The Majestic
USA, 150 minutes
Frank Darabont directs. Jim Carrey, Martin Landau, Bob Balaban & Laurie Holden star.
Screenwriter Peter Appleton is an ambitious, idealistic up-and-comer for whom the world appears to be his oyster. But life takes a sudden and drastic turn when he finds himself targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee during its Hollywood witch hunt. Barred from his studio, Appleton loses his job and identity, only to find new courage, love and the power of conviction in the heart of a small town. From Frank Darabont (The Green Mile) comes this Capra-esque drama set in the 1950's, starring Jim Carrey, Martin Landeau, Bob Balaban and Laurie Holden (The X-Files).

Ali
USA, 140 minutes
Michael Mann directs. Will Smith, Jamie Foxx & Jon Voight star.
Will Smith stars in director/writer Michael Mann's journey into the heart and life of the boxer, the legend, and most importantly, the man: Muhammad Ali. With wit and athletic genius, defiant rage and inner grace, Ali's impact reached well beyond the ropes of the boxing ring. This eagerly anticipated drama from the director of The Insider charts the life of one of the most inspiring and controversial figures of our time. From the ring to the Viet Nam war and beyond, Ali was a man who both ignited and mirrored the conflicts of his time to become one of the most admired fighters in the world. He talked and danced. He fought and struggled. Ali shook the world.

Last Orders
England, 109 minutes
Fred Schepisi directs. Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Tom Courtenay & Helen Mirren star.
Jack (Michael Caine) was an ordinary guy, a butcher, yet a powerful, charismatic man whose life was a crucial heartline for his son and four best friends. There’s Lucky (Bob Hoskins), the gambler, Jack’s best friend and admirer of his wife (Helen Mirren), Jack’s son Vince (Ray Winstone), Lenny (David Hemmings), a one-time boxer who is always looking for a fight, and undertaker Vic (Tom Courtenay), a wise and bemused presence who keeps the men on track. As the five set out on a journey through beautiful landscapes and a series of pubs, they are flooded with memories of their life with Jack. From Fred Schepisi (The Russia House) comes this funny and moving film about old friends. An epic story about ordinary people which shows that there are no ordinary people.

Sexy Beast
England, 88 minutes
Jonathan Glazer directs. Ben Kingsley & Ray Winstone star
Cockney gangster Gary (Ray Winstone) has decided his criminal days are over and has retired to the Costa del Sol for what he thinks will be a quiet life. But he hasn’t bargained for his erstwhile associate, turned enemy, the foul-mouthed Don (Ben Kingsley) turning up to persuade him to return to London for just one last bank heist. In this darkly comic drama by first-time feature director Jonathan Glazer we see Winstone perfectly cast as the dissolute, over-tanned, overweight ‘sexy beast’ Gary and Kingsley, a million miles away from his role in Ghandi in a magnificently, frighteningly intense performance as the pathologically repressed Don. Sexy Beast is a rich paella that mixes star routines with surreal moments, comedy with graphic violence and melancholy with sad romance.

Iris
England, 90 minutes
Richard Eyre directs. Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Kate Winslet & Hugh Bonneville star.
For his first foray into feature filmmaking, British theatre director Richard Eyre (Amy’s View) recounts the tender and extraordinary story of enduring love between the distinguished novelist-philosopher Iris Murdoch and her husband, John Bayley. Based on Bayley’s memoirs, and described by Eyre as "a grown–up love story," Iris follows their life together from its romantic inception at Oxford in the 50s with the young, vibrant Iris portrayed by Kate Winslet, through to Murdoch’s death just a few years ago. Screen stalwart Dame Judi Dench plays the older and aging Iris, as she falls sadly prey to perhaps the cruelest affliction that can beset a writer. Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville play Bayley.

I Am Sam
USA, 128 minutes
Jessie Nelson directs. Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer & Dianne Wiest star.
Sean Penn stars as Sam Dawson, a mentally-challenged father raising his daughter Lucy (Dakota Fanning) with the help of an extraordinary group of friends. When Lucy turns seven and begins to intellectually surpass her father, their close bond is threatened by a social worker who wants to place her in foster care. Determined to keep his child, Sam forms an unlikely alliance with a high-powered attorney (Michelle Pfeiffer). Together they fight the system and, in the process, fuse a bond that results in a unique testament to the power of unconditional love. Jessie Nelson directs.

Pauline and Paulette
Belgium, 78 minutes
Lieven Debrauwer directs. Dora Van Der Groen & Ann Petersen star.
A bittersweet story of family ties, Pauline and Paulette is a warm, funny family portrait with heartfelt and often heart-rending performances by its small cast. Described as "a little girl 66 years old," and one of four sisters, Pauline lives quite contentedly with the eldest sister, Martha, who helps her with everything from tying her shoes to cutting up her food. Everything is ordered and routine but when sudden tragedy upsets their lives, the women are forced to accept change, and learning new lines at their age proves comically, and at times, painfully difficult. Never heavy-handed nor overbearing, this first feature from Belgian fimmaker Lieven Debrauwer, which was a hit at the Cannes Film Festival deals beautifully with the ties of obligation that bind, as well as the heartstrings of affection that bond families together.

Charlotte Gray
England, 120 minutes
Gillian Armstrong directs. Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup & Michael Gambon star.
Set in Nazi-occupied France at the height of WWII, Charlotte Gray is the compelling, romantic adventure of a well–bred young Scottish woman (Cate Blanchett) working in London during the Blitz, who has a brief, passionate affair with Peter Gregory, an RAF pilot (Rupert Penry–Jones). When Gregory’s plane crashes on a mission over France she becomes a courier for the French resistance in order to search for her lover and, in the process, is drawn into the lives of a resistance fighter (Billy Crudup) and his father (Michael Gambon). Gillian Armstong (Little Women, My Brilliant Career) directs this adaptation of the best-selling novel by Sebastian Faulks.

Dark Blue World
Czech Republic/ England, 119 minutes
Jan Sverak directs. Ondrej Vetchy, Krystof Hadek & Tara Fitzgerald star.
In his first film since Kolya, director Jan Sverak juxtaposes the intimacy of a long-time friendship against the wide canvas of history. When the Nazis invade their country, Czech pilot Franta and his protégé Karel, a fresh faced young trainee pilot, flee to Britain, join the Royal Air Force, and fall in love with the same English woman. For Karel, Susan is his first love. Both the romance and the war test the men’s friendship to its limits. Engaging characters, Sverak’s signature big-heartedness, and stunning aerial cinematography make for a high-flying wartime story.

Life as a House
USA, 123 minutes
Irwin Winkler directs. Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas & Hayden Christensen star.
Like the dilapidated bungalow he calls home, George’s life is in shambles. He is middle-aged and estranged from everything – his job, his ex-wife, even his teenage son. When confronted with life-changing news, George seizes the chance to begin living on his own terms. He hatches a dramatic scheme to tear down his house – and ends up rebuilding the world around him with a passion that proves contagious, affecting other lives in the most unexpected ways. Kevin Kline imbues George with such humanity and disarming candor that no one can fail to be drawn into his story and he is supported by the stellar ensemble cast that director Irwin Winkler has assembled: Kristin Scott Thomas, Hayden Christiansen, Mary Steenburgen, Jena Malone, Sam Robards and Jamey Sheridan. Voted Audience Favorite at Filmfest.

The Shipping News
USA, 124 minutes
Lasse Hallstrom directs. Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore & Judi Dench star.
Directed by Lasse Hallström (The Cider House Rules, Chocolat) and based on Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Shipping News traces one man’s extraordinary journey toward self–discovery. Newspaperman Quoyle (Kevin Spacey) survives an awful marriage to a crazy woman (Cate Blanchett) and moves with his daughters to his ancestral home in a Newfoundland harbor town, where he gets a job on the weekly paper covering the shipping news. Now, in a place where life is as rough as the weather, Quoyle not only begins to find an identity for himself, but in the process uncovers friendship, love and dark family secrets. Julianne Moore and Judi Dench also star.

No Man's Land
Bosnia, 97 minutes
Danis Tanovic directs. Brancko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac & Simon Callow star.
Ciki and Nino, a Bosnian and a Serb, are soliders stranded in No Man’s Land – a trench between enemy lines during the Bosnian war. They have no one to trust, no way to escape without getting shot, and a fellow soldier is lying on the trench floor in a very precarious situation. Into this harrowingly absurd scenario steps the futile mechanism of U.N. peace-keeping, including an honorable French tank commander, a cynical British journalist, and a few bureaucrats whose first priority is to look good for the international television audience. Much acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival, Danis Tanovic’s black comedy expertly combines hair-trigger expense, political satire, violence, and surprising moments of warmth and humor to search for the fundamental humanity that modern warfare threatens to destroy entirely.

Gosford Park
USA, 134 minutes
Robert Altman directs. Alan Bates, Richard E. Grant, Maggie Smith, Emily Watson, Clive Owen & many more star.
Upstairs, Downstairs meets Agatha Christie in Robert Altman’s latest. Gosford Park is a comedy-of-manners set in 1932 at an English country estate with a big ensemble cast, typical of Altman’s films – here he has a stellar British one, including Alan Bates, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Helen Mirren, Jeremy Northam, Maggie Smith and Emily Watson. Sir William McCordle (Gambon) and his wife Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas) gather relations and friends for a shooting party. It’s an eclectic group including a countess, a WWI hero, the British matinee idol Ivor Novello, and an American film producer. The guests gather in gilded rooms, servants teem in the kitchens and corridors – but all is not as it might seem either above or below stairs. Part comedy, part mystery, the film is finally a moving portrait of events that bridge generations, class, sex, tragic personal history – and culminates in a murder (or is it two murders…?)

The Royal Tenenbaums
USA, 105 minutes
Wes Anderson directs. Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow & Bill Murray star.
This buoyant new film by Wes Anderson (Rushmore), mingles romance, tragedy, social observation, black comedy and unforgettable characters played by an all-star cast. Meet the Tenenbaums, a dysfunctional family of eccentric geniuses living in a parallel New York. Gene Hackman stars as Royal Tenenbaum, the erratic, unscrupulous paterfamilias, long banished by his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston). Now, he’s back home to settle accounts with his three children – financial whiz Chas (Ben Stiller), failed playwright Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) and retired tennis champ Richie (Luke Wilson) – whose early brilliance was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure and disaster – most of this generally considered to be their father’s fault.

A Beautiful Mind
USA, 129 minutes
Ron Howard directs. Russell Crowe, Ed Harris & Jennifer Connelly star.
Russell Crowe joins Ed Harris and Jennifer Connelly in Ron Howard’s latest, a human drama inspired by events in the life of mathematical genius, John Forbes Nash, Jr. From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, Nash experienced it all. He made an astonishing discovery early in his career and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery. After many years of struggle, he eventually triumphed over this tragedy, and finally – late in life – received the Nobel prize.

Waking Life
USA, 97 minutes
Richard Linklater directs. Wiley Wiggins & an ensemble cast of 74 star.
Richard Linklater, one of the handful of American independent filmmakers with a genuinely creative interest in style and structure, takes a radical turn with this new free-flowing surrealist comedy. Linklater’s live-action footage, shot on digital video, has been transformed into light, pliable cartoon images by a team of animators under the direction of Bob Sabiston. Waking Life is a companion piece to Linklater’s 1991 breakthrough Slacker; like that film, it consists of a series of vignettes, which may or may not be installments in one never-ending dream. Around a nameless central figure (Wiley Wiggins), who begins the film as a child caught in a dream of weightlessness, Linklater weaves, a funny, moving and altogether dizzying experience.

In the Bedroom
USA, 135 minutes
Todd Field directs. Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek, Marisa Tomei & Nick Stahl star.
Actor Todd Field (Ruby in Paradise, Eyes Wide Shut) makes his directorial debut with a family drama that was honored with the Special Jury Prize for Acting at the Sundance Film Festival. Keenly observed and peerlessly performed, In the Bedroom centers on the inner dynamics of a family in transition. Matt Fowler (Tom Wilkinson) is a doctor practicing in his native Maine and is married to New York-born Ruth Fowler (Sissy Spacek), a choral music teacher. Their only child Frank (Nick Stahl) is home for summer and has become involved with a local single mother (Marisa Tomei). As the beauty of Maine’s brief and fleeting summer comes to an end, these characters find themselves in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.

The Son's Room
Italy, 87 minutes
Nanni Moretti directs. Moretti, Laura Morante & Jasmine Trinca star.
Winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Canne’s Film Festival, The Son’s Room is a touching portrait of a closely knit Italian family whose secure, contented middle-class existence is shattered with the death of their teenage son. Veteran filmmaker Nanni Moretti himself plays a psychoanalyst more used to listening to the misfortunes of others than having to confront his own problems, who now struggles to come to terms with his devastating personal loss. Despite his difficult subject, Moretti refuses to milk the story for tear-jerking sentiment and instead looks at the way in which sudden tragedy leaves us desperately groping for answers, taking themes of grief and self-recrimination to create a film that’s both a slap in the face and a comforting embrace.

The Man Who Wasn't There
USA, 116 minutes
Joel Coen directs. Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand & James Gandolfini star.
The new film from Joel and Ethan Coen, inspired by the pulp fiction novels of James M. Cain, is set in the summer of 1949 and has as its title character Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), a barber in a small northern California town. Ed is dissatisfied with his life, but his wife Doris’ (Frances McDormand) infidelity presents Ed with an opportunity for blackmail that he thinks will help him to change it. However, Ed’s scheme unravels and lays bare even darker secrets before leading to murder. The Man Who Wasn’t There is a tale of passion, crime and punishment, all presented in glorious black-and-white, and sees the Coen brothers reunited with many of their frequent creative collaborators including leading lady Frances McDormand starring in her first Coen brothers movie since Fargo.

Italian for Beginners
Denmark , 99 minutes
Lone Scherfig directs. Anders W. Berthelsen, Anne Eleonora Jorgensen & Peter Stovelback star.
The vitality of the Danish Dogme movement can be seen in this witty, charming exploration of life, death and love among six thirty-somethings. One bleak Copenhagen winter this unlikely group of lonely people finds that an introductory Italian language class provides an unexpected catalyst that infuses their ordinary lives with passion, makes dim futures seem significantly brighter and gives new relationships a place in which to blossom. A popular and critical sensation at festivals around the world, including this year’s Berlin Film Festival where it won the Silver Bear award, director Lone Scherfig’s beautifully-observed relationship comedy intricately weaves together several storylines as we witness how each character finally gets a chance at love.

Focus
USA
Neal Slavin directs. William H. Macy & Laura Dern star.
Set in New York at the height of World War II, Focus is a powerful and highly-charged drama about the unraveling of a community under pressure of hatred, paranoia and fear. Lawrence Newman (William H. Macy) is no hero. All he wants is to live a quiet life in the security of his own home. But not far below the surface of his ordinary neighbourhood lurks a seething suspicion of 'foreign elements' – including Jews - prompted by resentment of America's involvement in the war. Almost invisible in his ordinariness, Newman's problems begin when he starts wearing eyeglasses. He then gradually finds himself dragged into a nightmarish spiral of conflict with his extremist, bullying neighbour Fred (played with menacing brilliance by rock singer Meat Loaf Aday) who is determined \to involve Newman in his insidious secret organization. A burgeoning relationship with provocative (character name) Laura Dern) does nothing to distract attention from Newman as the tension - and violence - between neighbors escalates to a frightening crescendo. Based on a 1945 novel by Arthur Miller, Focus is both a taut period drama, and a highly contemporary look at intolerance, forcing us to wonder how brave we ourselves would be if called upon to confront bigotry in our own communities.