-placed swing hits (including Frank Sinatra crooning "Come Fly With Me") combine in seductive sequences that evoke Rat Pack cool and the Newman/Redford spark of The Sting II. Christopher Walken gives an electrifying performance as Abagnale's pitiable dad, while Amy Adams is touching as his naïve fiancée. Ultimately, Catch is as hollow as its hero, but that's the point. The form matches the subject matter in a movie that burns brightly and then quickly fades away. Which just means you need to watch it again. Enjoy. -- Full review.
- Los Angeles, 31 December: Box-office ticket sales for the year are expected to tally over $9 billion, up 10 percent from last year.
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Best Picture: Chicago
1 January, West Hollywood, CA -- 
