Hugh Jackman, Academy Award winner Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway star in this critically-acclaimed adaptation of the epic musical phenomenon. Set against the backdrop of 19th-century France, Les Misérables tells the story of ex-prisoner Jean Valjean (Jackman), hunted for decades by the ruthless policeman Javert (Crowe), after he breaks parole. When Valjean agrees to care for factory worker Fantine's (Hathaway) young daughter, Cosette, their lives change forever.
Ah, Barbra. Of all her onscreen personas, she sparkles in none as she does in her role as 1930s comedian Fanny Brice in the musical Funny Girl. Portraying the life of this star of stage and radio, Brice preens and prances and sings, captivating her audience both onscreen and off. Fanny Brice started life on the Lower East Side of New York, the daughter of a Jewish saloon owner. Not the prettiest girl around, Brice still managed to quickly rise to stardom as a performer in the Ziegfield Follies.
"Be Italian!" comes the thundering command from one of the catchiest songs in Nine, and the movie version of this Broadway musical hit is undeniably solid on that point. It's drenched in cool cars, glamorous Italian threads, and cozy Roman neighborhoods, all circa 1962. That, you will note, is the vintage of Federico Fellini's classic film 8 ¬Ω, the source for both the stage show and Rob Marshall's frantic musical picture.
Danny Boyle (Sunshine) directed this wildly energetic, Dickensian drama about the desultory life and times of an Indian boy whose bleak, formative experiences lead to an appearance on his country's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Jamal (played as a young man by Dev Patel) and his brother are orphaned as children, raising themselves in various slums and crime-ridden neighorhoods and falling in, for a while, with a monstrous gang exploiting children as beggars and prostitutes.
The spirit of Motown runs through the long-awaited film adaption of the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, which centers around a young female singing trio who burst upon the music scene in the '60s, complete with bouffant hairdos, glitzy gowns, and a soul sound new to the white-bread American music charts. Sound familiar? You aren't the first one to draw comparisons to the meteoric rise of the Supremes, and despite any protests to the contrary, this is most definitely a thinly veiled reinterpretation of that success story.
Robin Williams won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck nabbed one for Best Original Screenplay, but the feel-good hit Good Will Hunting triumphs because of its gifted director, Gus Van Sant. The unconventional director (My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy) saves a script marred by vanity and clunky character development by yanking soulful, touching performances out of his entire cast (amazingly, even one by Williams that's relatively schtick-free).
Philadelphia wasn't the first movie about AIDS (it followed such worthy independent films as Parting Glances and Longtime Companion), but it was the first Hollywood studio picture to take AIDS as its primary subject. In that sense, Philadelphia is a historically important film. As such, it's worth remembering that director Jonathan Demme (Melvin and Howard, Something Wild, The Silence of the Lambs) wasn't interested in preaching to the converted; he set out to make a film that would connect with a mainstream audience. And he succeeded.
An appealing, free-floating lunacy fuels What's New Pussycat?, and there's enough of it bubbling around to carry the movie past its many defects. The cast is like a collection of terribly attractive people stumbling over each other at a disorganized cocktail party--they aren't always witty, and some of them are drunk, but there's enough going on to keep you distracted. Peter O'Toole plays a swinging London womanizer seeking help for his addiction, who makes the mistake of consulting one Dr. Fritz Fassbender (Peter Sellers), a demented psychoanalyst.
Movie studios, by and large, avoid controversial subjects like race the way you might avoid a hive of angry bees. So it's remarkable that Crash even got made; that it's a rich, intelligent, and moving exploration of the interlocking lives of a dozen Los Angeles residents--black, white, latino, Asian, and Persian--is downright amazing.
Steven Spielberg, proving he's one of the few modern filmmakers who has the visual fluency to be capable of making a great silent film, took a melodramatic, D.W. Griffith-inspired approach to filming Alice Walker's novel. His tactics made the film controversial, but also a popular hit.
