Disneyfied recounting of the human-interest story (ca. 1999) about the matronly members of a Yorkshire Women's Institute who posed for a charity cheesecake calendar. An abundance of tittery comedy, but some darker tones, too, and nice plump roles for the capable Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, and others. Directed by Nigel …

The Amateurville Horror. Gifted youths -- girls and gays, plus one "honest-to-God straight boy" -- gather together at Camp Ovation for a summer of acting, singing, dancing, and self-affirmation. You could just scream. With a cast of unknowns, not counting an as-himself cameo by Stephen Sondheim. Written and directed by …

Andrew Jarecki's documentary for HBO rehashes a late-Eighties criminal case that never came to trial, in which a Jewish upper-middle-class family man and teacher in Great Neck, Long Island, already caught red-handed in possession of child pornography (postmark Amsterdam), was brought up on charges, together with the youngest of his …

Hector Babenco takes us behind prison walls in Brazil (different prison walls than in his Kiss of the Spider Woman), in well-lit photography, for an episodic two and a half hours, where an affable doctor battles AIDS, educates the inmates, distributes condoms, etc., but mostly lends a sympathetic ear. Flashbacks, …

The name of the movie is the name of a Mexican resort hotel-cum-hospital where half a dozen gringas await their turn to adopt native newborns; more bluntly, where the haves take from the have-nots. Or still more bluntly, where the Left-leaning John Sayles can show off some of his right …

The untested director Bo Welch, trained as a production designer, tries out the tested formula of How the Grinch Stole Christmas: a sententious Dr. Seuss book, a sampling of voice-over recitations from the actual text ("Then something went bump. How that bump made them jump!"), and a major comedy star …

What would probably like to be thought of as a big goof, or alternatively a big boner, must instead be regarded as a big botch. The bigger-headedness that results from the big hit of 2000 is not an attractive feature, and in truth none of the three Angels -- Drew …

Unrecognizable update of the 1950 film (and 1949 book) of the same name, set originally around the turn of the century, now a sort of Fox-TV sitcom quadrupled. The messiness of the family life (in a family of fourteen) is neither adequate camouflage nor alibi for the messiness of the …

If Mike Figgis, following his string of digital-video experiments, wanted simply to prove he could still make a regular movie, then the present project might be termed a success. It could hardly be more "regular," an obvious and overwrought thriller about a New York family (Dennis Quaid, Sharon Stone, and …

The hardships and heartache of the American Civil War, cushioned in the plushness of the production: the crane-happy camera, the spendthrift special effects, the "painterly" washes of color and "dynamic" compositions, the visual poetry and bombast, the chiselled and sanded faces of the A-list romantic leads, Nicole Kidman (with her …

Backstage dance musical centered around a Chicago ballet troupe, not necessarily the Joffrey Ballet that does the actual dancing. A labor of love for Neve Campbell, who trained in her native Canada as a ballerina and who co-wrote and co-produced in addition to starring, and just a labor for Robert …

Reissue of David Leland's concert film to commemorate what would have been the 75th birthday of George Harrison.

Better titled Cockiness, even if it meant that the convoluted scam at the center of it had to be called, with altogether appropriate machismo, a cock game: the poker-faced Edward Burns, in a cropped haircut that makes him into a poor man's Ben Affleck, dances rings around Dustin Hoffman's underworld …

Las Vegas fairy tale, from first-time director Wayne Kramer, full of hand-me-down ideas about the old-school gangster who still believes in busting kneecaps to keep order, the failed showgirl and the tail-for-sale, the poor-man's Sinatra and "the next Harry Connick, Jr.," the changing economic landscape: "There comes a time to …

Liam Neeson narrates this story of reefs in peril. Directed by Greg MacGillivray and starring underwater photographers Howard and Michele Hall.