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In a compelling way, this documentary presents the startling scientific data on the looming global warming crisis. Part of why it’s compelling is that it’s presented by Al Gore, who has taken the issue as a personal crusade. Compelling and Al Gore in the same sentence, you say? Yes. Gone is the Gore-bot 3000 of the 2000 election.

The film has two threads interwoven — Al Gore’s slideshow presentation on global warming and personal reflections on Gore’s life. I’ve read some critics who said that the “Gore worship” parts are distracting, however I couldn’t disagree more. The personal information presented about Gore helps bring an emotional connection to the issue. This is key to the overall effectiveness of the film, because it makes a complex issue that seems to affect the average person from a distance more personal. How can politicians or even scientists make the average Joe care about global warming, if they can’t understand it? This film succeeds in doing so, because it makes us see global warming and its effects.

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Originally titled WITCHFINDER GENERAL in England, this film is set during the British civil war between the Royalists and Parliamentary Party when men were paid by locale magistrates to torture confessions of witchcraft out of innocent citizens. The U.S. title, CONQUEROR WORM, really has nothing to do with the story, having been taken from an Edgar Allan Poe poem as a way to capitalize on the popularity of star Vincent Price’s other Poe films. For the U.S. release, the distributors also included Price reading a Poe poem over the beginning and end segments.

Loosely based on historical fact, Price plays Matthew Hopkins, a witchfinder who coldly moves along the countryside doing God’s work, which is murdering “witches.” It’s one of Price’s best performances, as well as one of his more interesting characters. The plot is simple — after Hopkins elicits sexual favors from his fiancée Sarah (Hilary Dwyer, THE BODY STEALERS) and murders Sarah’s uncle John (Rupert Davies, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD), young solider, Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy, DEATH BECOMES HER), sets out for revenge. Aiding Hopkins is his torturer John Stearne (Robert Russell, 1967’s BEDAZZLED).

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Director Edward Zwick, who has made his career up of smart action films, makes his most socially conscience film to date. This film takes a scathing look at the diamond industry at the end of the 20th Century. Blood diamonds or conflict diamonds are being smuggled out of civil war torn places like Sierra Leone to fund the bloody slaughter of people within Africa.

The film begins with Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou, IN AMERICA) walking his son Dia (Kagiso Kuypers, film debut) to school when RUF rebels raid their village gunning down anyone in sight. Solomon is able to get his family to safety, but he is captured in the process and sent to a mining camp to dig for diamonds. While there, he finds a huge pink stone well over 100 carats and makes the very dangerous decision to pocket the jewel. In jail, smuggler Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio, THE DEPARTED) learns of Solomon’s pink diamond from the murderous rebel leader Capt. Poison (David Harewood, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE), who vows to find the diamond himself.

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This neo-noir simmers with sin and corruption. J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST) is a former cop who worked the seedy streets of Chinatown where he eventually became so disillusioned by the violence and sleaze that he left the force and became a private eye. However, that move still doesn’t remove him from violence and sleaze as he becomes notorious for making his living taking incriminating pictures of people. His life seems to be trapped in a vicious circle of meaning well, but always causing others to get hurt.

Then walks in his next case, Mrs. Mulwray wants her husband Hollis (Darrell Zwerling, GREASE) followed, because she suspects that he is cheating on her with a younger woman. So Gittes watches the big wig in the water department as he battles others in the city government who want to build a new dam to supply much needed water to the drought plagued city of Los Angeles. When Gittes and his men get shots of Hollis with the young girl, they end up on the front page of the paper, which is followed by the real Mrs. Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway, NETWORK) wanting to sue and finally Hollis’ murder.

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This crime mystery is one of my all time favorite films. The murder of a prominent businessman plays a central role in the narrative, but the homicide is not what the film is about.

Officer Sam Wood (Warren Oates, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA) finds the dead body of Philip Colbert in an alley. The small town of Sparta, Mississippi doesn’t see crimes like this one, so gruff police chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger, ON THE WATERFRONT) sends out his officers to pick up any and all possible suspects. Sam finds black man Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier, A PATCH OF BLUE) at the train depot and arrests him without question. When the chief interrogates Virgil about where he got the large sum of money in his wallet, Virgil says he earned it — as a police officer in Philadelphia.

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Writer/director Anthony Minghella (THE ENGLISH PATIENT) crafts a multilayered drama that investigates the criminal heart in all of us.

Will (Jude Law, CLOSER) is a landscape architect working on a project to turn an impoverished area of London into a viable quarter. He lives with his long-term girlfriend Liv (Robin Wright Penn, NINE LIVES) and her autistic daughter Beatrice (Poppy Rogers, FROM HELL). Will and Liv’s relationship is on the rocks. Will and his partner Sandy (Martin Freeman, HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY) set up their new office in the very neighborhood they are trying to revive. However, this leads to several break-ins, conducted by free runners, including Miro (Rafi Gavron, film debut), who works for a group of immigrant crooks.

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This is the kind of film that makes you smile and laugh right up to the point when it rips your heart out. It does so while tackling grand issues of life and death and the loss of innocence in the confines of a simple plot.

Paulette (Brigitte Fossey, READY FOR LOVE) is a five-year-old girl fleeing Paris as the Germans bomb the city during WWII. Along the crowded road leading out of the city, her parents and her dog are gunned down by machinegun fire. She almost instinctively realizes her parents are dead. While he’s trying to catch a runaway cow, 10-year-old Michel Dolle (Georges Poujouly, ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS) discovers the young girl, who clutches her dead dog, and takes her to his father (Lucien Hubert), who begrudgingly takes in the girl only so his neighbors won’t, making them the heroes.

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This sequel to director Kevin Smith’s breakthrough indie sensation returns 10 years after the events of the first film to see where its main characters are now. Well they’re pretty much in the same place as they were before.

The film begins with the convenience store — where Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) worked in the original — burning to the ground. Then we jump a few years forward in time with the duo flipping burgers at the Mooby’s fast food joint. It’s Dante’s last day for he is moving to Florida with his fiancée Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach, JERSEY GIRL), where he will work in his future father-in-law’s car wash.

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Everything from the satirical edge to the perfect timing to the audacious originality that made BORAT so good is missing from Sacha Baron Cohen’s first attempt to take characters from his DA ALI G SHOW to the big screen. ALI G INDAHOUSE is sunk by an awful sitcom plot and tired, recycled juvenile humor.

In the film, Ali G is a wanna-be gangster, who works at a youth center teaching kids how to “Keep It Real.” When the center’s funding is pulled, he chains himself to a fence in a pitiful attempt at a hunger strike. However, this incident gives deputy prime minister David Carlton (Charles Dance, SWIMMING POOL) an idea. Because his political party is looking to court the youth vote, he believes Ali G will fit the bill and ultimately bringing down the Prime Minister (Michael Gambon, GOSFORD PARK), giving Carlton the chance to take over.

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This satirical comedy actually works better as a character study than a poignant attack on Big Tobacco. At its center is the fascinating Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for Big Tobacco’s pseudo-health organization. And he’s played perfectly by Aaron Eckhart (IN THE COMPANY OF MEN).

Naylor is a major wheeler and dealer and his moral flexibility is like a wet noodle. But he has to be as the face defending tobacco to the public. As such, his only friends are the MOD (Merchants of Death) Squad — Polly Bailey (Maria Bello, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE) and Bobby Jay Bliss (David Koechner, ANCHORMAN) — who represent the alcohol and gun industries respectively. His boss BR (J.K. Simmons, SPIDER-MAN) needs him to figure out a way to increase sales for the top boss Doak “The Captain” Boykin (Robert Duvall, THE APOSTLE) is pressuring him. Naylor comes up with the idea to make cigarettes cool again by getting a sponsorship deal with a Hollywood film. So he travels to L.A. with his son Joey (Cameron Bright, BIRTH), who just idolizes his father.

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