An earnest and sometimes overblown story of a music teacher's impact on those around him, Mr. Holland's Opus is at times a genuinely touching drama in the vein of It's a Wonderful Life. Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) plays an aspiring composer and musician who takes a job teaching music at a local high school to earn money while he composes. ...
Queen of the Damned combines the plot elements from the two disappointing novels Anne Rice cranked out as the sequels to Interview with the Vampire and contrives to be better than the book it is named after, but not by much. The vampire Lestat (a pale, pretty Stuart Townsend) awakens after a century-long nap and discovers flamboyant metal music, then irritates the vampire community ...