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Director Anthony Mann and star James Stewart teamed on five Westerns, including the wonderful THE MAN FROM LARAMIE. This earlier film, which had its screenplay nominated for an Oscar (a rare feat for a Western), is actually a grittier and more emotionally complex film. It came out the same year as the sappy and overrated SHANE, but holds up a lot better than that dated “classic.”

Stewart plays Howard Kemp, a Civil War veteran who is forced to become a bounty hunter out of necessity. In his effort to capture killer Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan, THE WILD BUNCH), he receives help from old miner Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell, WINCHESTER ‘73) and dishonorably discharged soldier Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker, THE DIRTY DOZEN). Traveling with Ben is Lina Patch (Janet Leigh, PSYCHO), the daughter of a dead bank robber.

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Coming out in the same year as Barbara Stanwyck’s wonderful turn in THE LADY EVE, this film is just as hilarious and just as fun.

Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett and directed by Howard Hawks, the film has eight stodgy professors living in one big house working for years on an epic encyclopedia. Leading the group of scholars is the youngest of them — linguist Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper, MEET JOHN DOE). One day the garbageman (Allen Jenkins, DESTRY RIDES AGAIN) comes in to ask them to answer some questions on a quiz he’s trying to win and they are fascinated with his use of new slang. Potts realizes that his chapter on slang is woefully out of date and has to venture out into the world to discover the current data on the ever-changing topic.

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The beginning of the film has John (Brad Pitt, FIGHT CLUB) and Jane Smith (Angelina Jolie, GIRL, INTERUPTED) in couple’s therapy. They seem to be resigned to the fact that their marriage is boring. John wants Jane to be more spontaneous while Jane wants John to take more than a nonchalant attitude toward their home life. What they don’t know is that both are leading secret lives as top-notched assassins working for opposite agencies.

But it all comes to a head when they are assigned the same target and they discover their secrets. This sets up an all-out, cat-and-mouse war. John’s associate Eddie (Vince Vaughn WEDDING CRASHERS) is the paranoid type who thinks that Jane has been setting him up for six years. Jane’s right-hand woman Jasmine (Kerry Washington, RAY) doesn’t have a much better opinion of John.

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Haunting is the only way to explain this methodically paced picture. This film from Japan looks into the lives of four abandoned children. The film begins with their mother (You) moving them into a new apartment by smuggling three of the children in under the noses of the landlord.

Akira (Yuya Yagira) is eldest and the designated caretaker of the children when their mother disappears. Next in line is the sad Kyoko (Ayu Kitaura), who dreams of one day buying a real piano. Following them is silly and mischievous Shigeru (Hiei Kimura) and the adorable 5-year-old Yuki (Momoko Shimizu).

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The 2005 animated box office champ has arrived on DVD and it provides enough laughs to be well worth a viewing. Marty (Chris Rock, NURSE BETTY) is a zebra in the Central Park Zoo in New York City. He has never been to the wild and dreams of what it would be like to go. When he shares his desires with his friends Alex the lion (Ben Stiller, DODGEBALL), Melman the hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer, TV’s FRIENDS) and Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith, THE MATRIX RELOADED) they think he’s nuts for wanting to leave the pampered life of the zoo. Especially for Alex, who is the superstar attraction of the zoo, leaving is not an option.

With the help of some spy-like penguins (director Tom McGrath), Marty gets out into the city, which leads to him and his friends being shipped off to a wildlife reserve in Africa. However, along the way, they become shipwrecked on the tropical island of Madagascar where they run into a tribe of lemurs, ruled by King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen, TV’s DA ALI G SHOW) and his right-hand-man Maurice (Cedric the Entertainer, ORIGINAL KINGS OF COMEDY). The lemurs want to enlist Alex to scare away jackals that have been preying on their people. Tension builds between the zoo friends and when the call of the wild takes over, Alex begins to look upon his friends as food.

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You will never look at a person in a wheelchair the same after seeing this documentary. It’s fun, exciting, humorous, moving and badass.

The central story of the film deals with quadriplegics who play full-contact wheelchair rugby, leading up to the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. The central characters are Mark Zupan, the grumpy goatee sporting tough guy from Team USA, and Joe Soares, the bitter, arrogant coach of Team Canada, who use to play for Team USA before he got too old and was cut. Both of these men have dynamic testosterone-fueled personalities and can be total jerks. This is the most joyous thing about the film, which shows quadriplegics as human beings that have varying emotions and personalities.

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This sequel to Rob Zombie’s HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES was something that I wasn’t looking forward to seeing before it came out. However, the positive reviews for the film made me want to give it a chance. Zombie, the frontman for the band White Zombie, has made a huge leap forward in his filmmaking career with this twisted horror film that harkens back to 1970s classics like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT.

One doesn’t need to see the nearly unwatchable first film to see this one. The film is bloody and gory and also morbidly funny. Zombie seems to be playing with the conventions of the slasher film, making you drawn to and repulsed by the killers at the same time. The film begins with a police raid on a farmhouse where a family of savage killers and rapists are keeping young women prisoner. The standoff ends with the matriarch Mother Firefly (Leslie Easterbrook, POLICE ACADEMY) arrested and her children Otis (Bill Moseley, ARMY OF DARKNESS) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie, 2004’s TOOLBOX MURDERS) on the run.

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The history of this film will become legend. Director Paul Schrader (AUTO FOCUS) was asked to do a prequel to THE EXORCIST. When he turned in his moody dramatic piece the studio decided they wanted something more commercial and hired a new director to virtually redo the entire film with more conventional scares. That movie was EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING and it stank. After it bombed in the theaters, the studio decided to release Schrader’s version to help recoup the costs of making two films.

The core idea of the films is relatively the same, but they couldn’t be anymore different. Schrader’s film is more of a dramatic ode to spiritual doubt and the presence of evil in the world than a scare-fest. Father Lankester Merrin (Stellan Skarsgard, GOOD WILL HUNTING) goes on sabbatical from the Catholic Church after an incident during World War II emotionally scars him. He is involved in an archeological dig in Africa where they find a church buried in the sand.

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Like 2002’s overlooked NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, which successfully pared down an epic novel into a two-hour film, PRIDE & PREJUDICE does a stellar job of doing the same. Star Keira Knightley (BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM) proves that she is not just another pretty face, but a real actress. She brings wit and humor to the central role of Elizabeth Bennet, the second eldest daughter of the moderately poor Mr. and Mrs. Bennet (Donald Sutherland, KLUTE, & Brenda Blethyn, SECRETS & LIES).

She has a bit of snobbery for rich people, but this doesn’t stop her from encouraging her shy older sister Jane (Rosamund Pike, DIE ANOTHER DAY) in her courtship of Mr. Bingley (Simon Woods, TV’s CHARLES II: THE POWER AND THE PASSION). However, she cannot stand Mr. Bingley’s seemingly arrogant and snobbish Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen, THE RECKONING). Other key characters include Elizabeth’s flirtatious sister Lydia (Jena Malone, SAVED!), stuffy preacher Mr. Collins (Tom Hollander, THE LAWLESS HEART), Mr. Darcy’s rich aunt Lady Catherine de Bourg (Judi Dench, MRS. BROWN), dashing soldier Mr. Wickham (Rupert Friend, forthcoming THE LIBERTINE) and Elizabeth’s best friend Charlotte (Claudie Blakley, GOSFORD PARK).

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This film rendition of the best-selling novel of the same name is an enjoyable love story, but lacks a certain emotional or intelligent oomph to lift it to a greater level. I enjoyed the film from start to finish and was completely engaged, but I never felt swept away by the subject or the love tale.

The film begins with the young girl, Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo), being sold to a geisha house. She wants to escape, but is thwarted at every turn. Running the geisha house is Auntie (Tsai Chin, THE JOY LUCK CLUB) and the raspy-voiced, chain-smoking Mother (Kaori Momoi, KAGEMUSHA). Chiyo is special because she has brilliant blue eyes, making her an instant threat to the aging geisha Hatsimomo (Gong Li, RAISE THE RED LANTERN). Chiyo must endure though and eventually begins her training as a geisha with Mother’s rival Mameha (Michelle Yeoh, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON). Taking the name Sayuri, Chiyo (now played by Ziyi Zhang, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS) becomes the most popular geisha in Japan.

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