DIE ANOTHER DAY Just as it took Roger Moore a couple of movies to grow into the part of James Bond, so too has it taken Pierce Brosnan a while to satisfactorily pull off the role at the center of the most successful franchise in film history. His newfound conviction (he's become less the Moore playboy and more the Sean Connery hardass) is only one of the reasons that this 20th entry in the 40-year-old series easily emerges as the best of the Brosnan Bonds -- and, in effect, the best 007 outing in well over a decade. Except for one unfortunate "surfing" sequence late in the game (featuring arguably the worst special effects ever produced for the series), the action is tightly orchestrated and thus more exciting, and the various performers -- Halle Berry (the first Bond babe with an Oscar) as the enigmatic Jinx, newcomer Rosamund Pike as the aptly named Miranda Frost, Toby Stephens (Maggie Smith's son) as sneering entrepreneur Gustav Graves, and Rick Yune as the diamond-disfigured Zao -- all breathe vigorous life into their characterizations. Scattered tributes to past flicks in the series also add to the merriment. 
CURRENT RELEASES
BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE God bless America. And God bless Michael Moore for caring so much about America. The scruffy guerilla filmmaker who's made a career out of sticking it to the nation's corporate guard on behalf of the little people this time sets his sights on the country's thorny firearm issue. The result is a hard-hitting treatise that offers almost as many laughs as his previous pictures Roger & Me and The Big One but also emerges as a much sadder, wiser piece of filmmaking than its predecessors. Detractors will claim that this film, so skewed that Marilyn Manson ends up coming across as the most logical of all the interviewees, is nothing more than a typical liberal diatribe taking pot shots at easy targets, and they'd probably be right except for one thing. Sure, it's easy for Moore to note that those countries without easy access to firearms don't have our absurdly high murder rate, yet this film muddies the waters by pointing out that Canada, a country also swimming in firearms, has an enviably low murder rate despite the prevalence of weapons, thereby leading Moore (and us) to question whether gun control isn't the issue as much as an arrogant American mindset that feels everything is for the taking for anyone with the means to do so. Bowling for Columbine isn't a subtle film; instead, it makes its case with Magnum force. 1/2
8 MILE At first glance, 8 Mile would appear to be Eminem's Purple Rain, a blatant attempt by a music star to broaden his fan base by appearing before the movie-going multitudes in a ragtag effort consisting primarily of sizzling concert scenes surrounded by tepid melodrama. Yet it's soon clear that this is actually going to be a bona fide motion picture and not just a soundtrack album with cinematic trimmings. Not that this movie, knowingly directed by Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), doesn't have some connection to Purple Rain. Indeed, it harkens back to several films from the late 70s/early 80s (Saturday Night Fever, Fame, Flashdance) that had replaced the traditional glitz of the musical fantasy world with the grit of the real world, a place where creative expression wasn't a luxury but rather a survival instinct, a possible escape from the lower rungs of a manmade hell. Here, the desolate locale is the Detroit of 1995, wherein a young man beaten down by life uses rap as a way to express himself. 8 Mile has its share of potholes along the way, but overall it's a sturdy drama, and it conclusively demonstrates that, for one movie at least, its magnetic star can go the distance.
THE EMPEROR'S CLUB In the tradition of Dead Poets Society and Finding Forrester comes another inspirational drama that champions the power of education while simultaneously providing air time to the sort of shaky, only-in-the-movies scenario that would leave a true academic guffawing at the simplemindedness of it all. Still, this works better than it probably should, thanks primarily to Kevin Kline's committed performance as a Classics professor whose ability to shape the characters of his young charges meets a serious challenge in a rebellious, irresponsible boy (Emile Hirsch) who eventually forces the prof to compromise his own strict moral code. To its credit, the script by Neil Tolkin (who previously penned the anti-education Pauly Shore vehicle Jury Duty), based on Ethan Canin's short story "The Palace Thief," does acknowledge the reality that some students are simply out of reach of even the most dedicated of instructors. Eventually, though, even the film's thorny issues get buried under the soft gauze of cheery conformity, as all troubles wash away in a sea of grandstanding speechifying and daft plot developments. 1/2
FAR FROM HEAVEN While many films sacrifice emotional investment for the sake of stylistic innovation and vice versa, this one fearlessly tackles both facets and emerges a winner on both fronts. In crafting what turns out to be one of the best films of the year, writer-director Todd Haynes (Safe) has made a glorious-looking picture that's almost fetishistic in its desire to replicate those Technicolor-soaked melodramas from the 50s, in particular the ones from cult director Douglas Sirk. Haynes pulls off this verisimilitude -- everything from the colorful costumes to the dialogue to Elmer Bernstein's score smacks of "old-school" Hollywood -- yet he also nails the oversized emotions and barely repressed attitudes, resulting in one of the most affecting "weepies" of recent times. Julianne Moore, in what may endure as the performance of 2002, stars as a content housewife in 1957 Connecticut whose life starts to unravel once she discovers that her husband (Dennis Quaid) is a closeted homosexual and that she's feeling an attraction for her gentle black gardener (Dennis Haysbert). Foregoing any semblance of irony or camp or even dreamy nostalgia (traits that invariably affect any 50s-set flick made today), Haynes has instead come up with a straight-faced triumph that works as both a poignant love story and a piercing social commentary. 1/2
FEMME FATALE Director Brian De Palma has spent most of his career courting controversy, so why expect different results from his latest release? Already running the gamut of critical opinion since its opening (from an F by Entertainment Weekly to four stars from Roger Ebert), this deliriously over-the-top thriller features both the best and worst of De Palma. A convoluted, twisty yarn about a shapely thief (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, channeling Sharon Stone) who double-crosses her criminal cohorts, assumes a new identity and makes a patsy out of a tabloid photographer (Antonio Banderas), Femme Fatale includes some terrific set pieces that remind me why I revere his style so much -- yet ultimately becomes burdened with several self-conscious sequences that make me wince at how he's frittered away much of his latter-day career. Woe to the audience member who approaches this with a straight face -- the writer-director is clearly in a playful mood here (love that blood-stained shirt, "seven years later") -- but even accepting this in the right frame of mind can only provide it with so much leniency. 1/2
FRIDA First, let us be thankful that it's the Salma Hayek version, not the proposed Jennifer Lopez one, that made it to the screen -- after all, who wants to see a Frida Kohler biopic that would doubtless find the Mexican artist putting aside the paintbrushes (and putting a part in her unibrow) for a career as a glamorous songbird? Seriously, as far as screen biographies of artistic sorts go (always a gamble, since it's hard for film to accurately convey the creative process at work), this one apparently ended up in the right hands, as director Julie Taymor (Broadway's The Lion King) uses various colorful conventions -- an animated sequence designed by the Brothers Quay, the melding of actual people and artwork, the stunt casting of Edward Norton, Antonio Banderas and Ashley Judd in small roles -- to effectively touch upon the key incidents in Kahlo's life, from the trolley accident that kept her perpetually in pain over the years to her brief fling with Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush). Still, the film's centerpiece is her long, complex relationship with husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera, and it's the robust performances by Hayek and Alfred Molina that ultimately give Frida its soul.
HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS The second chapter in the Harry Potter saga (following last year's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) concerns itself with the boy wizard's sophomore session at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There's an evil presence lurking in the halls of the venerable institution, and, needless to say, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and best buddies Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson) find themselves smack in the middle of the mystery. As before, groundskeeper Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) offers them friendship, schoolmaster Albus Dumbledore (the late Richard Harris) offers guidance, Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) offers discipline, and Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) offers opposition. And there's even a new teacher on the premises: the vain Gilderoy Lockhart (scene-stealing Kenneth Branagh), who's more interested in promoting himself as a hero-celebrity than in actually teaching the kids anything of merit. Chamber of Secrets, on a par with its predecessor, cuts no corners as far as the visual effects are concerned, yet the real magic in the series remains the interaction between its human players, most notably the three perfectly cast kids.
I SPY This tepid studio product is supposedly based on the same-named 60s TV show starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, but its relationship to that series is so tenuous, they could easily have called this thing Petticoat Junction or My Mother the Car and gotten away with it. Owen Wilson, charming when the role is just right (rare, indeed), is warmly relaxed as a second-tier secret agent, while Eddie Murphy, in his patented motor-mouth mode, darts all over the screen as his civilian partner, a boxing champ whose ego is larger than Brazil and Argentina combined. This sort of "buddy comedy" is long passe, so the real surprise is that Murphy and Wilson actually make a pretty good team, each actor playing off the other's strengths. But the project surrounding them is distressingly rote, a true snoozer that finds the pair trying to stop the usual Eurobaddie (Malcolm McDowell) from selling a stolen government aircraft to the highest international bidder. The plane, incidentally, is invisible, though viewers hoping for a Wonder Woman cameo will be sorely disappointed.
OPENS WEDNESDAY:
Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights (animated).
Extreme Ops (Devon Sawa, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras).
Solaris (George Clooney, Natascha McElhone).
Treasure Planet (animated).
Wes Craven Presents: They (Laura Regan, Marc Blucas)
