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DECEMBER 29th: Opening This Week | Top 10

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Director: Richard Eyre
Stars: Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Andrew Simpson (Full Cast)
Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures

The Plot: As teacher Sheba Hart (Blanchett) generates headlines after her affair with an underage student is disclosed, the role her colleague, Barbara Covett (Dench), plays in the event is slowly unearthed.

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THE BUZZ: Exactly how is Fox Searchlight, who's also pushing Little Miss Sunshine and The Last King of Scotland, handling three Oscar campaigns? All three films are up for Golden Globes, with Scandal in the lead with three nominations: Ms. Dench for Best Actress, Ms. Blanchett for Best Supporting Actress, and Patrick Marber for Best Screenplay. Look for them all to earn Oscar nods, with Dench shaping up to be Helen Mirren's only Best Actress competition (strangely, Blanchett might be up against herself in the Best Supporting category for Babel).

Message Boards: The best quote of the movie | this movie was awesome!

The Painted Veil [limited]

Director: John Curran
Stars: Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber (Full Cast)
Studio: Warner Independent Pictures (WIP)

The Plot: In Hong Kong, a shallow, uneducated society girl (Watts) enters into an affair with a career politician (Schreiber), only to be awakened by a trip to a cholera-infested region of the country with her husband (Norton). The trip marks the beginning of a spiritual journey which will leave her a widow and fiercely devoted mother.

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THE BUZZ: The only person stumping for this film is Bob Yari, the Crash producer who is no stranger to whipping up the drama. He's saying Warner Bros., who's distributing Veil through their art-house arm, delayed the film's completion and hasn't given it the Oscar push it deserves. (And it's true: WB has clearly put their marketing dollars behind Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorsese.) But is it because the film, while "handsomely mounted" and all, is kind of a snooze? Everyone seems to be in love with Ms. Watts, despite being drubbed early on for daring to step into Garbo's shoes.

Message Boards: The Seventh Sign | Anyone really hate this movie?

Children of Men [12/25 -- limited]

Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Stars: Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejiofor (Full Cast)
Studio: Universal Pictures

The Plot: In 2027, a time when human procreation has mysteriously stopped, a former activist (Owen) agrees to help a band of rebels transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary called the Human Project.

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THE BUZZ: Would you rather be protected by Clive Owen or attended to by Julianne Moore? Tough choice, we know, but while you puzzle that out, consider the notion that Cuarón has blossomed into one of the most promising directors out there. He can make hits both large (Prisoner of Azkaban) and small (Y tu mamá también) in scale, and his projects are all vastly different from one another. Certainly the biggest risk Cuarón's taken to date, Children could behave wonderfully at the box office, or rebel like a petulant teen. One thing is for sure: Even the toughest critics are calling this one of the best films of the year.

Message Boards: I liked movie, but societal collapse depicted here is too unrealistic | The main character isn't manly enough

The Good German [12/25]

Director: Steven Soderbergh
Stars: George Clooney, Cate Blanchett (Full Cast)
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures

The Plot: An American journalist (Clooney) in post-war Berlin to find his former mistress (Blanchett) is lured into a mystery involving her missing husband and a soldier's washed-up body.

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THE BUZZ: Say hello to one of the many Oscar also-rans of this past year ... The luscious black-and-white trailer is enough to make cinephiles start salivating, but we can't help wondering if Soderbergh is sacrificing content for style -- again. We secretly love Solaris, but is this another self-indulgent Soderbergh mental road trip? Please, if you're going to echo Casablanca, don't take yourself too seriously!

Message Boards: swearing | The Third Man (1949)

Dreamgirls [12/25]

Director: Bill Condon
Stars: Beyoncé Knowles, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy (Full Cast)
Studio: DreamWorks SKG

The Plot: Under the care of their manager, a trio of female singers grow from a promising R&B act to one of the most successful pop groups of their time.

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THE BUZZ: All the drama you can shake your booty at! This long gestating, loosely veiled story of Diana Ross and the Supremes has attracted Hollywood's A-list and "American Idol" refugees alike. Like it or not, Beyoncé was born to play Deena Jones, just as "Idol"er Jennifer Hudson makes perfect sense as Effie White, the original lead singer who is replaced by Deena. Elsewhere, Usher was in talks to play songwriter C.C. White, but no deal could be reached, opening the door for the relatively unknown Keith Robinson. But who would have thought Eddie Murphy, as R&B singer James "Thunder" Early, would emerge as the award hopeful? Look for DreamWorks to unspool their DreamGirls on an old-timey roadshow this month, as they serve it up event style in LA, SF, and NYC.

Update: While Paramount has been effectively overworking the buzz machine in the extreme, we have word that the movie, while handsomely mounted and containing some knockout song performances, is totally beat-able when it comes to the Best Picture Oscar. Murphy kicks butt, Hudson knocks her songs out of the park, Beyonce is a graceful leading lady, but... Chicago this ain't. Really. In fact, we only wish Rob Marshall had directed!

Message Boards: Is anybody else sick of watching Beyonce's horrible excuse for acting??? | Does Jimmy Early call Lorrell a Ho?

Pan's Labyrinth [limited]

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Stars: Ivana Baquero, Ariadna Gil, Sergi López (Full Cast)
Studio:

The Plot: In war-torn Spain, Ofelia (Baquero) travels with her pregnant mother (Gil) to meet her new stepfather, the imposing Capitan Vidal (López). The brutal Vidal has transformed an abandoned mill into his military headquarters and Ofelia's new home. But in the decrepit garden near the mill Ofelia finds a passageway to another realm, a labyrinth ruled by an inscrutable Faun (Doug Jones) and other creatures both good and malevolent.

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THE BUZZ: Guillermo del Toro's Spanish-language fairy tale has floored nearly every critic and fanboy who has seen it, and it's easily the best-reviewed film of the year (check Metacritic). If the film sounds like all of the director's past works rolled into one, I believe you're about halfway there. The fusion of Franco-era politics and fairy tale imagery might normally prove too high concept for general audiences, but del Toro's built up more than a cult with films such as Blade II and Hellboy (two movies that transcended the comic-geek genre to become certifiable hits). And from what we hear, recent creature/effect-heavy movies such as Silent Hill can literally only dream of visions such as the ones del Toro and his team have rendered here. Prepare for the Pale Man, that's all we're saying ...

Message Boards: best foreign movies | Join AACAR (Americans Against Crappy American Remakes)

Black Christmas [12/25]

Director: Glen Morgan
Stars: Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert (Full Cast)
Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

The Plot: Couped up in their house during Christmas break, six sorority sisters and their house mother are terrorized by a stranger -- a murderous type who once lived in the home the women now occupy.

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THE BUZZ: Yes! Andrea Martin returns to campus (albeit it as a house mother, not a co-ed) in the remake of Bob Clark's horror classic. No stranger to effective remakes, Final Destination vet Glen Morgan packs his house full of hotness, a measure that is guaranteed to draw lots of boys of break from school and work. While we don't think the update will be as potty-mouthed as the original, we imagine the violence will be ratcheted up a few crowd-pleasing notches. In fact, star Mary Elizabeth Winstead has let it slip the ending has been re-shot and re-edited to such a degree that she's not sure of her character's fate. Looks to be the merriest of Christmases for hardcore horror fans, provided they can get their parents to drop them at the movies right after dinner.

Message Boards: Agnes looked like--- | The Original Draft...

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer [12/27 -- limited]

Director: Tom Tykwer
Stars: Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman (Full Cast)
Studio: DreamWorks Distribution

The Plot: Parisian-born orphan Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Whishaw), as he ascends to adulthood, develops a superior olfactory sense, as well as an obsession with creating the world's finest perfumes. His work, however, takes a dark turn as he becomes transfixed by the virginal scent of a young woman.

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THE BUZZ: Stanley Kubrick reportedly claimed that this film based on Patrick Suskind's international bestseller could never be adapted for the screen. Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton also turned up their noses at it before Run, Lola,Run's Twyker grabbed the rights and ran. Though it was a huge success overseas (to the tune of nearly $80 mil), we feel the film is too esoteric to create a niche during the hype-driven awards/holiday season. Look for this to appear in critics' you-missed-it lists come early 2007.

Message Boards: It was deemed unmarketable for American audiences | Necessary to kill them??

Factory Girl [limited]

Director: George Hickenlooper
Stars: Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen (Full Cast)
Studio: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

The Plot: In 1965, young Edie Sedgwick (Miller) drops out of Harvard and heads to New York City, where she becomes the muse of artist Andy Warhol (Pearce).

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THE BUZZ: A biopic of Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick has been in the pipeline since, well... forever. (Forever being as far back as the late 70s.) At one time, Katie Holmes was cast as the doomed party girl, but then she met this older guy named Tom and, well... you know how that went. Miller was actually cast twice, dropped the first time because she wasn't a big enough name, and then she had this relationship crisis with this hot British guy named Jude and, well... you know how that went. Now a tabloid name, this is Miller's opportunity to prove that she's more than just a pretty face, though the early buzz her performance generated hasn't sustained.

The focus is now on Guy Pearce's Andy Warhol, and how his screen time was upped after the first round of test screenings. And there's also the lawsuit filed on behalf of Bob Dylan, who objects to any reference to him in the movie. Hayden Christensen is playings the Dylan-inspired Billy Quinn; maybe his reportedly woeful performance will help Dylan's case.

Message Boards: How does the directors cut compare to the theatre release? | Edie Sedgwick's Drawings

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