The Dark Knight arrives with tremendous hype (best superhero movie ever? posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger?), and incredibly, it lives up to all of it. But calling it the best superhero movie ever seems like faint praise, since part of what makes the movie great--in addition to pitch-perfect casting, outstanding writing, and a compelling vision--is that it bypasses the normal fantasy ...
Manufacturer: Warner Home VideoStarring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie GyllenhaalDirected By: Christopher Nolan
It's, like, Shakespeare, man! This good-natured and likeable update of The Taming of the Shrew takes the basics of Shakespeare's farce about a surly wench and the man who tries to win her and transfers it to modern-day Padua High School. Kat Stratford (Julia Stiles) is a sullen, forbidding riot grrrl who has a blistering word for everyone; her sunny younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik) is ...
Manufacturer: Touchstone Home VideoStarring: Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, David KrumholtzDirected By: Gil Junger
A sad, melancholy ache pervades Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's haunting, moving film that, like his other movies, explores societal constraints and the passions that lurk underneath. This time, however, instead of taking on ancient China, 19th-century England, or '70s suburbia, Lee uses the tableau of the American West in the early '60s to show how two lovers are bound by their expected ...
Manufacturer: Entertainment in VideoStarring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, Randy QuaidDirected By: Ang Lee
There's no rule against rock anthems from the 1970s in the soundtrack for a movie about a medieval jousting champion, but if you're going to attempt such jarring anachronisms, you'd better establish acceptable ground rules. Writer-director Brian Helgeland does precisely that in A Knight's Tale and pulls off this trick with such giddy aplomb that you can't help but play along (upon ...
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home EntertainmentStarring: Heath Ledger, Mark Addy, Rufus Sewell, Paul Bettany, Laura FraserDirected By: Brian Helgeland
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home EntertainmentStarring: Mel Gibson, Rene Auberjonois, Joely Richardson, Heath Ledger, Jason IsaacsDirected By: Roland Emmerich
A harrowing portrayal of Deep South life in the 21st century, Monster's Ball hits you where it hurts most, in the complex realm of extreme human emotions. This is not a movie to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon. With intriguing juxtapositions and some of the best editing of recent times it has all the makings of a modern film noir, yet it's not only the men that end up on the ...
Manufacturer: Entertainment in VideoStarring: Halle Berry|Billy Bob Thornton|Heath Ledger|Sean CombsDirected By: Marc Forster
Fairy tales come vividly to life in The Brothers Grimm, a long-delayed fantasy/horror comedy that greatly benefits from the ingenuity of director Terry Gilliam. In lesser hands, the ambitious screenplay by prolific horror specialist Ehren Kruger (who wrote the American versions of The Ring and The Ring 2) might have turned into an erratic monster mash like Van Helsing. ...
Manufacturer: Buena Vista Home EntertainmentStarring: Matt Damon, Julian Bleach, Bruce McEwan, Heath Ledger, Peter StormareDirected By: Terry Gilliam
Lords of Dogtown captures the sheer kinetic joy of skateboarding like no other movie (except, perhaps, Dogtown and Z-Boys , a documentary about the very skateboarders this movie depicts). Set in the mid-1970s in Venice, CA--a.k.a. Dogtown--the movie starts with three young aspiring surfers turned skateboarders: Stacy (John Robinson, Elephant), Jay (Emile Hirsch, The ...
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures Home EntertainmentStarring: Emile Hirsch, Victor Rasuk, Rebecca De Mornay, John Robinson, Michael AngaranoDirected By: Catherine Hardwicke
