Interviews

Though she made her first movie at the age of 13, Diane Lane has only blossomed into a true star in her 30s, and Under the Tuscan Sun marks her full flowering. After a brutal divorce, Frances (Lane, Unfaithful, A Walk on the Moon) is persuaded by her friend Patti (Sandra Oh) to take a tour of Italy--where, on a whim that she hopes will rescue her from her desperate unhappiness, she buys a rundown villa and sets out to renovate it. Along the way, she gets advice from a former Fellini actress, meets a scrumptious Italian lover, and helps support Patti after her own relationship derails.

The passion of mad love and the cold calculations of social climbing collide in Woody Allen's Match Point. Former tennis pro Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Velvet Goldmine) stumbles into good fortune when Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer, Lovely & Amazing), the daughter of a wealthy businessman, falls in love with him. But when Chris meets Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson, Lost in Translation), a much deeper passion is stirred--and his desire isn't deterred when he discovers that Nola is already dating Chloe's brother.

Harry's fourth summer and the following year at Hogwarts are marked by the Quidditch World Cup and the Triwizard Tournament, in which student representatives from three different wizarding schools compete in a series of increasingly challenging contests. However, Voldemort's Death Eaters are gaining strength and even creating the Dark Mark giving evidence that the Dark Lord is ready to rise again.

In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, director Wes Anderson takes his familiar stable of actors on a field trip to a fantasy aquarium, complete with stop-motion, candy-striped crabs and rainbow seahorses. And though Anderson does expand his horizons in terms of retro-special effects and a whimsical use of color, fans will otherwise find themselves in well-charted waters.

Literary adaptations just don't get any better than director Joe Wright's 2005 version of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice. The key word here is adaptation, because Wright and gifted screenwriter Deborah Moggach have taken liberties with Austen's classic novel that purists may find objectionable, but in this exquisite film their artistic decisions are entirely justified and exceptionally well executed.

The unflinching realism and searing performances of Monster's Ball are stunning in all the connotations of the word. Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) and Leticia (Halle Berry) inhabit stark, queasy realities of the contemporary South, he as a death row corrections officer and she as the soon-to-be widow of an inmate (Sean Combs) whose execution Hank helps conduct. In the aftermath of the execution, both lose their children to tragic deaths and they form an unlikely bond.

Movies don't come any bigger than Peter Jackson's King Kong, a three-hour remake of the 1933 classic that marries breathtaking visual prowess with a surprising emotional depth. Expanding on the original story of the blonde beauty and the beast who falls for her, Jackson creates a movie spectacle that matches his Lord of the Rings films and even at times evokes their fantasy world while celebrating the glory of '30s Hollywood.

An epic story, exotic locales and electrifying performances from Bai Ling (Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow), Tim Roth (Dark Water) and Nick Nolte (Hotel Rwanda) highlight this moving film that celebrates the power of the human spirit. Raised as an orphan, Binh (Damien Nguyen) is a young Vietnamese man with one impossible dream: to be reunited with his birth father, an American G.I. who left without a trace.

Movie-kinetics genius. Kung Fu Hustle takes the gleeful mayhem of Hong Kong action movies, the deadpan physical humor of silent comedies, and the sheer elasticity of Wile E. Coyote cartoons and fuses them into a spectacle that is simple in its joys and mind-boggling in its orchestration. A run-down slum has been poor but peaceful until a bunch of black-suited gangsters called the Axe Gang show up to cause trouble--and discover that, hidden among the humble poor, are three kung fu masters trying to live an ordinary life.

Jackie Brown is the name of a flight attendant who gets caught smuggling her boss' gun money on the airline she works for. Luckily for her, the Fed Ray Nicolet and the LA Cop Mark Dargus decide to team up in order to arrest the arms dealer she works for, whose name they don't even know. Here's when she has to choose one way: tell Nicolet and Dargus about Ordell Robbie (the arms dealer) and get her freedom -except that if Ordell suspects you're talking about him, you're dead- or keep her mouth shut and do some time.