> Nov 21 - Gothika
>
> A psychiatrist (Halle Berry) wakes up as a patient in her own asylum. Ghosts, amnesia, and unspeakable crimes are trendy these days. A lot of people are keeping an eye on Berry, after a successful last couple of years, so this project is probably pivotal for her. The early word is good.

Movies like this tend to get too caught up in their own edginess and forget about the entertainment. I trust Halle Berry - she's had good taste in projects lately, and she's talented and nice to look at - but I'm concerned that this will turn out to be American McGee's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest more than anything else.

> Nov 21 - The Cat In the Hat
>
> I am singularly uninspired by live-action adaptations of Dr. Seuss, especially after The Grinch, which not even Ron Howard could keep from being over-saturated and unwieldy. There's a lot of talent behind the look and feel of both movies, but filming Seuss is like trying to film, I dunno, da Vinci. It doesn't translate. The Cat works much better with his voice unheard, and his world works better in two dimensions.

I don't think anyone disliked The Grinch more strongly than I did - it's an elite member of the "movies I turned off before they were finished club" (which is only three movies big, mind). The movie is garish, and every character, scene, and line of dialogue (except when Anthony Hopkins quoted directly from the book) hit exactly the wrong note. Given that, I doubt The Cat could possibly be quite as bad. Though, from the look of it, it's going to try.

> Nov 26 - Timeline
>
> Richard Donner (Superman, Lethal Weapon) directed this adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel. Crichton's work is usually fun but thin. This one is a time-travelling adventure that steers back to medieval times. I'm all about that. Could be good, could be mediocre, but it's sure to be interesting.

I've never actually liked a Crichton book, but good things have been done with them on film (the first Jurassic Park comes to mind, as does The Andromeda Strain, which had a lot of tension leading into the worst ending outside of Nightmare on Elm Street). I have a feeling this will fall short of the mark for medieval time-travel films set by Bill and Ted, but if there's some good actiony stuff, it could still be worth a watch.

> Nov 26 - Bad Santa
>
> Con artists Billy Bob Thornton and Bernie Mac...I don't know, dress up as Santa and swindle people or something. The trailers look horrid. If they are to be believed, the movie's single joke is that the characters hold unChristmaslike attitudes at Christmastime. Har har har.

Heavens. Almost as good as that movie from a few years back that was all about people dressing up like Elvis and doing unElvislike things.

> Nov 26 - The Haunted Mansion
>
> As was mentioned earlier in this forum, Eddie Murphy is talented, but not at picking projects. The Haunted Mansion offers me not one single ray of hope that it'll be anything but terrible. The advertising likens it to Pirates of the Caribbean, presumably because they're both based on Disneyland/World rides, but I don't know who's gullible enough to figure one will inevitably be as good as the other.

That would be this small minority of people who are easily misled by advertising and not especially good at figuring out which movies are good and which are bad. We call them the "general public." Or need I remind you of Kangaroo Jack's box office take? Anyhow.

I love Eddie Murphy. It's just that I can't think of more than, say, two good Eddie Murphy films. He's sort of like Anthony Hopkins in that respect - Hopkins is possibly my favourite living dramatic actor, and Murphy possibly my favourite living comic actor. And, yet, they have made precious few movies that were any good. Frustrating.

> Dec 1 - Forbidden Warrior
>
> The granddaughter of an Emperor is raised by a sorcerer and...probably some bad things happen. It looks to be a cross between the fantasy genre and Crouching Tiger. Depending on the balance, helpless villages may actually not get ransacked, and monsters might not even ooze goo. It's being released by "Cinamour Entertainment," so I bet you won't even be able to find this one until it hits DVD.

Ever since Crouching Tiger, every hack who wants to add an edge to his fantasy martial arts movies just mixes them up with a women's issues film and calls it art. So here's one voice in favour of monsters that ooze goo and bad guys who run around in black armour and grunt.

> Dec 2 - The Land Before Time X (direct-to-video)
>
> This series is the most hilarious series I've never seen. Well, I did see the first one. I wouldn't have thought, in a million years, that it would spawn nine sequels.

If these films had less moralising and more movie, they could be silly fun. As it stands, it's like going to a lecture on feel-good ethics.

> Dec 5 - The Last Samurai
>
> I've seen this trailer too many times in the theater. But it looks good. Like Master & Commander, it seems to be a return to some old-fashioned adventure storytelling. The modern-day emphasis on visuals remains, but special effects do not dominate. I flip-flop on Tom Cruise a lot, but this looks good. It also stands a chance at the Oscars, but that's still up in the air.

I've heard fantastic things about this movie, but, since it isn't out yet, they've all been from people who also haven't seen it. Curious. One of the things I've heard about it is that it's Tom Cruise's best movie ever, which I prompty likened to calling The Matrix Keanu Reeves' best film ever. Which is to say: big deal.

> Dec 12 - Stuck On You
>
> Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear are co-joined twins in this Farrelly Brothers comedy co-starring Cher. If, before this project's conception, you had made up the premise for the Farrellys' next movie, it could pretty easily have been something like this. Expect it to be crude, but, although their track record is not spotless, the Farrellys do know how to elevate crude to almost noble heights.

I've never "gotten" the Farrellys. Stephen's tried explaining them to me, but to no avail. I concede that there's apparently something there that I'm missing, but, well, I'm still missing it.

> Dec 12 - Something's Gotta Give
>
> The trailers for this Jack Nicholson comedy look hilarious. Nicholson could do almost anything and make it fun to watch.

I'm a big Nicholson fan. This could be interesting.

> Dec 17 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
>
> Yeah, like you need me to tell you about this.

I'm worried about this one. I hear an awful lot of material is missing that is more or less essential to the book - like the scouring of the Shire, for example. I'm not sure what's going to happen to the film sans denoument, but I hope it's not a sweeping helicopter shot and a voice-over giving us a rundown of the ending and a cheery "happily ever after." Remains to be seen.

> Dec 19 - Mona Lisa Smile
>
> This is the story of women at a women-only school "where the students are torn between the repressive mores of the time and their longing for intellectual freedom," to quote the plot summary at the IMDb. This isn't normally my thing (Hollywood always screws up when it tries to do anything for which there are pressures of political correctness at play), but the cast is excellent. Julia Roberts plays an instructor -- she's good in the right roles and terrible in others, but this looks promising. Rounding out the cast are Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, arguably THE three actresses of their generation whose talent have steered them around the teen idol stigmas that could prove the downfall of their peers. I haven't seen Gyllenhaal enough to have a personal opinion of her, but Dunst and Stiles are always watchable in my book. But as for whether I'll like this or not...it could go either way.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the students probably eventually become liberated from those neanderthal social mores, and the stodgy instructors either come to realise that perhaps their students have something to teach them, too, or else they get tied to chairs and hit with pies. Just a guess, though.

> Dec 25 - Cold Mountain
>
> Cold Mountain is not only a frontrunner for this year's Oscars, it was a frontrunner as long ago as last year. That means there are a lot of expectations to live up to. But the director, Anthony Minghella, is reliable, and the cast is outstanding: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Giovanni Ribisi, and Donald Sutherland. It's about a wounded soldier in the last days of the American Civil War. Just the sort of historical romance epic the Academy goes ga-ga over. Will it have the strength to threaten Return of the King? We'll see.

Epics are big lately. I think this should do well at the Oscars, provided it doesn't bomb. And the credits look promising.

> Dec 25 - Cheaper By the Dozen
>
> Steve Martin's still got it, but if he doesn't watch out, he's going to catch Eddie Murphy's script selection disease. I've seen the original movie, and it's not worth remaking; but the trailers don't suggest much of a tie between the two. The real "original" is the book anyway.

I'm very fond of Steve Martin, but I still don't like him as a lead. His ironic detachment and random zaniness make him more suited to sidekick, co-star, or ensemble member. Also I hated the book, but it's not in a genre that's produced anything I actually liked, so that wasn't a surprise.

> Dec 25 - Peter Pan
>
> Was I just talking about good-looking movies? WOW this looks fantastic. Of course, I liked Hook. But the look and feel of this upcoming live action version of Peter Pan absolutely dazzles me. I'm there.

I was lukewarm on Hook. I liked a lot of things about it, but it never really came together for me. Still, Peter Pan is a great story, and one could make an excellent adventure movie out of it. So I'll mark this one "sounds promising."

> Dec 26 - House of Sand and Fog
>
> The buzz is that the performances are outstanding, and the leads, Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly, may wind up with Oscar nominations for it. But early reviews are calling it an extreme downer. Depressing is ok, but only if it's depressing in an exhilarating or edifying way. The brooding kind is just...well, depressing.

That title says it's either a brooding relationship movie or a fantasy epic with an Arabian theme. I'm betting on the former, unfortunately. I like Ben Kingsley a lot, but I don't think he's enough to sell me on a relationship brooder.

> Dec 30 - Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood (direct-to-video)
>
> Ain't nuthin' but a hip-hop thang. Just bidness in tha hood.

Sometimes I feel bad for Warwick Davis. He gets one good role ever, and it has to be in mofo Willow. At least he seems to be having a good time playing the Leprechaun in all these groaners. I hope he's not too upset about the fact that somebody finally filmed Tolkien - a movie with FOUR hobbit leads and a dwarf lead - and he didn't get a single darn one of them.

> In America - limited, 12/26
>
> This looks to be columnist David Poland's favorite movie of all time, even over The Hulk and Undercover Brother. It's also got good Oscar buzz behind it, particularly for Djimon Hounsou, who has a small but powerful role.

I hate Djimon Hounsou, because I can't hear his name without getting the theme song to mofo Digimon stuck in my head. And, naturally, I feel that he is personally responsible for this.