1 - A BEAUTIFUL MIND - "A Beautiful Mind" is the story of John Nash, a mathematical genius who pushes himself beyond the brink of sanity with his compulsive need to be at the top of his field. His obsession with competition in all living things leads to his formulation of the Game Theory for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize some fifty years later. Ron Howard’s astute direction take us on a tour through John Nash’s brilliant analytical mind and explores his schizophrenic vision of the world. Russell Crowe is nothing short of brilliant in a super charged performance that transports us through the Pentagon’s top secret world of code breakers at the height of the Cold War and dissects his tumultuous lifelong battle with mental illness. Jennifer Connelly is the loving wife who sacrifices her own personal happiness to help her husband cope with his disability while his love for her forces him to find a solution for survival that can’t be found in mathematics. "A Beautiful Mind" is not only a great character study but a heroic vision of the power of love.

2 - SHADOW MAGIC - I’m sorry to say that this international award winner got lost in the wake of Sony Pictures Classics publicity blitz for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" at the height of Oscar Fever earlier in the year. SPC should held up its release until after the Oscars to give the average viewer a chance to discover it. "Shadow Magic" is a deceptively simple coming of age story full of memorable characters who are defined as much by nuance and gesture as by their positions in life. It’s about the conflict of cultures, the breakdown of tradition in the face of modernization, and the timeless generation gap. Liu Jinglun (Xia Yu) is a young still photographer in 1905 China who thinks of his world in terms of shadow and light. He is also infatuated with Western technology so when an enterprising Englishman (Jared Harris) introduces pictures that move to Liu’s community with his Shadow Magic Show, Liu becomes obsessed with the whole motion picture process. The Englishman fills Liu’s head with dreams of the future and teaches him to act upon them at work, play, and love. Their ambition to capture a way of life on the brink of extinction on film takes them all the way to the Forbidden City. There is one magical moment when Liu woos the lady of his dreams by projecting moving images from the street onto her curtains in the dark of night. He displays his passion for her by sharing his passionate need to make pictures that move for the rest of his life - a life he hopes to spend with her. What makes "Shadow Magic" even more remarkable is the realization that it is the first feature effort by its writer and director Ann Hu. (see review for more details)

3 - MULHOLLAND DRIVE - Its haunting images and compelling scenes literally pull you into a netherworld of smoke and broken mirrors. Individual scenes are like shards of glass reflecting the splintered psyche and disintegrating self image of a woman down on her luck and ready to pull the world down with her. Naomi Watts is simply mesmerizing as the wide eyed ingenue who transforms herself into a sultry vixen before our eyes and later reappears as a street urchin on a downward spiral toward total degradation. "Mulholland Drive" is about jealousy, loss, the downside of Hollywood and whatever else writer/director David Lynch had bouncing around inside his head at the time he reconfigured this intended mini-series for theatrical release. The movie is a brain teaser for some and an enigma to others. Ultimately, it’s a challenge to anyone willing to try and decipher the clues dropped like breadcrumbs throughout the movie that eventually lead us back to the attempted murder at the beginning of the movie. (see review for more details)

4 - MOULIN ROUGE - "Moulin Rouge" is an operetta that reinvents some of the most memorable and defining pop and rock songs of the last fifty years by appropriating their lyrics for its libretto. Some songs, like Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy, are as timeless as the movie’s themes of Truth - Beauty - Freedom - and Love. The infectious dramatic style of "Moulin Rouge" evokes the silent cinema at the turn of the century with its jaunty camera moves and exaggerated characters. The key players emerge from the facade of faux theatricality as full blooded creatures with all their passion and humor intact. It’s enough to make you understand the appeal and appreciate the theatrical conventions of the time with its dastardly villains, ladies in distress, and heroes. Nicole Kidman is the doomed Satine, an alluring courtesan and star attraction of the Moulin who hopes to stake her claim as a legitimate actress in the musical theater with the help of the movie’s narrator and her true love - Christian (Ewan McGregor). If the plot elements are the bare bones that support "Moulin Rouge," then the lyrics of the familiar songs are the connective tissue that link the fates all the characters to each other right up to director Baz Luhrman’s stupendous musical finale - a tribute to India’s Bollywood that has as much dramatic weight, and cliff hanging suspense as any movie serial. (see review for more details)

5 - BLACK HAWK DOWN - Based on the best seller of the same name, "Black Hawk Down" is a minute by minute account of one of the worst military blunders in the war on terrorism in the last decade. A cadre of U.S. Rangers are sent to Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993 to capture the leaders of a terrorist group who are forcibly cutting off a U.N. relief effort to feed their countrymen during one of the worst famines in their history. Poor intelligence gathering and an underestimation of the enemy’s numbers, armament, and determination paves the way for an ambush. What should have been a one hour operation turns into an eighteen hour rescue mission when two Black Hawk choppers are shot down and cut off from the ground troops they were sent to protect. The Rangers and the seasoned veterans of Delta Force must uphold one of the major tenets of a code of honor that in essence says, No man, dead or alive, will be left behind and taken by the enemy. Director Ridley Scott puts you smack in the middle of the confusion on the ground, in the air and back at the command post where the head honchos pulling the strings have no idea what their men are up against. The enemy is rightly seen from the soldiers’ point of view as a faceless mob on a suicide mission to wipe them out. The fine ensemble cast has the look and feel of men in combat. The familiarity of faces like William Fichtner and Tom Sizemore dissolve into the grit of war until they are as indistinguishable from each other as the men beside them. They are fighting for a common cause, but it is made painfully clear that they keep going back for each other because of an unspoken bond. If there is one positive element to be gleaned from the debacle depicted in "Black Hawk Down," it is the celebration of brotherhood experienced by the men who have earned the right to call themselves Rangers.

6 - IN THE BEDROOM - Small emotional moments gather like grains of sand until the burden of their weight is too much to bear for a couple grieving over the senseless murder of their son. Cissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson are the parents in first time director, Todd Fielding’s examination of a marriage on the brink of collapse when all else fails to bring relief from the pain of loss. The simplicity of the movie’s style gives an added measure of integrity to the issues raised by the story’s moral ambiguity. It’s a terrific picture about ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances and the lengths they go to try and absolve their own feelings of guilt.

7 - MONSTERS INC. - This is unquestionably the most delightful animated movie to come out in a while. It ranks with the best of Disney and the "Toy Story" films. It doesn’t insult the intelligence of its intended audience; it doesn’t throw in unneeded double entendres to be hip with an older audience; the animation is first rate; it never violates the tenets of its story once the premise is established; it never denigrates any of its characters for the sake of a laugh; and the movie is genuinely funny. Behind every kid’s closet door lurks a world where monsters live. They come out at night to scare the kids because they live in a city behind the doors that generates its energy from the screams of frightened children. The louder the screams, the more celebrated the Monster. James P. Sullivan, better known as Sully, is the One Eyed King of scream. But what happens if a child should go through the closet and invade his world? That’s what "Monsters Inc." is all about. The situations are often hilarious and the realization of a city built on the fear of children in a dimension of humans is highly imaginative with a factory of rotating doors to the other side and a Swat team to put trespassers in quarantine. The movie explores the differences between the two worlds in a way kids can understand and resolves those differences with a message that is entertaining without being preachy. The end result is a parable of sorts that makes "Monsters Inc." worth seeing again and again with or without kids.

8 - A.I. ( or "Artificial Intelligence") - What are parents to do when their son is in a near fatal accident and is put in a cryogenic state to wait for the technology to be invented so he can be revived and live a normal life? In this futuristic sci-fi fantasy adapted by the late Stanley Kubrick from a short story called "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" and realized for the screen by Steven Spielberg, the father buys a mecha (short for mechanical) boy named David to satisfy his wife’s maternal needs. Once David is activated and returns her affection with unconditional love, "A.I." takes off in directions unknown to explore the very nature of humanity using elements from such diverse film classics as "The Wizard of Oz," "A Clockwork Orange," and particularly "Pinocchio" as guideposts. Haley Joel Osment is nothing short of miraculous as he transforms David from a clueless automaton who mimics everything he sees into a complex real-live-kid-wannabe who runs the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can’t take your eyes off him. Steven Spielberg may have supplemented David’s wanton gaze with split images to reflect the duality of his nature, and framed his presence through rippled glass to suggest the jumble of his emotional circuitry but when David first asks his surrogate mother, "Mommy? Will you die?," Haley Joel Osment’s got ya’ for the rest of the movie. When David is rejected by the revived son and left to fend for himself in the world by his mother, David has enough heartbreak to make you believe he is human. Inspired by the story of Pinocchio, David goes in search of a Blue Fairy in the hopes of becoming a real boy so he can win back his mother’s love. On his journey he asks himself the same questions that have plagued man since the beginning of time: "Where do I come from?" and "Why am I here?" He experiences the same emotional ups and downs of a real person. Fear, anger, and confusion are diffused by the joys of friendship and the exhilaration of The Quest - a search for a humanity that will reward him with the purity of a mother’s love. "A.I." is a one of a kind futuristic fairy tale set in a surreal and fantastic world that relies more on the conventions of science fiction rather then the folklore of a distant past. (see review for more details)

9 - THE LORD OF THE RINGS: The Fellowship of the Ring- The good news is you don’t have to have read the Tolkien classic to enjoy this amazing fantasy with its feats of derring-do, sense of high adventure, and colorful characters. The story opens with a brief history of an ancient ring whose awesome power could bring darkness and chaos to the civilized world if used by the forces of evil or if a creature of goodness succumbs to temptations beyond his control. Lost in battle and found years beyond the time it became the stuff of legends, the ring is found by Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm), a Hobbit (a creature with human characteristics) of good nature who safeguards its secrets while resisting its power. In the last years of his life he passes the responsibility on to his nephew Frodo (Elijah Wood), but not before a timeless evil senses its reappearance and unleashes its power on the unsuspecting world. The task falls to Frodo to return the ring to the only place where it can be destroyed. A lifelong friend of Bilbo’s - Gandalf the Wizard (Ian McKellen) - helps organize a Fellowship of fearless fighters from different parts of their civilization to help Frodo accomplish his task and save the world. Together they travel through perilous lands filled with the most realistic fairies, goblins, ancient demons, and natural disasters ever created with the latest digital technology. Combined with the real life splendor of director Peter Jackson’s homeland, New Zealand, "Lord of the Rings" is a feast for the eyes as well as a rousing tale.

10 - THE MAJESTIC - Frank Darabont’s film is shamelessly sentimental, shamelessly old fashioned, and shamelessly schmaltzy. I’m not exactly sure why I liked it except to say it struck an emotional chord at a particular moment on a particular evening when my thoughts wandered to the events of 9-11 and I needed to hear about love, honor and patriotism. The irony is that this movie was written, produced and probably in the can ready for release long before this tragedy, yet "The Majestic" seems - by fate - circumstance - or destiny - to have come out at the right time to ride the crest of patriotic fervor. The hero of "The Majestic" may not be as heroic as the man he is thought to be after he gets in a car accident, washes up on the shore with amnesia and is mistaken in an ocean side community for one of their own, a fallen hero in WWII. If anything, he becomes a heroic symbol speaking out for the men who gave of themselves in that war. Jim Carrey is superb as the amnesiac and it’s always a pleasure to see such veteran actors as James Whitmore and Martin Landau breathe life so effortlessly into their roles. The story takes place during the McCarthy Era and Carrey’s character is a screenwriter who gets caught up in the witch hunt. The Majestic of the title is a movie house where the inspiring films of old Hollywood left their imprint on the man Carrey is believed to be and the woman who loved him played with wit and charm by Laurie Holden.

Copyright 2001