A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes moviemaking back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for, say, Titanic, it's an impressive achievement that will leave you marveling at the ...
A feel-good movie that highlights the beauty of France as much as it does its stars, A Good Year provides a languid, gorgeous viewing experience. Director Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe--who first worked together on the Academy Award-winning Gladiator--are reunited in this romantic film, which is based on Peter Mayle's book A Year in Provence. Crowe plays Max, a workaholic ...
A slow burning, yet entirely gripping, mobster film, American Gangster pits Denzel Washington's Frank Lucas against Russell Crowe's law enforcer Richie Roberts. Spread over a necessarily prolonged running time, their story is then brutally, expertly, told. And while American Gangster isn't in the league of prime Scorsese and Coppolla classics (such as Goodfellas and ...
A Beautiful Mind is an award-winning movie if ever there was one. This biopic of mathematician John Forbes Nash is two parts Shine to one part Good Will Hunting. Scripted by Akiva Goldsman (Lost in Space) and directed by Ron Howard (The Grinch)--both trying to get sincere and serious after previous movies--it showcases a big, compelling performance from Russell ...
Cinderella Man is a wholesome slice of old-fashioned Americana, offering welcomed relief from the shallowness of many summer blockbusters. In dramatising the legendary Depression-era comeback of impoverished boxer Jim Braddock, director Ron Howard benefits from another superb collaboration with his A Beautiful Mind star Russell Crowe, whose portrayal of Braddock is simultaneously ...
Aside from some gripping battles and a storm sequence to rival anything seen on screen, Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is as much about daily shipboard life during the Napoleonic era--especially the relationship between Captain Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and Doctor Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany)--as it is about spectacle. Aubrey is a powerful figure whose ...
As revisionist history, Michael Mann's intelligent docudrama The Insider is a simmering brew of altered facts and dramatic license. In a broader perspective, however, the film (co-written with Forrest Gump Oscar-winner Eric Roth) is effectively accurate as an engrossing study of ethics in the corruptible industries of tobacco and broadcast journalism. On one side, there is Jeffrey ...