Bowling For Columbine
USA, 119 minutes
Michael Moore directs.
Michael Moore (Roger and Me, Stupid White Men) blends social commentary with a prankster’s flair in Bowling for Columbine, a scabrously funny, seriously thought-provoking tour de force. With his trademark charm and biting wit, Moore – himself a life-long member of the National Rifle Association – sets off on a rollicking journey across the country to investigate why so many Americans own guns and why so many of them use them on each other. In his own words: "Are we a nation of gun nuts, or are we just nuts?" Among Moore’s wide range of subjects are victims of the Columbine High School massacre and Charlton Heston, infamous figurehead of the NRA. The first documentary in 46 years to be accepted to compete in the Cannes Film Festival where it won a special award, Bowling for Columbine is a powerful and provocative piece of filmmaking sure to resonate with audiences.

Antwone Fisher
USA, 117 minutes
Denzel Washington directs.
Derek Luke, Joy Brian & Denzel Washington star.
Denzel Washington’s directorial debut is the emotionally charged true story of a man’s fight with his inner demons. A sailor with an explosive attitude, ,b>Antwone Fisher (Derek Luke) is ordered to see a naval psychiatrist (Washington) about his volatile temper. Little does he know that his first step into the doctor’s office will lead him on a journey home. With the support of the doctor and the woman (Joy Bryant) from whom he learns how to love, Fisher finds the courage to stop fighting and start healing. Only then can he call on the family he never knew and come to terms with the one he knew all too well. The original screenplay inspired by his life was penned by Antwone Fisher. Washington tells Fisher’s story with the same measured intensity and quiet authority found in his onscreen work. The results are impressive indeed.

Bloody Sunday
UK, 110 minutes
Paul Greengrass directs.
James Nesbitt & Tim Pigott - Smith star.
Winner of numerous awards including top honors at Sundance and Berlin, director Paul Greengrass’s critically-acclaimed political drama is a passionate and suspenseful film that retells the tragic events that took place in Derry, Northern Ireland on January 30, 1972. It stars James Nesbitt (Waking Ned Devine) as Ivan Cooper, an idealistic Catholic activist who sees his well-meaning attempt to stage a peaceful civil rights march turn into a massacre as thousands of British troops pour into the tense and crowded city. This bold film meticulously and vividly reconstructs the still highly controversial events of that fateful day, using an ultra-realistic style and dozens of characters from all sides of the conflict. Absorbing and intense, Bloody Sunday looks with true compassion into the lives of both the Irish protestors and the British soldiers, and brings to life an enormously sensitive and complicated moment in Northern Ireland’s recent history. A war film about the struggle for peace, Bloody Sunday has a timeless universality that we can well appreciate today.

Adaptation
USA, 114 minutes
Spike Jonze directs.
Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep, Tilda Swinton & Chris Cooper star.
From director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (the team responsible for Being John Malkovich) comes this wildly unconventional comedy about a writer named Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) who, out of sheer desperation, decides to insert himself into the screenplay he’s struggling to adapt. It’s a great idea, until reality and fiction begin to overlap in the most unexpected ways. Charlie, whose stack of neuroses makes Woody Allen look like a carefree bon vivant, cannot resist writing about himself. How he manages in this case, which started out as an assignment to do a straight adaptation of Susan Orlean’s (Meryl Streep) book about an obsessive orchid breeder, provides the core for this imaginative, smart, and darkly funny film. Playing both Charlie and his twin Donald (protruding paunches, thinning hair, and all), Cage is supported by a gallery of great performers including Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and more.

13 Conversations About One Thing
USA, 102 minutes
Jill Sprecher directs.
Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, Amy Irving & Alan Arkin star.
A man approaching middle age decides to change his life. A rising young attorney’s plans are thrown into disarray as the result of a single act. A woman faces her husband’s infidelity. An envious businessman seeks revenge on a cheerful coworker and an optimistic young cleaning woman awaits a miracle. Just the ebb and flow of daily New York life: chaotic, isolated, diffuse. 13 Conversations About One Thing is a thoughtful, sophisticated movie about connectivity and how small moments in our lives can have huge meaning. Young director Jill Sprecher elicits exquisitely measured performances from an impressive cast of pedigree performers including Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, Clea Duvall, Amy Irving and Alan Arkin.

Far From Heaven
USA, 107 minutes
Todd Haynes directs.
Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid & Dennis Haysbert star.
Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore, who won Best Actress at the 2002 Venice International Film Festival for this role) is a buttoned-up 1950’s Connecticut housewife whose husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) hides a secret that will turn her world upside down. Perfectly conjuring the color-saturated look and feel of 1950’s Hollywood melodrama, director Todd Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine) uses this most domestic of settings to take a look at themes of race and sexuality that are as relevant and volatile now as they were then. Dennis Haysbert, as the gardener to whom Cathy turns for more than sympathy, infuses real tenderness and depth to his part as does the entire cast. Capped by Elmer Bernstein’s lush orchestral score, Far From Heaven is a truly sumptuous tale ripe with desire.

Evelyn
Ireland/UK, 95 minutes
Bruce Beresford directs.
Pierce Brosnan, Aidan Quinn, Julianna Margulies & Alan Bates star.
Based on true events, Evelyn tells the inspiring story of Desmond Doyle (Pierce Brosnan) and his three small children, Evelyn (Sophie Vavasseur), Maurice and Dermot. Abandoned by his cheating wife, Desmond does his best to raise his kids alone. But it’s Ireland in 1953. When his mother-in-law reports her daughter’s abandonment, the double-fisted might of the Church and Irish courts wrests the children from Desmond, placing all three in orphanages. Vowing to reunite his family, Desmond takes to the courts and his fight becomes an uplifting testament to the strength of a father’s love and the power of the human spirit. Released from the James Bond persona, Brosnan shows the true range of his talent. Director Bruce Beresford (Tender Mercies, Driving Miss Daisy) has assembled a tremendous cast including Alan Bates, Julianna Margulies, Aidan Quinn and Stephen Rea.

Spider
UK/Canada, 98 minutes
David Cronenberg directs.
Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson & Gabriel Byrne star.
Masterfully probing the dark recesses of the human psyche, David Cronenberg’s latest film stars Ralph Fiennes as Cleg, a new arrival at an East End halfway house. Recently released from a psychiatric asylum, his attempts to interact with the other residents quickly give way to obsessive memories of his boyhood. But the present, past, and fantasy are indistinguishable for Cleg. Is he deranged by guilt for crimes committed against his parents? Or is he an innocent trapped in a web of his own devising? Brilliantly re-imagined from Patrick McGrath’s gothic novel and luminously shot, Spider is one of Cronenberg’s finest accomplishments, a chillingly gripping cinematic distillation of pure madness. Terrific support comes from Gabriel Byrne and Miranda Richardson who, in a tour de force, plays three distinct characters in Cleg’s imagination.

Rabbit-Proof Fence
Australia, 94 minutes
Phillip Noyce directs.
Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan & Kenneth Branagh star.
Director Phillip Noyce (The Bone Collector, Patriot Games,) returns to his native Australia for a compelling tale of courage and indomitable spirit in Rabbit-Proof Fence, voted Audience Favorite Feature at Aspen Filmfest 2002. In this incredible but true Depression-era story, 14-year old Molly Craig is forcibly taken from her Aboriginal family and relocated as part of a decades-long Australian government program of social and racial "improvement." Stubbornly refusing to submit to her fate, Molly leads her younger sister and cousin in an escape. Wily and daring, they elude the government’s best tracker and the provincial police, and, in an epic trek, cover 1,500 miles of life-threatening outback in a quest to return home. Director Noyce masterfully combines stunning images and Peter Gabriel’s score with perfect casting, in particular that of the three children whose heroic performances make this a truly unforgettable film.

The Pianist
Roman Polanski directs.
Adrien Brody & Thomas Kretschmann star.
Winner of this year’s coveted Palme d’Or (Best Picture) at the Cannes Film Festival, visionary director Roman Polanski’s long-anticipated drama is based on the autobiography of a celebrated Polish composer and pianist who survived the Holocaust by hiding in the Warsaw ghetto. Polanski, himself a Holocaust survivor, waited four decades to make this very personal statement, and in Adrien Brody (The Thin Red Line) he found an actor of sufficient intensity to play the demanding part of Wladyslaw Szpilman. Filmed in Eastern Europe, The Pianist tells of the incarceration of Szpilman and his family within the walls of the Ghetto, their efforts to survive, and the tragic inevitability that led them one by one to be deported. Szpilman alone escaped and his incredible survival, like Polanski’s film, is a powerful testament to the belief that the triumph of the human spirit is wedded to the transforming power of art.

Spirited Away
Japan, 125 minutes
Hayao Miyazaki directs.
Multi-award winner including Berlin’s prestigious Golden Bear and the highest grossing Japanese film of all time, Spirited Away is the latest fantastical creation by animation master Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke). An enchanting journey for kids of all ages, Spirited Away offers up a fabulous ghost-infested adventure full of action, suspense, and characters both delightful and bizarre. The film follows the fanciful adventures of 10-year old Chihiro who stumbles upon an abandoned theme park and discovers a whole new world: a giant bathhouse that caters to ghosts, gods, and goblins and is ruled by a grumpy sorceress. Desperately trying to remain human while cleaning giant hot tubs and fiercely fighting off a cast of wild spirits (including a giant Stink God), she befriends a motley crew made up of a busily buzzing gnat, a miniature pig, and more. The "freshest and most captivating children’s feature since The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland," Spirited Away is a holiday must-see for adventurous kids and adults!

Auto Focus
USA, 104 minutes
Paul Schrader directs.
Greg Kinnear & Willem Dafoe star.
Wild, funny, shocking and poignant, Paul Schrader’s (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) Auto Focus tracks the rise and fall of Bob Crane, star of TV’s Hogan’s Heroes, who set out to become the next Jack Lemon. Instead, he became Robert Hogan, the suavely unctuous leader of American POWs interred by history’s most inept Nazis. The show was tasteless, but it was a hit and it brought Crane fame, fortune, and some distinctly unusual temptations. In a dazzling performance, Greg Kinnear plays Crane as an innocent wallowing in vice who remained oblivious to the damage his addiction wreaked upon his family, career, and, finally, his own soul. Willem Dafoe is Crane’s technical adviser and sidekick, Johnny Carpenter, a Sony salesman who shares his passion for sex and technology, and Rita Wilson plays his high school sweetheart first wife in a sharply observed performance.

Nicholas Nickleby
UK/USA, 120 minutes
Douglas McGrath directs.
Jamie Bell, Nathan Lane, Tom Courtenay, Barry Humphries & Jim Broadbent star.
From one of Charles Dickens‘ best-loved novels come some of his most unforgettable characters, vibrantly brought to life by a star-studded cast. Young Nicholas (Charlie Hunnam) and his family enjoy a pleasant life – but then again, this is Dickens. When tragedy leaves them penniless, the family ventures to London to seek the help of wealthy Uncle Ralph. Unfortunately Ralph’s intentions are less than beneficent and Nicholas encounters both more misfortune and the kindhearted Smike. And the adventure continues. Dickens‘ world is vibrantly brought to life in this adaptation by Douglas McGrath (Emma) featuring fabulous performances by Nathan Lane, Christopher Plummer, Tom Courtenay, Alan Cumming, Barry Humphries, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall and Juliet Stevenson who bring huge relish and enthusiasm to this classic story.

Talk to Her
Spain, 112 minutes
Pedro Almodovar directs.
Javier Camara & Dario Grandinetti star.
Following the international success of All About My Mother, Pedro Almodóvar returns with an extraordinary film that blends melodrama and black comedy into something deeply moving and utterly unique. Talk to Her is about two men in love and the long healing of wounds inflicted by passion. It’s also a film about words and communication. Our protagonists are Benigno, a male nurse devoted to the care of a beautiful coma victim, and Marco, a middle-aged writer involved with a striking female bullfighter. In Talk to Her, Almodóvar, a celebrated director of women, turns his masterful gaze on masculine romantic and erotic ardor, managing to combine comedy, tragedy, coincidence, and the sheer mystery of beauty in a way that is completely hypnotic. Featuring original performances by choreographer Pina Bausch, singer Caetano Veloso, and an eye-popping film-within-a-film devised by Almodóvar himself.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
USA, 115 minutes
George Clooney directs.
Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney & Julia Roberts star.
Television – think host of The Gong Show – made him famous, but his biggest hits happened off screen - or so he claimed. Sam Rockwell gives a breakthrough performance as Chuck Barris, the legendary showman who allegedly led a cloak-and-dagger double life – television producer by day, covert government operative by night. Based on Barris’ own 1984 “unauthorized biography” in which he claims to have been recruited by the CIA, Confessions… has been adapted to the big screen by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich). And for his directorial debut, George Clooney has assembled an impressive roster of talent; the film features performances by Drew Barrymore, Rutger Hauer, Fred Savage, and plenty of cameos including comic turns by Julia Roberts and Clooney himself.

Love Liza
USA, 90 minutes
Todd Louiso directs.
Philip Seymour Hoffman & Kathy Bates star.
Winner of Sundance’s Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, Love Liza features Philip Seymour Hoffman in a transfixing performance as Wilson Joel, a website designer whose world comes to an abrupt stop with the untimely death of his wife, Liza. Trying to make sense of what has happened, he turns to his mother-in-law (Kathy Bates). What stands between them is an unopened letter from Liza that Wilson refuses to open, fearing its content. He struggles to maintain a vestige of normalcy. But nothing – and no one – can give him comfort, and his behavior becomes increasingly eccentric, taking him on an odyssey of addiction, self-pity, self-realization, and a curious fascination with remote-control model enthusiasts. Alternately unsettling and bleakly funny, Hoffman’s portrayal of grief is the most honest and uncompromising characterization in recent cinema.

The Hours
USA, 115 minutes
Stephen Daldry directs.
Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore & Meryl Streep star.
The Hours is the story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each lives at a different time and place; all are linked by their yearnings and fears. Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman in an astonishing transformation), in a 1920s London suburb, is battling insanity as she begins her first great novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a wife and mother in Los Angeles at the end of WWII, finds the novel Mrs. Dalloway so revelatory that she begins to consider a devastating change in her life. Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) is a contemporary version of Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway; she lives in New York and is in love with Richard, a poet who is dying of AIDS. Their stories intertwine and finally come together in a surprising and transcendent moment of shared recognition. Adapted by playwright David Hare from Michael Cunningham’s best selling novel, The Hours is directed by Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot) and features a score by Philip Glass.

Chicago
USA, 107 minutes
Rob Marshall directs.
Renee Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones & Richard Gere star.
Looking for a little music and glamour to usher in the New Year? It doesn’t get any better than this long-awaited and thoroughly joyous Kander and Ebb musical starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as nightclub sensation Velma Kelley. Velma’s in prison for killing her philandering husband. Renée Zellweger plays Roxie Hart, the small-town innocent who dreams of singing and dancing her way to stardom but also ends up in prison. They share Chicago’s slickest lawyer, Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) but little else as they compete for the heart and attention of the city through its tabloids. Queen Latifah, Lucy Liu, John C. Reilly, Christine Baranski round out the cast of this terrific holiday movie extravaganza – and all that jazz!

About Schmidt
USA, 125 minutes
Alexander Payne directs.
Jack Nicholson, Kathy Bates, Hope Davis & Dermot Mulroney star.
Warren Schmidt (a captivating Jack Nicholson) has arrived at several crossroads at once. He’s retiring after a lifetime’s toiling for an insurance company. His only daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) is about to marry Randall (Dermot Mulroney), a dimwitted waterbed salesman with a mullet. And then his wife (June Squibb) dies suddenly, leaving him utterly adrift. With no job, no wife, and no family, Warren is desperate to find something meaningful in his thoroughly unimpressive life so he sets out on journey of self-discovery, exploring his roots across Nebraska in his Winnebago. Throughout his journey, Warren details his adventures and shares his observations with an unexpected new friend and confessor and begins – perhaps for the first time – to glimpse himself and the life he has lived. This darkly comic and decidedly bittersweet road movie with a difference comes from Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, the team behind the Oscar-nominated Election.

The Guys
USA, 100 minutes
Jim Simpson directs.
Sigourney Weaver & Anthony LaPaglia star.
In this powerfully moving and unexpectedly humorous film, a New York City journalist (Signourney Weaver) is called to help a fire captain (Anthony LaPaglia) write a series of eulogies for the men he lost at the World Trade Center. Nick is initially a difficult collaborator – he’s lost eight of his twelve men and feels unequal to the responsibility of articulating his feelings about them. But Joan works with him and together they create portraits of the individual men in time for their memorials. As we follow Nick’s journey, we rediscover the quiet heroism that informs all of our daily lives. Retaining all the potency of the stage play upon which it is based, The Guys is an affecting and gracefully executed study in grief, remembrance, and the astute distillation of indelible events to their most intimate scale.

25th Hour
USA, 134 minutes
Spike Lee directs.
Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Rosario Dawson & Anna Paquin star.
The clock is ticking on Monty Brogan’s (Edward Norton) freedom – in 24 hours he’ll go to prison for seven long years. Once a king of Manhattan, the drug dealer is about to say goodbye to the bright lights, his big city dreams, and a life that opened doors to the swankiest clubs but also alienated him from the people closest to him. In his last day on the outside, Monty tries to reconnect with his fireman father (Brian Cox) who’s never given up on him and gets together with his two best friends from the old days, Jakob (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Slaughtery (Barry Pepper). Also in the mix is his girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson) who might – or might not – have been the one who tipped him off to the cops. Director Spike Lee (Summer of Sam, Do the Right Thing) sheds light on a man for whom time is running out and is struggling to redeem himself in the 25th hour.

Stevie
USA, 140 minutes
Steve James directs.
In 1995 director Steve James (Hoop Dream, Prefontaine) returned to rural Southern Illinois to reconnect with Stevie Fielding, a troubled young boy he had been an Advocate Big Brother to ten years earlier. He began a film, a search, to discover the forces that shaped Stevie’s life. Part way through the filming, Stevie is arrested and charged with a serious crime that tears his family apart. What was to be a modest profile turns into an intimate four and a half year chronicle of Stevie, his broken family, the criminal justice system, and the filmmaker as they all struggle with what Stevie has done and who he has become. Forceful and affecting, Stevie paints a complex portrait that poses questions and offers no easy answers. The results made it a critically acclaimed standout at the Toronto Film Festival this fall.

Narc
USA, 105 minutes
Joe Carnahan directs.
Jason Patric & Ray Liotta star.
Equal parts adrenaline and hard boiled, Narc is the second feature from Joe Carnahan, a talented young director whose flair and originality have garnered fans like Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford. Narc tells the dark story of suspended undercover narcotics officer, Nick Tellis (Jason Patric), who is reluctantly drawn back onto the force to find the truth behind the murder of a young police officer killed in the line of duty. He is teamed with Henry Oak (Ray Liotta), the slain officer’s partner, a rogue cop who will stop at nothing to avenge his friend’s death. As Tellis and Oak unravel the case, the dark underbelly of the narcotics world reveals itself in surprising ways that are more twisted than either officer has seen before…and the mystery that reveals itself threatens to destroy them both.

Max
Hungary/Canada/UK, 108 minutes
Menno Meyjes directs.
John Cusack, Noah Taylor, Molly Parker & LeeLee Sobieski star.
It’s 1918 in Munich and celebrated art gallery owner Max Rothman (John Cusack) meets fellow war veteran and aspiring young artist Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor). Finding his own artistic aspirations dashed because of his injuries, Max transfers his energies to Hitler, taking him under his wing and encouraging him to paint. Thus begins a story of two most unlikely friends facing an uncertain future and one’s fateful decision to embrace a nightmarish vision of evil. Deeply unsettling, defiantly humorous, and ultimately, tragically moving, Max is more historical fable than historical drama, careening through art, politics, love, hope, intolerance, obsession, and malevolence to provide an original and intimate portrait of a major turning point in modern history. With Max, screenwriter Menno Meyjes (The Color Purple) makes his directorial debut.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown
USA, 108 minutes
Paul Justman directs.
During the 60s and early 70s, the Funk Brothers were the heartbeat of Berry Gordy’s popular Motown label. Yet the story of the Funk Brothers – session player Gordy handpicked from the cream of the Detroit jazz and blues scene – has largely gone untold, and its members have not been given their due. Until now. Fourteen years in the making, Standing… is the first behind-the-scenes look at the musicians who helped create more No. 1 hits than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and Elvis combined. This groove-laden film takes you into Motown’s basement Studio A to tell the Funk Brothers saga via archival footage, interviews, re-created scenes, and new performances featuring Joan Osborne, Bootsy Collins, Ben Harper, and Chaka Khan. It’s what’s goin’ on!