The Hannibal horror-movie franchise (Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon) gets an extraneous third installment from best-selling novelist and scriptwriter Thomas Harris.... Read more

The ubiquitous Pedro Almodóvar adopts Penelope Cruz as his latest muse for his 16th film. In Volver, Cruz leads a predominantly female cast in a cross-generational story about the culture of death in Almodóvar's native region of La Mancha, Spain.... Read more

Positioned as a diatribe on the abysmal state of the American education system and gang violence around Long Beach, California, Freedom Writers is based on the true story of neophyte high school teacher Erin Gruwell (Hillary Swank), who broke with curriculum convention to inspire her troubled students during the mid-1990s.... Read more

Here's a different take on the docudrama format. Writer/director Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook) dives headfirst into the true story of a group of Southern California rich kids who goofed their way into kidnapping and violence in August 2000. With a dream cast of the youngest and brightest actors of the day, Cassavetes creates a movie that makes you feel like you're watching apathetic kids riding down a progressively steeper incline in an unmanned vehicle.... Read more

Robert De Niro's second outing as director (his first was A Bronx Tale, 1993) pinpoints the privileged ideology and unscrupulous secrecy that enabled the creation of the CIA. With Eric Roth's eloquent, fictional script, the film traces Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) as a pokerfaced Yale student with an inscrutable way of not answering questions. Through flashbacks, asides and forward-moving action, we are submerged in a concealed world of distrust and espionage.... Read more