Her Majesty
Last week we received the movie with the winner of the Best Actor Oscar, The Last King of Scotland, and this week offers up the Best Actress: Helen Mirren (Gosford Park, Prime Suspect) won for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, centered around the conflict within the royal family and British government at the time of the death of Princess Diana. The lower-budget 10 Items or Less features Morgan Freeman in a more flawed (and foul-mouthed) role than his archetypal father-figure: he plays an actor in a lull researching a role in an independent film when he crosses paths with Scarlett (Paz Vega, Spanglish), a character that fascinates him, and Screen Door Jesus is an ensemble character drama about faith, religion, and race in a small Texas town that has won a slew of film festival awards.Night at the Museum is the marquee comedy of the week, with Ben Stiller (Zoolander, Dodgeball) heading a cast that included Robin Williams and Mickey Rooney-- Stiller finds himself in a museum that comes alive in the after-hours in this PG family comedy. Cedric the Entertainer (The Honeymooners, Intolerable Cruelty) stars in Code Name: The Cleaner if you need more of a PG-13 comedy; he plays an amnesiac who may be a spy... or may be a janitor. Comedian Al Franken is the subject of the documentary God Spoke, covering his rise through Saturday Night Live to his career as an author to his time with Air America, and comedian Steven Wright has put out a performance DVD, When the Leaves Blow Away, offering up one of the most unique stand-up performances around.
A barrage of new genre pictures have popped up this week. The time travel picture is also the highest profile: Deja Vu stars Denzel Washington (He Got Game, Training Day) as an ATF agent trying to prevent past tragedies. The edgy revenge movie of the lot is .45, which stars Milla Jovovich (Ultraviolet, Resident Evil). The duo of German movies offer up both futuristic, sci-fi, kung-fu action in The Challenge and the action comedy The Wedding Party, adapted from a comic book. Thr3e is our horror film, a psycho-killer movie where three victims-to-be try to understand why they have been targeted.
Among the TV shows new this week are the miniseries Tsunami: The Aftermath, setting characters among the devastation in Thailand a few years ago. The two BBC series include Planet Earth, the award winning BBC documentary series, and the period costume miniseries Wives and Daughters. The procedural NCIS has just launched Season 3, and volume one of the Adult Swim show Moral Oral is also new this week. The two new anime series on the wall are volume one of Yu Yu Hakusho and the complete Witch Hunter Robin.
