An energized and passionate, if selective, telling of the story of Chess Records, Cadillac Records is a worthy entry in the niche genre of movies about rock and roll roots. Adrien Brody plays Leonard Chess, who started Chess Records in Chicago in 1947 and turned the label into an important force for blues, rhythm and blues, gospel and, in time, early rock and roll.
The most successful invigoration of a cinematic franchise since Batman Begins, Casino Royale offers a new Bond identity. Based on the Ian Fleming novel that introduced Agent 007 into a Cold War world, Casino Royale is the most brutal and viscerally exciting James Bond film since Sean Connery left Her Majesty's Secret Service. Meet the new Bond; not the same as the old Bond. Daniel Craig gives a galvanizing performance as the freshly minted double-0 agent.
Bill Murray gives yet another simple, seemingly effortless, yet illuminating performance in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. Don Johnston (Murray, Lost in Translation, Rushmore) receives an anonymous letter telling him that he has a 19 year old son who's looking for him. Don only decides to investigate at the prompting of his neighbor Winston (the indispensable Jeffrey Wright, Shaft, Basquiat), who not only tracks down the current addresses of the possible mothers, he plans Don's entire trip down to the rental cars.
The Manchurian Candidate, a classic of paranoid cinema from the 1960s, gets a cunning update, rife with hot-topic references to corporate war profiteering and electronic voting machines. Major Ben Marco (Denzel Washington, Training Day) has been haunted by nightmares ever since a firefight during the first Gulf War--a battle in which he believes he was saved by the heroism of Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber, Kate & Leopold). But Marco's nightmares suggest otherwise and drive him to investigate what happened, which may threaten Shaw's candidacy for vice-president.
