Wendy R. Weinstein

MANSFIELD PARK

Writer-director Patricia Rozema gambles on a reimagined Fanny Price for her Mansfield Park, a less passive heroine, more like the feisty young Jane Austen, and comes up flush. Using Austen's novel, letters and early journals, Rozema infuses Fanny with the spirit, wicked wit and emotional depth of...

ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE, THE

In their heyday, Rocky and Bullwinkle occupied two three-and-a-half-minute slots on their popular early 1960s cartoon show. The rest of the half-hour (excluding commercials) featured other clever, hip animated segments such as 'Fractured Fairy Tales,' 'Peabody's Improbable History' and 'The...

HOUSE OF MIRTH, THE

Terence Davies' invariably intelligent screen adaptation of The House of Mirth captures Edith Wharton's corrosive portrait of turn-of-the-century New York society. Beginning with his first image, a slowly evolving ornamental pattern, Davies underscores the inevitability of his heroine's demise....

DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS

While it hardly conjures magic, Ron Howard's Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas delivers one holiday gift, and that is Jim Carney. As the eponymous curmudgeon, Carrey throws his entire furry green body and inimitable grin into this role, pushing Dr. Seuss' cartoon creation to its dramatic...

ALL ACCESS: FRONT ROW. BACKSTAGE. LIVE!

Moviegoers will be rocking in their obligingly designed stadium seats at Imax's All Access: Front Row. Back Stage. Live!, a thoroughly enjoyable hour of diverse live performances, interviews and backstage moments. With its engulfing screen (up to 80 feet high and 100 feet wide) and six channels...

ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE

Disney might have reinvented the movie musical with its animated features The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, but the studio breaks no new ground in the action-adventure genre with its latest offering, Atlantis: The Lost Empire. While the directors' use of Cinemascope is impressive,...

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring arrives from Middle Earth just in time for the holidays. Perhaps it's not as great as the J.R.R. Tolkien book on which it is based, or even the original Star Wars movies, but it's an imaginatively mounted, impeccably cast fantasy epic with...

THE CHERRY ORCHARD

Thirty-eight years after his Zorba the Greek, director Michael Cacoyannis, now 80, brings a wise and elegiac Cherry Orchard to the screen. Starring the still ravishing Charlotte Rampling in a pitch-perfect performance, and her Georgy Girl (1966) co-star, Alan Bates (who also co-starred in Zorba),...

THE QUIET AMERICAN

Director Phillip Noyce's The Quiet American finally opens, more than a year after the traumatic razing of the Twin Towers, but on the eve of a possible American-led invasion of Iraq. The timing never seems right for Graham Greene's critical take on American foreign policy. However, this visually...

THE PIANIST

Long before Rosemary's Baby, the murder of his wife Sharon Tate, and his notorious flight from America, Roman Polanski was a Jewish survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland. He escaped the Krakžw Ghetto at age seven through a hole in a barbed-wire fence. The Pianist, which won the Palme d'Or at this year...