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Sidney Lumet has made some of my favorite films, including NETWORK and DOG DAY AFTERNOON. This film has a wonderful premise, but a distracting focus. The story follows a family who are on the run from the FBI because in the 1970s the parents Annie (Christine Lahti, TV’s CHICAGO HOPE) and Arthur Pope (Judd Hirsch, TV’s TAXI) blew up a napalm factory, which unintentionally blinded and crippled a janitor who wasn’t supposed to be there.

Annie and Arthur have two sons Danny (River Phoenix, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE) and Harry (Jonas Abry, SLAVES OF NEW YORK). The family is constantly moving as the feds get wind of where they may be. Danny is becoming bitter about his life because he’s about to graduate high school and won’t be able to go to college to study music. The family moves to a new town and Danny starts to date his music teacher’s daughter Lorna (Martha Plimpton, GOONIES). Danny is a piano phenomenon and the film focuses a lot on his struggles with his family’s secrets and the loss of his freedom. As Danny’s feelings become clear to Annie and Arthur, they must deal with the decision to let Danny leave or keep the family together.

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This psychological thriller from Stephen King presents a common protagonist for the writer — an author whose mental state is challenged. Based on a short story from King’s collection FOUR PAST MIDNIGHT, writer/director David Koepp crafts his best directorial effort after writing scripts for such films as JURASSIC PARK, CARLITO’S WAY, SPIDER-MAN and PANIC ROOM.

Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp, ED WOOD) is a successful writer, who finds himself confronted by a man named John Shooter (John Turturro DO THE RIGHT THING), who claims that Mort stole his story. If this isn’t enough to deal with, Mort is going through a divorce from his wife Amy (Monica Bello, THE COOLER), who he caught having an affair with Ted Milner (Timothy Hutton, ORDINARY PEOPLE). Mort is depressed and sleeps a lot. He talks to his dog and himself and begins to drink and smoke again. All of this is exaggerated by the increasingly creepier behavior of John Shooter. Eventually, Mort hires P.I. Ken Karsch (Charles S. Dutton, GOTHIKA) to find out more info on Shooter. All of this just makes Mort more and more paranoid.

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This film won the Oscar for best foreign language film last year. This is actually a sequel to director Denys Arcand’s 1986 film THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE, which I have not seen. However, one doesn’t have to have seen the first film to enjoy the second. This film only catches up with the characters when they are older.

Remy (Remy Girard, LES BOYS) is dying. The former playboy was working as a university professor before he got sick. His ex-wife Louise (Dorothee Berryman, THE RED VIOLIN) calls their son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau, LES DANGEREUX) to come to be with his father. He leaves his high-paying oil trading job in London to come to Quebec with his fiancée Gaelle (Marina Hands, FIDELITY). He’s angry with his father for being who he is – a womanizer and a liberal. Sebastien has become a good capitalist, which is probably the exact opposite of his father. But isn’t that how it always is. Louise encourages Sebastien to round up Remy’s old friends so they can be with him in his last days.

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Terry Gilliam is a director fascinated with fantasy and the bizarre. BARON MUNCHAUSEN is an ode to that love. The film throws logic out the window with a joyous glee, creating an epic fairy tale about an old adventurer reclaiming the excitement of life.

Sally Salt (Sarah Polly, THE SWEET HEREAFTER) is a young girl, whose father Henry (Bill Paterson, HILARY AND JACKIE) runs a theatre company. The company is performing a play on the fantastic life of Baron Munchausen when an elderly man shows up claiming to be the real Munchausen (John Neville, SPIDER). He begins to tell his “real” story, which mixes reality with fantasy backwards and forewords. Munchausen ends up on an adventure with Sally that leads to the moon, the fiery pits of a volcano, the other side of the world and the stomach of a giant fish. Along the way they run into Munchausen’s old servants Berthold (Eric Idle, LIFE OF BRIAN), Adolphus (Charles McKeown, BRAZIL), Albrecht (Winston Dennis, TIME BANDITS) and Gustavas (Jack Purvis, MONA LISA). The servants all had superhuman gifts, but now they are too old to use them. Yet Munchausen still tries to enlist them in a crusade against the Sultan (Peter Jeffrey, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS), who is waging war against the city and threatening the lives of Sally’s father and the other actors.

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When I first saw the trailer for this film, I was quite impressed and very intrigued. Then the film came out and the reviews were pretty much split 50/50 – half saying it was a brilliant satire of intolerant Evangelical Fundamentalists and the other half saying it was a mean-spirited attack on all of Christianity. Jerry Falwell went as far as to say that the film was “the most hateful thing to come out of Hollywood ever.” Falwell is also the one who refers to women at a certain all women’s college in his hometown of Lynchberg, VA as “the whores on the hill.” He also said that feminists and homosexuals were the cause of 9/11. So he’s pretty knowledgeable about hateful things. But I digress. I think people who call this film hateful are either too afraid at not looking PC or don’t like the film airing their dirty laundry.

The story follows the students of a Christian school. Mary (Jena Malone, DONNIE DARKO) has a pretty perfect looking life. Her and her best friend Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore, A WALK TO REMEMBER) are the most popular girls in school and just the best Christians they think they can be. Then during summer break, Mary’s boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust, TV miniseries TAKEN) reveals that he’s gay and Mary ends up believing that Jesus wants her to sleep with Dean to turn him straight. After Dean is shipped off by his parents for de-gayification, Mary discovers that she is pregnant. She starts to lose faith and ends up becoming friends with the rebellious Jewish girl, Cassandra (Eva Amurri, THE BANGER SISTERS) and her boyfriend, Roland, the wheelchair-bound twin brother of Hilary Faye (Macaulay Culkin, PARTY MONSTER). Mary’s new friends help her conceal her pregnancy and the soon-to-be-new-mother avoids the charming advances of Patrick (Patrick Fugit, ALMOST FAMOUS), the skateboarder son of the school’s principal, Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan, THE OPPOSITE OF SEX), who is having an affair with Mary’s mother Lillian (Mary-Louise Parker, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES).

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