November 2003 Movies

In a tiny village, when the Earth was young and ice still covered the land, a headstrong teenager, Kenai, has an issue with bears. And why not -- the bears compete for the same food and land, loot his village, and ruin his coming of age ceremony. When his oldest brother is lost in a perilous battle with a ferocious grizzly, Kenai ignores the village teachings of brotherhood, choosing instead to track down the bear and satisfy his thirst for vengeance. Kenai, voiced by Joaquin Phoenix, is changed into a bear by the Great Spirits, forcing him to examine the world through the eyes of his enemy. In his quest to regain his human form, Kenai enlists the help of an adorable, talkative and sometimes-pesky bear cub named Koda. Their journey propels them across the northern territory, through glacial caverns, frosty tundra, a valley of fire and treacherous gorges. Over the course of the journey with Koda, Kenai is forced to question everything he knows and learns many important lessons about the true meaning of brotherhood. Ultimately, he realizes that his physical transformation from a man to a bear is insignificant compared to the change that has occurred within him.

In this third installment that concerns itself with death, Neo, Trinity, and Morpheus--along with the rest of their battling posse--continue to come against the machines that have systematically enslaved the human race in the Matrix. Now displaying a greater confidence in his own power, Neo fully realizes that he is a superhuman figure capable of amazing feats, and is totally aware that he's able to see the codes of people and things with which he comes into contact. Simultaneously more humans, who are struggling to live in the real world, have awoken out of the Matrix. As their numbers increase, the machines invade Zion, the center of human resistance--considered the last real-world city.

On April 11th, 2002, Irish documentarians Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain were in Venezuela, with the intention of making a movie about the nation's left-leaning (and Castro-inspired) democratic president, Hugo Chavez, whose support comes mostly from the country's impoverished, who make up 80% of the population (versus past leaders who were often supported by the country's big money minority, like the petroleum industry). Although they did accomplish that, the film took a seriously unexpected turn when the filmmakers found themselves in the heart of a coup d'etat, trapped in the president's palace as Chavez's right-wing oligarchic opposition overthrew the leader. Chavez was able to return to power within 48 hours, buoyed by public support, but this film captures those frightening moments and days in which a nation's political future was fought over using both bullets and manipulation of the media. Venezuela's television networks, all owned by oil companies except for the state channel which the coup brought down, reported distorted interpretations of the coup, as proven by this movie's footage, which was then picked up by international news organizations like CNN. This movie also addresses what the White House thought about this coup in the world's fifth largest producer of oil (providing 14% of the United States' petroleum).

Set in contemporary London in the weeks before Christmas, "Love Actually" tells one story which weaves together a spectacular number of love stories-sometimes romantic, sometimes sad, sometimes stupid-all funny in their own way. Everywhere you look, love is causing chaos. From the new bachelor Prime Minister who falls in love 30 seconds after entering Downing Street to a loser sandwich delivery guy who doesn't have a hope with the girls in the UK, so heads for Wisconsin; from a jilted writer who escapes to the south of France to nurse his broken heart to an aging rock star trying to make a comeback at any price; from a bride having problems with her husband's best man to a married woman having trouble with her husband; from a schoolboy with a crush on the prettiest girl in the school to his architect step-father with a crush on Claudia Schiffer. These London lives and loves collide, mingle and finally climax on Christmas Eve-again and again and again-with romantic, poignant and funny consequences for all.

The most ambitious surfing movie ever undertaken — the "Billabong Odyssey", is based on a three-year global expedition to seek out and ride the biggest waves in the world. Shot primarily in 24-frames-per-second, progressive-scan 1080 HD format as well as 35mm, the film combines the talents of the world's best big-wave surfers, jet-powered watercraft tow vehicles, and cutting-edge weather-tracking technology to create an unprecedented cinematic experience. The Billabong Odyssey calls for three expeditions each year. Two, which will take place between October and March, will unfold in the Northern Hemisphere, including the entire West Coast of North America, the Hawaiian chain, Canada, and Mexico, as well as France and Spain. A third will occur in the Southern Hemisphere during its winter months of June through August. Although specific destinations remain secret, the maiden expedition took to the seas last October, focusing on key locations in the Pacific Northwest between San Francisco and Canada's Vancouver Island. Preparations are under way for future excursions to coastlines rich with high-surf potential, including Chile, South Africa, Ireland, New Zealand and the South Pacific isles.

Shortly after both his brother died and his girlfriend left him, Bruce (Rodolphe Marconi), a young filmmaker attending a year-long seminar in Rome, finds himself becoming the subject of obssession by a mostly straight Italian tour guide, Matteo (Andrea Necci), after the two end up sleeping together. Matteo continues to hang around Bruce, sometimes lurking in the darkness, stalking him, even as a new American girl (Echo Danon) with a fascination with serial killers enters their lives.

Many years ago, a playful toddler accidentally ended up in one of Santa's bags of presents, and got whisked away to the North Pole, where he would live out his entire childhood. One of Santa's elves adopted the child, named Buddy, and raised it among the tight-knit community of elves, who live up North with Santa, making toys year-round. Now a tall, fully grown man, Buddy and his distinctly non-elfishness, regularly causes havoc in Santa's workshop. He is unable to fully fit in with the other elves, and becomes forlorn. This inspires Buddy's adopted elf father to suggest to his human son that it's time for him to travel out into the world of men, and try to find his biological father and family back in New York City. However, it maybe just as hard for Buddy to fit into this new world, as he's only existed with other elves around him, and is not quite used to the ways of humans--especially urbanites.

This homage to the golden era of 1950s Technicolor musicals tells the story of a cabaret singer, Billie Golden (Isabel Rose), living with her mother in Queens who aspires to get out of the "airport circuit" (she sings at a dingy lounge at JFK Airport). Meanwhile, Billie is also trying to choose between two men who represent different paths her life could take next: a corporate attorney (Cameron Bancroft) she knew in high school, who could provide her with money and security; or her piano teacher (Andrew McCarthy) who doesn't have much money but understands her passion for music. In addition to the songs Billie performs on stage, there are also occasional musical numbers that represent Billie's daydream fantasies.

Based partially on the shootings at Columbine High School, writer-director Gus Van Sant presents "Elephant", which takes place during one day at a typical American high school. Following ten kids in their daily activities, an atmosphere of violence and lawlessness becomes brutally evident as tension mounts, leading to a tragic event.

In this documentary, Nathaniel Kahn examines the life and career of his father, Philadelphia architect Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974), whose work included the Salk Institute and the Parliament and Capitol Buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh, before dying of a heart attack in a Penn Station bathroom in 1974, unidentified and broke despite having been one of the century's most influential architects. Louis Kahn also led three different personal lives, with three different families, fathering a daughter with his wife, and a child each by two other lovers (one of whom was the mother of Nathaniel, who was 11 when his father died).

A documentary about the pivotal hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur that is narrated entirely in the words of the deceased artist himself. Through a variety of interviews, journal readings, poetry performances, private home movies, and never-before-seen concert footage, the film serves as a "self-portrait" of a cultural icon whose career and persona, both, continue to grow from beyond the grave.

Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is the unluckiest man in Las Vegas... he's so unlucky, it's contagious. Looking to knock out their highest rollers, one of the last mob-run casinos in town, the Shangri-La Hotel and Casino downtown, decides to use Bernie as a "cooler" to defuse their lucky streaks. The scheme goes fine until Bernie falls in love with a cocktail waitress, Natalie (Maria Bello), who becomes his "lady luck", much to the chagrin of the casino's crooked director (Alec Baldwin) who aims to break up the romance, and Bernie's newfound luck...

Russell Crowe is Lucky Jack Aubrey, the Navy's greatest fighting captain and Paul Bettany is ship's doctor Stephen Maturin. The ship, the Surprise, is suddenly attacked by a superior enemy. With the Surprise badly damaged and much of his crew injured, Aubrey – the "Master" of the Surprise and "Commander" of his men – is torn between duty and friendship as he sets sail in a high-stakes chase across two oceans, to the far side of the world, to intercept and capture their foe. It's a mission that can decide the fate of a nation – or destroy Lucky Jack and his crew. The film is based on the narrative outline of the tenth book in Patrick O'Brian's legendary "Aubrey/Maturin" series of high seas novels about the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars.

Harry Mayfield (Baker Hall) was once an extremely successful Los Angeles architect. Today, he is an aging, charming but cantankerous idealist who teaches rather than practices architecture. Decades earlier, he had started work on a magnificent house for his family on a hillside site overlooking the city and the sea. A rich young couple, Kate and Richard Banks, see the charred remains of what was once his house, and decide they want Mayfield to come out of retirement and re-build the house for them. Mayfield, flattered by the attention and attracted by the challenge, agrees. Kate hires him to redesign the house and asks a young Hollywood friend, Gaby (Sangiacomo), to make a documentary record, a film of the building of the house. She learns that Mayfield's work made considerable impact on his colleagues and experts in the field, but for some reason he never achieved great public fame. The house was not finished, and the incidents surrounding its failure to be completed caused the tragic death of his young son, and possibly the end of his career. Mayfield works hard to make a new design. After getting it approved by Kate he starts construction with the contractor he has hired to rebuild the house.

John Person (Jon Favreau), a struggling actor on the verge of eviction from his Hollywood studio apartment, goes against his better judgement -- and that of his pretty neighbor Grace (Joey Lauren Adams) -- and accepts an offer from his strange neighbor Neely (Bud Cort) to courier a blue suitcase up to the desert truck stop of Baker, California. His instructions are simple: deliver the suitcase to a trucker called Cowboy (Sean Bean) and collect $27 thousand. Oh yeah, and he has to defend the suitcase with his life. Naturally, nothing goes according to plan once John arrives. The Cowboy is nowhere to be found, John meets with some kooky alien-obsessed locals and Special Agent Banks (Kelsey Grammer) questions John about the mysterious decapitation of Neely and about other missing persons. When the final showdown approaches, John is faced with a choice that could change his life forever. Has the whole town gone mad? Or are the loony locals, who he dismissed as crazy, the only sane ones in this strange parallel universe called The Big Empty?

Set in a live-action world in which Warner Bros.' beloved assortment of irreverent animated entertainers interact with human characters for maximum comic effect, the story unfolds on the Studio backlot and careens all over the map in time-honored Looney Tunes style. Our celluloid heroes embark on a hilarious adventure that takes them from Hollywood to Las Vegas, Paris and the jungles of Africa in search of Fraser's character's missing father and the mythical Blue Monkey Diamond.

Mike Myers stars in the title role of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat, the film adaptation of the beloved literary classic. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss was first published in 1957, and remains one of the top ten best-selling hardcover children's books of all time. The mischievous feline visitor in the striped stove-pipe hat makes his big screen debut with this live-action production, which will bring the off-kilter Dr. Seuss characters - as well as some new ones created especially for the film - to life on the big screen.

Adopted by his grandmother, Madame Souza, Champion is a lonely little boy. Noticing that this lad is never happier than on a bicycle, Madame Souza puts him through a rigorous training process. Years go by and Champion becomes worthy of his name. Now his ready to enter the world-famous cycling race, the Tour de France. However during this cycling contest two mysterious men in black kidnap Champion. Madame Souza and her faithful dog Bruno set out to rescue him. Their quest takes them across the ocean to a giant Megalopolis called Belleville where they encounter the renowned "Triplets of Belleville", three eccentric female music-hall stars from the 30's who decide to take Madame Souza and Bruno under their wing. Thanks to Bruno's brilliant sense of smell, the brave duo are soon on to Champion's trail. But will they succeed in beating the devilish plans of the evil French mafia?

A criminal psychologist (Halle Berry) awakens to find herself a patient in the very same mental institution in which she works, with no memory of the murder of her husband (Charles S. Dutton) that she's accused of committing. As she tries to regain her memory and convince her coworkers of her innocence, a vengeful spirit uses her as an earthly pawn... which only further convinces all involved of both her guilt and her increasingly stead descent into madness and delusion.

In this romantic triangle teen drama set in modern Taipei, high school students Ke-Rou (Lun-Mei Guey) and Yueh-Chen (Shu-Hui Liang) are best friends. When Yueh-Chen asks Ke-Rou to approach a boy, Shih-Hao (Bo-Lin Chen) that she has a crush on (but is too shy to ask), Shih-Hao unexpectedly asks Ke-Rou out instead. She excepts, but with a warning, because she has a secret: she thinks she might be a lesbian because she's actually in love with Yueh-Chen. Going out with Shih-Hao, however, is her chance to test herself to see if she is, or if she isn't...

A revisiting, some 15 years later, of the principal characters of Denys Arcand's 1986 comedy drama film, "The Decline of the American Empire". Rémy, now divorced and in his early fifties, is hospitalized. His ex-wife, Louise, asks their son Sébastien to come home from London where he now lives. Sébastien hesitates; he and his father haven't had much to say to one another for years now. He relents, however, and flies to Montreal to help his mother and support his father. As soon as he arrives, Sébastien moves heaven and earth, brings his contacts into play and disrupts the system in every way possible to ease the ordeal that awaits Rémy. Around his father's bedside, Sébastien also reunites the merry band of folk who were all players in Rémy's complicated past: relatives, friends and former mistresses.

Set in Los Angeles at home of the middle-class Hong family, a drama thriller in which many layers of deception in a bi-cultural clan are unraveled--upon the arrival of an intruder brandishing a gun.

From the Mexican writing-directing team behind the Oscar-nominated "Amores Perros" comes this explosive, emotionally charged English-language drama about a woman (Naomi Watts), her cheating lover (Sean Penn), and an ex-convict (Benicio Del Toro).

When a man (Eddie Murphy) and his family encounter a ghost while visiting a haunted house during a job interview, he learns the value of family, and the lesson that he should make sure he never neglects them. Based upon the popular Disney theme park attraction.

A mystery suspense thriller based on Michael Crichton's best-selling novel about a team of student archaeologists on a dig at a medieval site in France. When Professor Johnston, their team leader, disappears, they suddenly find themselves in 14th century feudal France on a perilous journey beyond their wildest dreams. Now, to find their missing professor and avoid a potentially catastrophic event, they won't be excavating the past, they'll be living it.

With their two young daughters in tow, Johnny and Sarah emigrate from Ireland to New York City in pursuit of a dream. The family uses ingenuity and sheer strength of will to make the most of their new life. Ultimately it is their kindness to a stranger and that stranger's response in return that builds their new home.

This is the story of two criminals who disguise themselves as Santa Claus (Billy Bob Thornton) and his elf, traveling across the country to major malls, using the good will people have towards Santa to rob the stores blind. The plan is going great until the two baddies meet an introverted 8-year-old boy who reminds them of the true meaning of Christmas.

This documentary examines the short life of Australian-born Leigh Bowery (1961-1994) whose resume included being a famous fashion designer, a 1980s gay nightclub icon in London (as host of the Taboo nightclub), outrageous performance artist, lead singer of the art rock group Minty and the costume designer for the Michael Clarke Dance Company.