All the King’s Men
As the populist Willie Stark (Sean Penn) wins the Louisiana governorship in the 1950s, a reporter (Jude Law) finds himself doing the dirty work for “the people’s governor”. A surprisingly…
Walk the Line: How Cash Got His Act Together
Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. Photo: 20th Century Fox It’s impossible to see this movie and not think of last year’s Ray. Both films tell the story of a supremely…
Spartacus: Looking for Freedom
Kirk Douglas. Photo: Universal This is a story about freedom. Our hero was born without it and died without it. It is easy to see what Dalton Trumbo saw in…
Flashdance
18-year-old Pittsburgh welder Alex Owens (Jennifer Beals) also works as a dancer at a nightclub; she wants to be accepted into a prestigious dance academy, but will she make it?…
Melrose Place: Supersoap 2.0
Photo: Fox The show that started out as a lame copy of producer Darren Star’s Beverly Hills 90210 became the hottest primetime soap on U.S. television in the 1990s. Who…
Crash: Learning Who You Are
Thandiwe Newton and Matt Dillon. Photo: Lionsgate It begins with Don Cheadle’s character stating the theme of the movie. He talks about how people in a normal city walk and…
Boston Public
David E. Kelley paused his attorneys for a while and created a show about Winslow High School in Boston, a fictional inner-city school that was always short on cash but…
Million Dollar Baby: No Guts, No Glory
Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank. Photo: Warner As an actor, Clint Eastwood is a genuine American icon. His career as a director on the other hand looked quite uneven in…
Shadow of the Vampire: A Symphony of Horrors
Willem Dafoe. Photo: Lionsgate Anyone who has ever seen Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau’s marvelous, silent vampire flick, is likely to never forget the appearance of Count Orlok, the bald, rat-like bloodsucker…
Falcon Crest: Wine, Women and Power
Photo: CBS At first they all seem to have had realism in mind, the primetime soaps of the 1980s. The first episodes of Falcon Crest showed a middle-class family moving…