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Brad Anderson is an interesting filmmaker. His NEXT STOP WONDERLAND was smart and funny and his SESSION 9 was one of the scarier horror films that I’d seen in ages. Now he creates an atmospheric thriller that succeeds greatly from solid performances and a stellar ending.

First off, the performance of Christian Bale (BATMAN BEGINS) as Trevor Reznik is amazing. He dropped 60 lbs. for the role and is literally skin and bones, adding an inherent creepiness over the entire film. Equally as compelling is Jennifer Jason Leigh (THE HUDSUCKER PROXY) as Stevie, Reznik’s favorite prostitute, who really just wants someone to not treat her like dirt for once.

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This romantic comedy was a big hit in its native country of France. It has a whimsical AMELIE feel to it, but with a touch of darkness like WAR OF THE ROSES.

Julien (Guillaume Canet) and Sophie (Marion Cotillard, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT) have been friends since they were eight years old. Since then they have been playing a game of dares with each other. As youth, the dares were fairly harmless parks like saying dirty words in class or peeing on the principal’s office floor. The film uses a bit of an unbelievable conceit to keep these two friends from hooking up at a younger age. There is no doubt that these two people are meant for each other.

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This drama — masked as a thriller— is a debate on what is love. A random event, which results in a person’s death, brings philosophy professor Joe (Daniel Craig, LAYER CAKE) to meet scruffy Jed (Rhys Ifans, NOTTING HILL).

Joe is a practical and rational thinker, who has an idea that love is just an evolutionary trick to make people procreate. He is the kind of person who rationalizes everything. Jed is irrational, believing in the intangible and creating grand cause and method out of any sign or gesture. He begins stalking Joe, believing their one shared experience has linked them.

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Studio Ghibli is the true master of current animation. That’s solely due to the greatness of director Hayao Miyazaki. He keeps saying that he’s going to retire, but that would only make the world a dreary place. I felt both his PRINCESS MONONOKE and SPIRITED AWAY were the best films of their respective years of release.

Sophie (voiced young by Emily Mortimer, LOVELY & AMAZING and old by Jean Simmons, SPARTACUS) is a young, quiet hat maker, who doesn’t think she is pretty. One day she has a run in with the greedy Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT), who turns Sophie into an old woman. The next day Sophie leaves her hat shop and ends up on a wizard’s moving castle. The wizard is Howl (Christian Bale, BATMAN BEGINS), a handsome and charming young man who can turn into a giant monstrous bird.

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This thriller/horror flick is more than your typical werewolf movie. Rich industrialist Christopher van der Veer (Max M. Brown, only film performance) and his wife Pauline (Anne Marie Pohtamo, MANHATTAN) are savagely murdered. Gritty detective Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney, TOM JONES) is assigned the case.

Helping him is forensic scientist Whittington (Gregory Hines, WHITE NIGHTS) and Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora, HEAT), an investigator for a security company that guards wealthy individuals. When strange wolf hairs show up on the victims, Dewey makes the leap that Native American activist Eddie Holt (Edward James Olmos, STAND & DELIEVER) might be involved in some supernatural way.

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This film is one of the most deceptively deep motion pictures I’ve ever seen. By the end of the film, I knew the main character more deeply than I know acquaintances in real life.

Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström) is a widower who over time has isolated himself from people and become quite cold, because he finds the world too critical. He is being given an honorary degree from his old university and must travel there to accept it.

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This 1960 sci-fi/horror flick is a unique take on the classic alien invasion/ possessed child tale. One day in a small town in England all the citizens just faint on the spot. Scientist Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders, ALL ABOUT EVE) was talking to his soldier brother-in-law Alan Bernard (Michael Gwynn, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) at the time. Alan brings in the military and discovers that any living thing that crosses a certain point entering the village faints on the spot.

Then as mysteriously as it started it ends with everyone waking up. No one is hurt, but strangely 12 women in town are now pregnant. After the mothers give birth, the town discovers the strangeness of the children, which all have dark eyes, bleach blonde hair and are developing at an unusually fast rate.

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This film is why 1950s B-movie sci-fi is so great. This film was the first of the big bug series of flicks that infested the decade. Though it’s clearly a B-movie, it doesn’t act like one, because it plays its material straight and with a natural tone.

Police Sgt. Ben Peterson (James Whitmore, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) discovers a 5-year-old girl (Sandy Descher, THE PRODIGAL) wandering alone in the desert in a daze. The side of her trailer has been bashed in and so has the side of the general store. After an officer is killed, FBI agent Robert Graham (James Arness, TV’s GUNSMOKE) is assigned the case and calls in scientists Dr. Harold Medford (Edmund Gwenn, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY) and his daughter Dr. Pat Medford (Joan Weldon, 1954’s THE COMMAND). What they discover is that the atomic bomb testing in the desert has mutated the ants in the region to 9 feet. So the film’s heroes must destroy the mutant ants, but what will they do when the bugs reach Los Angeles?

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Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are the perfect duo. They have instant likeability. They both light up the screen. Their chemistry together is magic in an effortless way. They both have great comedic timing. Oh yeah, and they dance better than any two people in the world.

John “Lucky” Garnett (Astaire) is a dancer and a gambler, whose current dance troupe doesn’t want him to get married and leave them. So they make him late for his wedding to rich girl, Margaret Watson (Betty Furness, MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION). Once Lucky arrives after all the guests have left, Margaret’s father Judge Watson (Landers Stevens, ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS) wants to throttle him at first, but consents to letting Lucky marry his daughter if the young man can go to the city and make $25,000.

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This horror/thriller starts out fairly well, but spirals into cliché and cheese toward the end.

Jerry Blake (Terry O’Quinn, TV’s LOST) has murdered his family and started a new life with a new wife Susan (Shelley Hack, TROLL) and new teenage daughter Stephanie (Jill Schoelen, D.C. CAB). Jim Ogilvie (Stephen Shellen, GONE IN 60 SECONDS) is the brother of Jerry’s last wife and has begun a tireless crusade to find Jerry and kill him. Susan has been in a lot of trouble since her real father died. Jerry desperately wants to have the perfect family, but when things go awry he snaps.

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