Finding Neverland - 5 stars
Directed by Marc Forster
Starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Dustin Hoffman, Radha Mitchell, Freddie Highmore.What is youth? Is it an age or a state of being? Can it be taken away from you? Can you choose to throw it away?
These are the questions that director Marc Forster's Finding Neverland explores as it elegantly paints the story of J.M. Barrie, the playwright who helped make these questions an important part of growing up when he wrote Peter Pan.

Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean) plays the Scottish writer who befriends Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies (Kate Winslet, Titanic), a struggling widow, and her four sons while looking for inspiration for his next play. Barrie proves an imaginative playmate for the boys, who are silently mourning the loss of their father. He gives them their childhood back through whimsical trips to the park and romps through the backyard. While three of the boys are able to immerse themselves wholly into Barrie's make- believe worlds, the middle child, Peter (Freddie Highmore), is unable to let himself go and resume his childhood.

Eventually, the relationship Barrie provides is important, leading to trust and friendship and allowing Peter to feel comfortable and to enjoy life without feeling that he is being disrespectful of his father's memory.
This film highlights the importance of youth, and its whimsical set design and staging lets adults engage in an introspection of their childhoods and re-evaluate what is truly important in their lives. - Judith Lupatkin


Lemony Snicket's A Series
of Unfortunate Events - 3 stars
Directed by Brad Silberling
Starring Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Jude Law, Emily Browning, Liam Aiken, Kara Hoffman, Shelby Hoffman, Billy Connolly.

After losing their parents and home in a terrible fire, the Baudelaires-Violet, Klaus and Sunny (Emily Browning, Liam Aiken and Kara and Shelby Hoffman)-are sent to live with a distant relative, the evil Count Olaf (Jim Carrey, The Truman Show), who longs to acquire their family fortune. Because none of the other adults in their lives seem capable of helping them out, the orphans must struggle to always stay one step ahead of Olaf, relying only on their intelligence and love for each other to survive.

Like the popular series of books it's based on, Lemony Snicket offers a great alternative for those suffering indigestion from the horribly sugar-sweet confections that attempt to pass for children's entertainment nowadays. Nearly every element of the film is fashioned with a fine Gothic influence. The lead child actors are darker in spirit and far more clever than the usual cute young brats projects like these tend to attract, and the sets are absolutely breathtaking in their surrealistic angles and shadows (make sure you stay through the impressive end credits-they're even lovelier). Most importantly, the plot doesn't pull a Hollywood cheap shot and shy away from the tongue-in-cheek death and destruction that put the novels in the same morbid niche occupied by authors like Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey.

Granted, the adaptation is far from perfect: the script has taken the first three books in the series and shuffled around their events in an effort to best fit them to the cinematic structure, but the result is that the movie ends up being somewhat muddled and disjointed. Furthermore, Carrey is terribly miscast as Count Olaf, for instead of balancing out the movie as a properly spooky bad guy, he instead disrupts every moment of his screen time with wild pantomimes and third-degree scene-stealing. In an otherwise stylish picture, Carrey simply lacks class.

Flawed or not, though, Snicket is still a finely-crafted piece of entertainment, with a spirit that's oddball enough to be appreciated by naughty children of all ages. -Jennifer Morrow

Hotel Rwanda - 4 stars
Directed by Terry George
Starring Don Cheadle

In 1994, Rwanda was in a state of madness. Early in their European colonialist history, the Rwandan people had been arbitrarily divided into two groups: the Hutus and Tutsis, with the Tutsis wielding more power. Years of accumulating hate and prejudices brought the Hutu majority to declare war on the "cockroaches" of the Tutsi minority, spawning a genocide that claimed the lives of close to a million people. Hotel Rwanda expresses the horror of these times through the perspective of Paul Rusesabagina (Don, Cheadle, Ocean's Eleven), a luxury hotel manager who provided refuge for over 1,200 Rwandans throughout the genocide. Through Rusesabagina's eyes, the viewer sees the Hutu militia dancing in the street after slashing Tutsi civilians with machetes, foreign news correspondents confronting the inevitability of genocide and the rampant corruption that ran through the Rwandan military ranks.

Yet the film goes beyond depicting the genocide alone tapping universal themes; It shows the brutal apathy of people worldwide, the U.N.'s apparent inability to stop a genocide whose warning signs were apparent, and, on a positive note, an individual's courage and power to make a difference. Perhaps surprisingly, the movie does not contain overly graphic or unbearable scenes, yet some moments are powerful enough to give the viewer pause. -Amit Shertzer

Kinsey - 4 stars
Directed by Bill Condon
Starring Lian Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard

Let's talk about sex...and masturbation, orgies and homosexuality while we're at it.

Though today we freely discuss these subjects with friends, in the 1950s, sex was a taboo topic. Kinsey discusses the in-depth interview methods Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson, Schindler's List) used to gather his research on human sexual behaviors and how he traversed the country in the '50s to gather as many different perspectives as possible.

Kinsey reminds audiences of his original arguments: that sexual practices and preferences are a part of self-identity and should not be the target of discrimination. Not only is the movie stimulating in its portrayal of the evolution of societal perceptions of sex, but also in its examination of Kinsey's own sex life. Experimenting with homosexuality, having orgies with his co-workers and even allowing his wife Clara (Laura Linney, Love Actually) to experiment with the same lifestyle, Kinsey was considered a sexual deviant.

Neeson, the mild-mannered yet pleasure driven scientist, and Linney, his ever-supportive wife, do justice to the extraordinary people they portray. In the seriocomic title role, Neeson's performance marks his most climactic since his Oscar-winning role in Schindler's List. -Jenn Rubin

The Phantom of the Opera - 2 stars
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Starring Emmy Rossum and Gerard Butler

Joel Schumacher's (Phone Booth) screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's wildly popular musical, The Phantom of the Opera, stars Emmy Rossum (The Day After Tomorrow) as Christine, a budding opera singer torn between two men in Paris during the 1870s. It's only by chance that one of them is her childhood love, Raoul (Patrick Wilson, The Alamo), and the other her mysterious tutor, an insane, disfigured, musical genius known only as the Phantom (Gerard Butler, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life).

Despite the massive popularity of the original stage version, the film version of Phantom, while offering some high points, suffers from many unfortunate problems. Unfortunately, those positive aspects are rare: the cinematography depicts the beautiful and enchanting, other-worldly presence of Paris in the late 1800s, and the film's music will stick in your head long after the credits finish rolling.

However, that is about all that the film can offer. While the cast has a dazzling stage presence, it is diminished by the less-than-solid editing. And while almost all the actors do their singing, the pre-recordings of the vocals for the film sound like a wreck in the end: often, what is heard and what is seen work together about as well as Ashlee Simpson's performance on Saturday Night Live last year.

In the end, the biggest problem with the film is that, despite the wonderful musical score, much of the excitement of Phantom is lost in its conversion to the screen. For those interested in seeing Phantom, hop on the Chinatown bus to New York and scrap together some money to see it on Broadway instead. The only thing that the cinematic version of Phantom can really offer is boredom. -Leor Galil

The Aviator - 2 stars
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale

Leonardo DiCaprio (Catch Me If You Can) has certainly grown up since his Titanic days. He carries this film, which follows the life, career and deterioration of Howard Hughes, the famous airplane magnate and movie producer. Kate Beckinsale (Van Helsing) and Cate Blanchett (Lord of the Rings) play Ava Gardner and Katherine Hepburn, respectively.
Scorsese (Gangs of New York) certainly tries to create a magnificent world with The Aviator. Unfortunately, there was something missing in his film, which was problematic in many ways. First, it was too long, failing to keep a viewer's interest for nearly three hours. Also, the viewer never really learns anything of substance about Hughes besides his well-known eccentricity.

Only a few scenes in this film are worth watching. Dialogue between DiCaprio and Blanchett, along with Hughes' responses to questions about his life's choices, were quite good. But for most of the movie, a viewer could leave the theater and come back 10 minutes later without missing anything of consequence. Like many films out this year, The Aviator could have been good, but instead was lackluster and disappointing.
- Jessica Sedaca-Rosenberg

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - 3 stars
Directed by Wes Anderson
Starring Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum

In his fourth film, director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) pays homage to the late underwater-filmmaker Jacques Cousteau with a bittersweet comedy following the madcap adventures of the sea-vessel Belafonte and its crew. Starring Bill Murray (Lost in Translation) as the title character, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou expertly combines the comedic and the melancholy with the same effortlessness seen in Anderson's past works.

In the film, once-acclaimed filmmaker and explorer Zissou embarks on a journey to document his quest for revenge against the mysterious "jaguar shark" who ate his friend Esteban. Joined by an international crew including his wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston, Royal Tenenbaums), his presumed illegitimate son Ned (Owen Wilson, Starsky and Hutch), pregnant journalist Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett, The Aviator) and German sidekick Klaus (Willem Dafoe, Spider-Man), Zissou grapples with a variety of both physical and emotional trials, from invading pirates and bankruptcy to the realization of his fatherhood and competition with his own son for the affection of Jane.

As usual, Anderson's overtly quirky and eccentric script is ultimately accompanied by an underlying tale of tragic redemption. And while The Life Aquatic is certainly the director's broadest and most ambitious work to date, it leaves the sinking feeling that Anderson has resorted to mimicking his own, institutionalized style. -Jon Fischer