The Sum of all Fears
Phil Alden Robinson (Director)
The discovery of an unexploded nuclear missile left over from the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict and the death of the Russian Premier coincide. Ryan (Ben Affleck) is introduced as the youthful analyst seconded by CIA director Bill Cabot (Morgan Freeman) to shed some light on the politics of Russia's new leader. However, the real threat is a neo-Nazi group engaged on a course of action that will bring the two superpowers to nuclear war, having secured a broken arrow. You are kept on the edge of your seat, this film having more resonance after 9/11.

 

One Hour Photo
Mark Romanek (Director)
One Hour Photo marks Robin William's third film running as the bad guy, his most chilling role to date. Playing "photo guy" Sy Parrish, obsessed by the seemingly perfect family who are his most regular customers, he depicts a desperate image of a lonely, fanatical man whose only comfort is imagining himself a part of the lives of the wealthy, happy Yorkins family (headed by Connie Nielsen). Devastated by being fired from his job at the processing lab, and making a shocking discovery on his exit, he descends into psychosis. Refreshingly, the film is presented from Parrish's point of view rather than that of the Yorkins'.


 

The Count of Monte Cristo
Kevin Reynolds (Director)
Retelling a much filmed story, the director appears unsure about either staying with tradition or bringing it up to date. A dashing James Caviezel plays the Count, driven by a desire for revenge after betrayal by his best friend Fernand (Guy Pearce) which results in 16 years of solitary confinement in damp, cavernous Chateau D'If. Clearly this is a film in which the actors could over-indulge themselves and (almost) get away with it, were it not for the fact that--bar Richard Harris as the "Priest"--none of them seem to have the faintest idea how to conduct themselves in a period drama.

 

Lilo and Stitch
Dean Deblois (Director)
In Disney's animated comedy things go from bad to worse for little Hawaiian girl Lilo and her older sister Nani when man-mountain and no-nonsense social worker Cobra Bubbles gives Nani just three days to prove she's a fit guardian for her uncooperative sibling. Chaos ensues when the troubled Lilo's wish-upon-a- star produces a spaceship carrying the angry alien, Stitch, with intergalactic police in hot pursuit. The upbeat Elvis soundtrack is the perfect accompaniment, adding humour and enhancing the Hawaiian feel. The watercolour medium creates an informal, lush background in keeping with the Hawaiian setting.

 

Monster's Ball
Marc Foster (Director)
A harrowing portrayal of Deep South life in the 21st century, Monster's Ball has all the makings of a modern film noir. Billy Bob Thornton is a death row officer whose redneck father has taught him that emotions make you weak, leading to an inability to love his son (Heath Ledger) and feel any compassion for the convicts in his care. When he loses a "loved one", he embarks on a relationship with the widow (Halle Berry) of a man whom he strapped in the electric chair, and the two of them search for comfort in sex, alcohol and chocolate ice-cream. Far from concluding the suffering, the ending leaves the viewer in an emotional void, analysing shortcomings, prejudices and emotional ties.

 

My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Joel Zwick (Director),
This film has believable situations and engaging characters, but these characters (particularly Toula, played by writer/performer Nia Vardalos) look like actual human beings instead of plastic movie stars. The result is the tale of a Greek-American (whose family sees her as over the hill at 30), falling for a WASPy guy named Ian (John Corbett) and then enduring the outrage, doubt, and ultimate acceptance of her deeply ethnically-centred family. The actors invest their wildly stereotypical portrayals with sincerity and compassion, giving the movie honest warmth instead of Hollywood schmaltz.

 

Talk To Her
Pedro Almodovar (Director),
The outlandish, potentially appalling subject matter is handled with some finesse in Talk To Her, covering the same terrain as Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle and The Smiths' Girlfriend in a Coma. Marco (Dario Grandinetti), befriends Lydia (Rosario Flores), a bullfighter, who lapses into a coma after a goring in the ring. At the clinic where she is on life support, he meets a somewhat effete male nurse, Benigno (Javier Camara), who lovingly tends to a comatose ballet student, Alicia. Striking up a friendship, their respective stories emerge through flashbacks. Marco is distraught at the loss of Lydia, whereas the dysfunctional Benigno is blissful, having nourished an obsession for Alicia prior to her accident.

 

Lantana
Ray Lawrence (Director)
Lantana succeeds as a well-written, hypnotically acted drama reflecting the humanity, complexity and frailty of its audiences back to them. It is about betrayal, grief beyond recovery and the tenuous threads by which the most superficially ordinary relationships founder or survive. Andrew Bovell's economic, absorbing script is based on his stage play Speaking in Tongues and remains engrossing from beginning to end.

 

Pollock
Ed Harris (Director)
This biographical film follows the life of the tortured abstract expressionist artist, Jackson Pollock (Ed Harris), from his invention of his splatter paintings to his decline in later years as he succumbs to his demons (including alcohol). Despite this, the film leaves the viewer with the clear portrait of a significant artist, even if he was a difficult person for those close to him to cope with at times.

 

Dog Soldiers
Neil Marshall (Director)
This enjoyable movie is basically Night of the Living Dead with werewolves. A platoon on a training exercise in Scotland come across the wounded survivor of a special ops team (Liam Cunningham) that has been attacked by monsters. There's a confused conspiracy angle but it's mostly a lost patrol picture with the soldiers besieged in a mysteriously abandoned house in the woods. Howling-style bipedal werewolves make repeated attacks on the house, whittling the cast down each time.

 

Dinner Rush
Bob Giraldi (Director)
This is set in an elegant but hectic New York restaurant during a highly eventful evening. Louis, (Danny Aiello), restaurant proprietor and bookmaker, is dismayed that the kitchen serves up trendy nouvelle cuisine, under the aegis of his son and autocratic master chef Udo (Edoardo Ballerini), in place of the simple, hearty fare of its former "Mom and Pop" days. His other worries include Sous-chef Duncan, Louis' younger son, thousands of dollars in debt to bookies. He has got mixed up with a couple of hoods from Queens, who are determined to muscle in on Louis's restaurant business and have already shot dead his partner by way of an opening salvo in the negotiations. They're among tonight's diners.

 

John Q
Nick Cassavetes (Director)
This film is about an unscrupulous insurance company and a family man, whose son becomes very ill with heart problems. It is assumed everything will be ok because they all have medical insurance, but there are some technicalities and John Q has to take action to attempt to gain treatment for his son. It has a little action, a lot of top quality acting and it's one of those films that will bring a tear to your eye from time to time... If you're a fan of Denzel Washington or just after a good movie, buy this one!

 

Signs
M Night Shyamalan (Director)
Director-writer M Night Shyamalan brings his distinctive, oblique approach to aliens in Signs after tackling ghosts (The Sixth Sense) and superheroes (Unbreakable). Mel Gibson plays a family man traumatised by loss who leaves urban Philadelphia for the Pennsylvania sticks. Crop circles appear on the property Gibson shares with his ex-ballplayer brother (Joaquin Phoenix) and his two troubled pre-teen kids. The global crisis is portrayed through the focus on this family, who retreat into their cellar when "intruders" arrive from lights in the sky and set out to "harvest" them. This is The Birds redone as a religious drama of faith lost and perhaps regained.

 

Life as a House
Irwin Winkler (Director)
The film revolves around a George (Kevin Kline) who has been told he has 4 months to live, due to cancer. He decides to fill his life ambition by building his first and last house. Along the way he is assisted by his estranged son, Sam (Hayden Christensen), who experiments in various drugs and dabbles in small time prostitution to fund his addiction. The end result is almost heartbreaking and the actors are wonderfully cast. This film is in a league of its own, just like American Beauty.

Windtalkers
John Woo (Director)
This movie is overlong, over-silly, overwritten and overacted in the current American craze for war movies of extreme patriotism and graphic violence with a final uplifting victory. US Marine Nicolas Cage is assigned to look after Navajo Adam Beach, whose complex language is the basis of a code being used to fool the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II. His orders are to protect the code, not Beach, (if capture is imminent then he must kill him). They progress from hatred to agonised male bonding.

K-Pax
Iain Softley (Director)
Spacey's Prot is picked up by the police and is delivered to the care of psychiatrist Jeff Bridges, when he claims to be a traveller from the planet K-Pax. The intense relationship developing between the two forms the core of the film, as Bridges seeks the truth about his patient while also gaining valuable insights into his own life. The audience is kept guessing until the very end, and they are not offered an obvious tidy conclusion even then.

Villa des Roses
Frank van Passel
English/Belgium/Dutch/Luxembourgian co-productions don't happen every day, making Villa des Roses of interest from the start. The theme of this World War I drama is the pain of remembering. A young French widow, Louise, comes to work as a chambermaid at a dilapidated English guest house. A potential offbeat human comedy becomes a conventional romantic tradegy when the heroine falls for rakish artist Richard Gruenewald, with all the frustration and heartache their liaison promises. Stylish film-making but has an overall feeling of Anna Karenina meeting Upstairs Downstairs

Bourne Identity
Doug Liman (Director)
After years of increasingly farcical action movies, the old-school of espionage thriller makes a welcome return in the Bourne Identity, based on Robert Ludlum's novel. The plot more reflects Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate, while the Paris setting and superb car chase evoke Ronin. It has plentiful action, the set-pieces are played straight to tellingly tense effect. Damon is compelling and there's excellent support from Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox and Clive Owen. If a couple of questions are left unanswered, there are no gaping plot holes to destroy credibility, and the merciless, cold-blooded battle for survival delivers a chilling, gripping two-hour ride.