X-Men: The Last Stand took in $120.1 million last weekend, the biggest opening box office weekend in history, surpassing the $115.8 million Spider-Man 2 earned in 2004.

I told you it was an amazing film.

Few movie moments make me cry, and most of them are about innocence. The response of innocence to a moment of enlightenment: Nemo's astonishment at hearing of his father's heroism. The courageous disregard of pragmatic considerations in living an innocent life: Will Ferrell's pure-hearted obliviousness to the ridicule around him in Elf.

I didn't expect to cry at X-Men: The Last Stand, but I left the theatre shaking nonetheless.

After the second film, I realized the emotional superiority of the X-Men movies to all other science fiction films I had ever seen. But the third installment of the king of the comic book film franchises left me dumb with shock at the gashes it carved out of my expectations, especially the way it burns through main characters like blades of grass in a prairie fire. A last stand it certainly seems to be.

Here is a story of the struggle to contain uncontrollable power, and the things it can make us do that we will regret with horror forever. Sometimes civilization run amok unintentionally creates these titanic energies, but more terrifying are the capacities we sometimes find, with astonishment, inside us. Can mental discipline deliver us from their fury? Can ambition? Can love?

Although it commands archetypal terrain, the strength of the X-Men phenomenon lies in our intimacy with the characters, and Stephanie Zacharek at Salon.com thinks director Brett Ratner rushes through the relationships without giving them a chance to sing. That may be true: there are a lot of characters, including some new ones--that is, new to anyone who hasn't read the comics--that seem to exist only as pawns for Magneto. And some of the character arcs are left a bit thin, such as Rogue's determination to be like everyone else and the callous hypocrisy with which Magneto discards one of his most loyal lieutenants after a fateful event.

On the other hand, some of the new faces are compelling, especially big blue hairy Beast, a rough-and-tumble mutant monster who also has the intellectual sophistication and eloquence of a diplomat. Beast is new to the movies, but it seems like he has always been here. And when the end credits rolled I was startled to discover that he is brilliantly played by Kelsey Grammer: certainly not a role you would expect from him.

If you are an X-Men purist, however, the film will infuriate you. The director has been merciless in picking and choosing events and plot points from the X-Men universe in order to craft a successful film. So be an adult and appreciate X-Men: The Last Stand for the compelling adventure it offers; don't expect rigorous faithfulness to your cherished comic books.

X-Men: The Last Stand is also driven by a fantastic score that I am determined to go and purchase. And if you are one of those people who stick around to watch all the credits once everyone else has left the theatre, you won't regret it.

With the summer movie race about to officially wave the green flag, I thought you would like to see someone's predictions for this year's upcoming films. I just found this posting (PRODUCERS GAME 2006) from this past February, where Piker lists the movies she (or he, can't tell) believes will be the big ones in 2006.

This is more than just Academy Awards picks. One error here, I believe, is Piker's conviction that Pixar's Cars will outpace Superman Returns at the box office. Not a bad guess, given that no Harry Potters are coming out this year, but I think Superman Returns has a better chance of beating Titanic's all-time box office record than any movie in the past nine years.

You can also see the other picks from past years.

Believability. Not all movies need it, but those that are attempting to depict realistic events do. The Sentinel, starring Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland and Eva Longoria does well on this count, almost all the way through the film.

Douglas is Pete Garrison, a US Secret Service agent on the Presidential detail who once took a bullet that saved Ronald Reagan's life. But when an agent is murdered and it is discovered that there is a traitor within the service, Garrison fails a polygraph and becomes the prime suspect though he insists he is being framed. Enter Jack Bauer as a Kiefer Sutherland who has remembered how to dress decently since his last shoot on the '24' set. Agent David Breckinridge is a loyal, by the book company man who does everything properly and is the lead investigator, with a rookie field trainee played by Eva Longoria, who doesn't do very much more than show up for her scenes. Such is the recipe for a snappy spy movie that excels in the believability column.

Until they get to Toronto.

The President is attending the G8 at Toronto City Hall, and this is where the assassination attempt will take place. First, the real mole in the service (who may or may not be Garrison, I'm not telling) decides to stand up to the terrorists and says that he won't go through with it, and he doesn't care if they expose him or kill him: checkmate! But this man apparently hasn't seen many movies, because he is flabbergasted when the bad guy takes out three pictures of his family and says, "Oh, we're not going to kill you, we're going to kill her, them, and her."

Then the summit begins, and the American President gets up to the podium and says, "We must ratify the Kyoto Protocol." Righhhhht. They cut to the streets where a big angry mob is attacking police and storming the barricades: are we sure that this is supposed to be Toronto? And finally the attempt is made, in the stairwells of City Hall no less, by assassins dressed in Canadian military fatigues complete with bright red maple leafs on their shoulders.

For all you screenwriters out there, please do your research.

Two Saturdays ago I watched Inside Man, a genre film about a bank heist that turns out to be much more than it appears. Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Clive Owen star in this Spike Lee joint that critics are calling the best heist movie since Dog Day Afternoon.

Clive Owen's Dalton Russell has planned the perfect crime. One morning dressed as painters he and his team of four enter and hold up a Lower Manhattan bank. The regular hostage negotiator is on vacation, so Detective Keith Frazier, a cop with an internal affairs investigation hanging over his head, gets the gig and leads off with the normal routine: set up a crime scene, call the robbers, find out demands.

Things get interesting when the mayor shows up with a mysterious Jodie Foster who has been hired by the bank's chairman to secure a single safe deposit box in this, his flagship bank, from all prying eyes. She is whom the very rich call when they have a problem that requires absolute discretion, and in this case the chairman, played Christopher Plummer, is really going to need it.

In the face of a by-the-book police department and rising political pressure, Frazier has to draw on all his instincts to determine that this is no simple bank robbery. Having been unexpectedly figured out by a second-string detective, Dalton tells Frazier during one of their conversations, "You're too smart to be a cop."

The heist is interspersed with interviews held with the hostages after the crisis has ended, and as the story slowly unfolds you realize that they suspect everybody: all the hostages are dressed up identically to the robbers, and all have walked out together. In fact, the bank doesn't appear to have been robbed at all, since nothing seems to be missing.

In the end Dalton's plan works perfectly and he and his team get away with it like they should, but not before the real bad guys get nailed thanks to his genius and the surprisingly quick mind and steely determination of an underrated cop.

The critics are all over Inside Man with praise, and the movie seems to be part of Spike Lee's turning the corner since September 11th in his view and understanding of his native city. Stephanie Zacharek at Salon has written a masterly analysis of this aspect of the film in her excellent review, and comments insightfully on Jodie Foster who, she says, "rules the movie like an ice queen." By way of closing I will quote a few paragraphs for you here.

But as with so many movies set in, and about, New York, the plot is just a convenient device to bring an entertaining jumble of characters together. Lee has always been interested in exploring the tensions between people of different races, to the extent that by the mid-'90s he'd become predictably, and tiresomely, dogmatic. But "25th Hour," a tough but tender love letter to his native city, suggests that 9/11 sparked a change in him: Putting black-white relations under a microscope no longer seemed to interest him; suddenly, united against an enemy outsider, we had no choice but to get along.

Lee's eyes and ears are open to everything the crazy-quilt patchwork of New York has to offer. He sees the way people in the city often cede grudging respect to their neighbors, even when those neighbors annoy the hell out of them. Russell and Frazier are the linchpins of "Inside Man," the characters who need to work hard to fully understand each other in order to "get along." Washington gives an easygoing, casual performance, which is his best kind: He's an intelligent, astute actor, though sometimes a self-conscious one. His line readings here have just the right amount of snap, and he knows how to suggest the hostile or wary undercurrents that sometimes flow beneath seemingly benign encounters.

"Inside Man" cuts backward and forward, so that even though much of the action takes place in and around the bank where the hostages are being held, we also see Frazier and Mitchell questioning them after their release. None of the hostages, for reasons that will become clear if you see the movie, can be presumed innocent, so Frazier grills them mercilessly. In one scene, he and Mitchell pressure one of the released hostages, a Sikh, to give them as much information as he can. He's upset because his turban has been removed, and his religious beliefs demand that his head be covered. Frazier tries to settle him down and soften him up, and the two end up bantering about the kind of indignities people are forced to suffer in a city like New York. Frazier sinks the last ball right in the pocket: "I bet you can get a cab, though."

..."Inside Man" won't ever be considered one of the "great" Spike Lee movies: It's a well-made entertainment, the sort of thing that audiences generally treat as being far less serious than messagey pictures like "Crash." (Even though, in a sense, "Inside Man" is a movie that practices what "Crash" preaches: The necessity of recognizing our differences without allowing ourselves to be confined by them.) There are dozens of little touches in "Inside Man" that capture the craziness, the unexpected delights, of urban life, like the Albanian hottie (the actress who plays her is Florina Petcu) who's called in by the cops to serve as an impromptu Albanian-to-English translator. She's happy to help -- but first she hands Frazier a gold gift bag stuffed with parking tickets, which she naturally assumes he'll fix for her. And that, Lee recognizes, is the kind of give-and-take that this city demands. He is the inside man.

V for Vendetta is the latest in the string of graphic novels vaulted to the screen, and is the most hyped movie of the year so far. But whereas Sin City and Running Scared claimed only to be Frank Miller's imagination set in motion, and Aeon Flux and Ultraviolet were only ever meant to be action thrillers, V for Vendetta wants to be more, something more intelligent, a political commentary in an age of terrorism and jeopardized civil rights. It is billed as "An uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of The Matrix Trilogy." I found it extremely disappointing, therefore, that it only succeeds in being just another screenwritten graphic novel.

Twenty years ago the United States disintegrated in a chain of events beginning with a misjudged Middle-eastern war, and having turned inward on itself England embarked on totalitarianism. Now a terrorist with style will save his people by sowing too much chaos for the government to control through an intelligent program of popular empowerment. V blows up ancient buildings in inspiring fireworks displays, exposes the government's lies by commandeering Big Brother's media network for his own eloquent purposes, and conducts a campaign of serial justice against high profile figures. He also saves a twenty-something girl from a group of government bad guys, adopts her, and then partly through charm, partly through collaboration and partly through torture frees her from herself and makes her a terrorist, sorry, a freedom fighter, just like himself. And yet through it all, we feel sorry and keep on rooting for the compelling figure who is V.

Right at the very end he fulfills his destiny by bringing down the government, blasting the Houses of Parliament to the beat of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and giving the country back to its people.

Since we never see Hugo Weaving's face, Natalie Portman is the de facto star of the movie, and V for Vendetta proves that she can headline her own film. After her Oscar-nominated role in Closer and now this, the little girl whom Jean Reno died for is on her way to the A-list. Before long, Natalie Portman is going to be a major star.

V for Vendetta is a fun film to go and see, but it is something you are more likely to expect from the creators of The Matrix: Revolutions than the creators of The Matrix itself.

As much as I tried to pretend that The Hills Have Eyes constituted a satisfactory movie-going experience for one evening, I just couldn't bring myself to believe it. So after the closing credits last night, I went back to the ticket machine and bought one for the late showing of Failure to Launch, a romantic comedy starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Trip is still living at home at the age of thirty-five, and so his fed-up parents hire Paula, a domestic interventionist whose specialty is simulating the romantic experience that many young men need in order to finally build the confidence necessary to leave home. What follows is a fun comedy full of all the satisfying twists and turns, mistakes and slip-ups that you pay for when you go to see a romantic comedy.

But in addition to the regular, Failure to Launch has surprises, including a modest number of hysterical slap-stick situations which are all the funnier for being so out of place. It starts with the attack of the chipmunk and being bitten by dolphins, and then progresses to a climax when they take a bb-gun to the mockingbird. And don't forget the priceless scene when they chat about Luke taking only what he has with him into the cave on Dagobah. The movie is worth it for these scenes alone.

In yet another case this year of a supporting player stealing a film, Zooey Deschanel makes the picture as Paula's roommate Kit, an eccentric, irreverent loner whose storyline could have supported its own movie. Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw also shine as Trip's parents. Yes, that's right, Terry Bradshaw. Yes, that's right, he is quite good. No, as you will see, he is no longer in top form, but give the man a break: his last Superbowl was thirty years ago.

I have always thought that Sarah Jessica Parker's best film was L.A. Story, but she does a great job as Paula in Failure to Launch, and after her forced persona in The Family Stone, that is a very good thing.

The Hills Have Eyes is an example of modern dramatic genius, a story of family solidarity in a harsh world, a portrait of a father who will go to any lengths to protect his child.

No, I'm just joking. It sucks. Hollywood has given itself a tough act to follow: the studios will be hard pressed to make a worse film during the remainder of this calendar year.

The movie is based on Wes Craven's 1977 horror film of the same name, where a family on a cross-country trip takes a shortcut through a former nuclear testing ground in New Mexico, and is terrorized by a group of genetically deformed mutant cannibals.

It goes like this: family in a Suburban and renovated Airstream pulls into gas station 200 miles from nowhere; creepy station attendant suggests little-known shortcut; they are mysteriously stranded; dog takes a stroll and is gutted; father walks back to gas station and gets in car without checking the back seat first, is burned at the stake in front of family as a diversion while two mutants attack women in trailer, killing mom and eldest sister and stealing sister's baby. Son-in-law goes looking for baby with baseball bat and beats up a bunch of overinflated sacks of skin. Cool head explosions. Remaining sister and brother defend trailer but bodies stolen and mom munched on. Trailer gets blown up, dad finds baby through bloody ordeal and help of second dog, but leaves loaded gun next to body that is meant to be dead, providing the necessary plot occurrence required for mutant little girl to sacrifice herself for baby's protection by killing mean mutant who looks like Jake Busey. Everybody lives happily ever after.

Save your money.

Read Stephen King's interesting review of the Oscars in Entertainment Weekly here.

One of the best things about his article is the insightful comment from a reader called RobG about the treatment of racism in the movie Crash:

Crash was quite simply a racist movie. Why? Because it's message was that racism is all about relatively powerless people being mean to each other with things like a white person getting upset because a black person is named Shanequa. How absurd. A real movie dealing with real racism would have addressed how people of color are marginalized by society as a whole, by right wing politics, and by racist tax structures that make sure rich white kids go to great public schools while those in poor neighborhoods are falling apart. It would have addressed how 1/3 of young black men are somewhere in the penal system (prison, parole, etc). Black people referencing the Cosby Show? Maybe because that is the only portrayal of black people the white writer could think of. Crash is racist because it tries to say to white people that see all groups are racist too and that we just need to be nicer to each other and conveniently ignore the structural enforcers of racism.

"I am a Titan. A monolith. Nothing can stop me."

If you have heard of it, you probably think Ultraviolet is another weak, futuristic science fiction dystopia that should be avoided. But you would be wrong.

Based on a comic book, Ultraviolet is a futuristic science fiction dystopia, but a very, very good one. Violet lives in an era defined by the fear of disease, much as previous eras were dominated by terrorism. She has Hemoglophasia, an ancient blood virus related to vampirism that has been reawakened in these days and spread like the plague. But the most threatening thing about it is how it endows the infected with superhuman speed, strength and intelligence. Quarantine and segregation turned to extermination, and now humans and the remaining hemophages are at war.

Unlike some films of this sort which couldn't find a competent writer if their box-office receipts depended on it, Ultraviolet bristles with short, resonant dialogue of the kind you find in captioned comics. Milla Jovovich, who gets better and better with each movie, is stunning as she delivers her abbreviated lines with almost Shakespearean dramatic skill. And young Cameron Bright, a bit of an enigma in his dark child roles, is as solemn as ever playing a pre-teen surrogate son whose blood is a deadly weapon.

Ultraviolet introduces fresh new technologies such as dimension compression, which enables Violet to sheath swords and conceal dozens of weapons on her person within invisible spatial dimensions, portable anti-gravity generators that empower motorcycle chases to climb the sides of skyscrapers, and disposable mobile phones that you print out onto paper cards from public kiosks to change your number every sixty seconds.

And if one-versus-seven-hundred gunfights and flaming swords duelling in the dark aren't enough for you, Violet wears the coolest sunglasses since The Matrix.

If you were disappointed by Aeon Flux, don't judge this book by its cover.

The little movie that could, did. Crash won Best Picture this year, snatching the honours at the last minute from under the noses of the stunned cast and crew of Brokeback Mountain. Terrence Howard said after the show that, "The most important movie of the decade, I think, is Crash, because of its worldwide social impact." I have said before that we live in an era of the rejuvenation of film, and I think Crash ranks way up there in the most significant films of our century so far.

Beyond the ability of this film to show us how to quit the cowboys, Crash winning this evening says something about which stories are rising in importance in the common mind, and which are falling. Tonight, core issues central to the development of our civilization trumped popular socio-cultural identity politics. Someone on the red carpet said that this is the year Americans learned to think again, and wouldn't that be wonderful if it is true? It's time to go and see Crash again.

Tonight is the Oscar show, of course, and I am going to enjoy having these first impressions recorded for posterity. Besides, it will be a very good writing exercise. And since nobody has invited me over to watch with them this year, nobody is going to disturb me. And so here we go. I will update this entry continuously throughout the night, with the most recent comments at the top. [This order has been reversed for easier reading the day after the Oscars. -- JM]

Note: If you are looking for my Oscar WMD Report, with everything you need to enjoy the show tonight, scroll down. I am afraid it is getting a little bit buried by these two long articles.

6:55 pm -- I decided to watch Live from the Red Carpet on E!, and I am dismayed to see that they are already broadcasting and I have missed some. There's Jessica Alba in a golden dress that looks beautiful. And Naomi Watts in a tan/cream dress with something flowing down the front. That's a scary choice, we'll see how that pans out later.

7:00 pm -- That's Isaac Mitzrahi reporting from the carpet, the fashion designer who groped Scarlett Johansson and looked down Teri Hatcher's dress at the Golden Globes. Let's see if he keeps his hands to himself tonight. Of course, he's gay, which pretty much means that he can walk up to the stage and grope a statue or two tonight.

7:06 pm -- It seems like CityTV in Toronto and Star! are broadcasting E!, CTV is showing something called "Countdown to the Oscars," but I don't know who produces that, and Global will be running Entertainment Tonight's coverage, which doesn't appear to have started yet!

7:13 pm -- After canvassing the offerings, I am going to stick with E!, until ET decides to get its act together and start broadcasting. There's George Clooney. So far Jessica Alba gets the prize for best dress: she might run away with it tonight. Too bad Playboy didn't wait until next week to lie and steal their way to a picture of her for their cover. Isaac thinks Keira is leading so far, with an eggplant-coloured dress. Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves are hand-in-hand. Jessica is in Versace; and she's keeping her distance form Isaac. Did you know they have their publicists here to make sure they look right on the carpet?

Brokeback Mountain is a movie about forbidden love that is the tear-jerker of the year--at least that's what everybody seems to be falling over each other to proclaim. Yeah, big deal. The truth is that Brokeback Mountain is here because someone has finally done a movie about gay cowboys that isn't just about being gay, and that is considered enough of an artistic achievement to vault it to postmodern superstardom. In reality, Brokeback Mountain minus the gayness of the cowboys is Memoirs of a Geisha, a good dramatic film with six nominations that nobody cares about since they are all for technical and editing achievements. Remember: no gay cowboys equals no best picture nomination squared. Next year, expect a best picture Oscar to be awarded to a group of feminist penguins who choose to stay home and cook.

Crash is this year's little movie that could, and over the last two weeks it has been huffing and puffing its way to a possible upset. Crash is a story about the intricacies of racism, and how they conspire to weave a tapestry of lives in Los Angeles. But beyond that the film is hard to describe. I saw it last summer, and it stunned me right from the beginning with its two black youth complaining about how they are always misunderstood and stereotyped, right before they pull out a gun and hold up the District Attorney. Raising its arguments like a signpost, Crash is full of memorable scenes, heartrending conflicts, great performances from a brilliant ensemble cast and a realistic portrayal of America's most challenging issue. Crash deserves to win.

Capote keeps getting better as more time passes from the day I saw it. Although I didn't think so at the time, it truly deserves to be in the running. I mean, everyone knew that Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance was going to be awesome, but who could have predicted that the film was going to be, too? Capote is the story of a self-centered writer who gets the opportunity of a lifetime to demonstrate his genius thanks to a family being massacred in Kansas. If that sounds callous, just watch Truman Capote exploit everybody in order to write one of the most important books of the century. See him manipulate the situation, lie repeatedly to the simple-minded killer, take advantage of the traumatized town and use all his friends. Where do the ethical limits of artistic creation lie? Where does an artist's responsibility to society begin and end? And all he can do at Harper Lee's triumphant movie premiere is complain about how the government is torturing him because they keep granting stays of execution to the murderers. You see, he can't finish his book until he has an account of the hangings to furnish his final pages. Why doesn't anyone seem to care about what he's going through?

What's so engaging about Munich are the moral compromises that the protagonists go through in killing eleven supposed terrorists in cold blood and trying to justify it to themselves. There are many opinions on this film, one of the most surprising of which is that it has apparently made more Israelis sign up for Mossad. I don't get it. The quote from the movie that stands out for me is when Avner's mother explains to him how proud she is of what he is doing since, "They aren't going to give us anything, so we must take it." And for some reason this is a popular view in Israel. Why is this something to be proud of? If this was a story about central Europe in the 1930s, fine, but it's not. As far as the film goes, it would have been better without so much violence, and minus the gratuitous sex scenes that are made up to be meaningful moments of self-discovery. And what would Spielberg be without something completely unbelievable? In this film it is the scene in the safe house when both our Mossad team and the PLO show up and stay together for a couple of days, giving Steven a nice, clean canvas for some political discussion. The thing is, the PLO think the Mossad are ETA, the Basque terrorist group. Wouldn't they have known that they were talking to Israelis and not Spaniards? Well, we love Spielberg, and you can't have one without the other.

Good Night, and Good Luck is the most unique film of the year not to have gay cowboys in it. George Clooney deserves the Oscar for Best Director, and only seeing Brokeback Mountain lose is closer to my heart than seeing George win. David Strathairn wins Best Actor in any year but this year. Filmed entirely in monochrome, it has virtually no score. Directing that kind of movie in our media saturated era of surround sound and immersive environments is no mean feat, let alone illuminating the complex relationships between fear, justice and freedom that Clooney does with insight and conviction.

Other than Syriana, Good Night, and Good Luck is my Best Picture choice.

Don't tell me you are surprised. What other topic did you expect me to choose to write about today?

So let's say you've got your food and drink, friends to watch with, you've left work early enough to see the red carpet, and you have brushed up on recent newsworthy events in preparation for Jon Stewart to take everybody down a notch. Now what do you need? Intelligence! Not intelligence as in mental ability--we are talking about the Oscars here--but as in the stuff George W. has a lot of after bugging your phone for the last five years. Here is your Oscar intelligence report. Fully guaranteed by George Tenet, it provides everything you will need either to be an informative host or to sound smarter than your neighbours, depending on your particular bilateral or multilateral outlook on life. Colin Powell look-alike spokesperson sold separately, but very cheap.

I think the best list of nominees is the one done by the Academy themselves. You can find the official List of Nominees here. If you want to print it out, you can take the .pdf right off my site here: Printable Oscar Ballot. Some movies this year were produced by mobile film studios situated in buses and train cars, but to the best of my knowledge they have been left out of the nominations since the Academy has determined that they are not real.

See how each nominee has fared during awards season with Entertainment Weekly's Oscar 2006 Cheat Sheet, complete with the specs on their placing in ten different awards contests leading up to tonight.

Do you have money on tonight's proceedings? If so, check the Oscar Betting Odds for each nominee in each category from up to twenty on-line bookmakers.

And last but not least, Oscar Night Buzzword Bingo. This is just like the bingo we use in company boardrooms that we know by a ruder title. It's good for those in your party who really don't want to watch the Oscars, but can be convinced if you make it sound fun and stupid. It will work especially well for your friends in the Army reserves.

Bruce Willis is a beat-up, alcoholic old cop, Jack Mosley, who has to make a routine trip at the end of his shift to transport a witness to court. When he stops for booze along the way everything goes to hell, and he realizes that getting 16 blocks in 118 minutes while staying alive isn't exactly going to be a cakewalk.

Jack Mosley is a character who could have been in a cartoon, but instead is played with grit and earnestness by Willis and becomes a real, serious human being. Mos Def plays Eddie Bunker, the witness, who talks like Truman Capote but probably won't win an Oscar for it. He is either a hardened criminal trying to play Mosley, or an innocent, petty thief who only wants to open a bakery in Seattle to make birthday cakes for kids. Regardless of who he is, he really makes the film, both through his compassion and his ongoing, self-directed conversation that is actually quite a lot of fun.

One thing that is really nice about 16 Blocks is how it shows the kindness and gentleness that is what I have always noticed about Manhattan. In Toronto, or God forbid, Europe, if you say hello to a stranger on the street, they will often either avoid you or reply with a curt politeness. In New York I always found that I could strike up a conversation. Most movies dwell on the toughness of New York City, you know, with it being Babylon and all, but 16 Blocks reveals a softer side. From Eddie on down to the cop in the subway and the Japanese tenant, you can see that a lot of good people live there.

I have had a beef with director Richard Donner ever since he exiled the gods from Troy for no apparent reason and turned Thetis, the political genius who was the first Titan to throw in her lot with Zeus, into an absent-minded lady doing her washing in the shallows. When I saw that he directed this movie, I half-expected him to carry on his massacre of fundamentals, replacing all the yellow cabs in New York with bicycle rickshaws and making his policemen carry bows and arrows. Thank goodness he didn't.

I have a friend who is moving to China in two weeks, and he would love this movie. If you like films with nominal plots consisting of nothing but meaningless violence set in a dark, gangster underworld, you'll like it too.

Running Scared stars Paul Walker as Joey Gazelle, a mob henchman responsible for disposing of a gun that has been used to kill two dirty cops. Unfortunately, his son's Russian friend, Oleg, sees him hide it and disappears after using it to shoot his psychopathic stepfather. He has to find the boy and the gun before his boss, the Russian mafia and the police do, or it's all over.

The warning label for Running Scared doesn't lie: "PERVASIVE STRONG BRUTAL VIOLENCE, AND LANGUAGE, SEXUALITY AND DRUG CONTENT." If you decide to go and see it, prepare to be saturated with everything that makes a movie Restricted. I almost walked out of this one because of the violence against women, but happily that subsided after a few opening scenes.

The last film of this type that I saw was Unleashed, which made my shortlist of the worst films of last year. Had I known what this movie was really going to be like, I probably wouldn't have gone, but some unexpected redeeming qualities saved it.

Compared to Unleashed, these writers have learned what a plot twist is. It is also one of those films that is so outrageously and implausibly violent that you can barely stop laughing all the way through it. Even the mom gets in on the killing, blowing away two serial pedophiles as they stand in the middle of their impressively designed, brightly coloured and generously stocked kiddie playroom that doubles as a movie set and child disposal centre.

There is also some side-splitting dialogue. Here Gazelle is explaining to Oleg in the third person how he was able to resolve things with his own violent and abusive father: "On the morning of his 14th birthday, he walks into his father's room with a baseball bat and Mark McGuires the f---in' s--- out of him." What makes this so embarrassingly hilarious is that we have recently been introduced to an elderly, brain-damaged invalid who keeps dropping his spaghetti into his lap at dinner--and whom Gazelle keeps referring to as "dad".

After icing the pedophile couple, Gazelle's wife speaks to him in a repetitive but heartfelt soliloquy: "I did not marry an evil man. I did not marry an evil man. Shady, sleazy, mixed up with the wrong people, but not evil." And then there is the carefully scripted Mastercard commercial, which I won't ruin for you by discussing it here.

I avoided the film "Birth," with Nicole Kidman, but Oleg is played by Cameron Bright, the kid who shared all those controversial nude scenes with her. I didn't know going in that the movie is based on Frank Miller's graphic novels, which explains all the nifty scene transitions and the distinctive colouring of the film.

Again, were it not for the macabre humour, I wouldn't have survived this one. But if you like this kind of thing, knock yourself out. And when you're done, please come back here and explain to me how this movie could possibly have extracted from me nine whole paragraphs of content!

It appears that notable movie posters are a new topic for my blog. Here is a newly-released poster from Spider-Man 3, which is due to open in 433 days: 4 May 2007.

I don't know a great deal about Spider-Man, but apparently he wore a black suit for a little while, until he found out it was an alien parasite. He then discarded it and it was taken on by some villain called Venom. So maybe Venom is in this movie? Kirsten Dunst says yes and director Sam Raimi says no.

So is this a black and white photo or is Spidey wearing a black suit? To make you wonder more deeply, here is the opening page at the Spider-Man 3 web site. What do you think?

In case you are one of those people who believes everything they read in the newspaper, remember the one thing we know for sure. J. Jonah Jameson would have no problem discrediting our hero by running a story that a black Spider-Man was about when he knew very well it was one of the bad guys.

Thanks goes, once again, to Gary Susman at Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch where I got the poster and most of my Spider-Man information. It's a really good blog: you should take a look.

White panoramas of Antarctica marry an uplifting opening score, and you know from the very beginning that Eight Below is going to be a wonderful film.

Based on actual events, the film tells the story of eight huskies who have to be left behind in Antarctica after an accident forces an immediate evacuation of a science outpost. Jerry, played by Paul Walker, does everything he can to retrieve the dogs but is forced to give up hope as the months tick by. For six months the dogs have to fend for themselves. But if you think that this Disney movie is just for kids, think again. In case you don't believe me, there's a warning on the film that it's not for small children.

Eight Below has no shortage of tragedy, such as when Old Jack can't break free of his shackles, and in spite of desperate encouragement from Maya, gives up and chooses to end his long life.

Maya, the Cassie Campbell of the team, is also the Garbo of the picture. She commandeers the film's quintessential shot: a lonely close-up as she stands to the left and gazes off longingly into the distance, contemplating the task of leadership ahead of her.

Eight Below is a coming of age story, too. Max is the blue-eyed baby of the group. He botches a hunt attempt, gets separated and then spends the rest of the film learning what it means to be a hero. He overcomes his grief at Dewey's upsetting death, faces a dragon, and saves the day at the very end.

Eight Below really does have something for everyone, such as the Jaws moment which almost ends things for Max, right before Gandalf and the Rohirrim appear on the cliffs above Helm's Deep to take on the sea monster.

Believe it or not, this movie also has one of the most devastating put-downs I have ever seen in film. Waking up after the evacuation, Jerry discovers that they have not returned for the dogs. Katie, the pilot and his one-time girlfriend with whom he is trying to reunite, had promised to return but was prevented: "Jerry, I'm really sorry. I know you're disappointed in me." Jerry replies, "No. Sometimes you've just got to lower your expectations."

Katie is played by newcomer Moon Bloodgood, who descends from heaven and very nearly steals the picture from the dogs! Mirror, mirror on the wall, indeed.

(The rest of the dogs, from left to right here, are Buck, Shadow, Truman, Max and Shorty. I can't find a picture of Dewey, but he is the splitting image of Truman with a cut over his left eye. You see, when they first met Truman bit him there, and they have never been apart since.)

Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore deliver the first Oscar-worthy performances of the year in Freedomland, a kidnapping drama that is a boiling cauldron of emotions.

Moore is Brenda Martin, a mother whose son is inadvertently kidnapped when she is carjacked while driving through a park one night in Armstrong, a black New Jersey neighbourhood. By the time she walks into a nearby hospital, she has almost lost her mind. She reports her son's kidnapping to Detective Lorenzo Council, played by Jackson, who must find the child, handle a psychologically destroyed mother, and manage his own fragile mental stability at the same time.

To make matters worse, Brenda's unlikable brother (Ron Eldard) also happens to be a detective in neighbouring white Gannon. When the Gannon police blockade the projects in Armstrong, Council has to struggle even more to keep the lid on a smouldering racial situation that is dangerously escalating.

Jackson has played this kind of noble, moral yet emotionally wrecked kind of hero before, but I have never witnessed him do it with such abandon. For both of the leads, making this film must have been exhausting. If Denzel Washington can win Best Actor for playing a corrupt cop in Training Day, then Jackson should win two for this role.

I first remember watching Julianne Moore in Nine Months, the most memorable scene of which showed Hugh Grant pounding the hell out of a big green Barney in a toy store. With her recent films I have found myself taking a dislike to her as an actress. As I reflect on it, though, I think much of that has to do with her role in The Forgotten, which was one of the most disappointing movies I have ever seen. Perhaps I projected those feelings retroactively on her previous work, or maybe it is just that her performances can be so eerily emotional that they have scared me away. From what I have just seen in Freedomland, that appears to be a very good explanation. I love it when I find good reasons to give movie stars another chance.

Freedomland is Crash on steroids. Although it doesn't have the same level of subtlety as Crash, the raw performances emit a seething intensity. If this film had not been released until November, Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore would be definite Oscar contenders for next year. But it may be too early in the year for Freedomland to command that kind of influence come awards season.

Have a look at these incredible posters from X-Men: the Last Stand.

Opening day is 26 May.

There are six of them in all, including one for Beast. See all of the posters here.

A tennis ball flies back and forth across a net.

"People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, and you lose."

So begins Match Point, a thoroughly brilliant suspense-thriller starring Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, that is proof positive for why Woody Allen should stay out of his own films.

Chris Wilton (Rhys Meyers) is a failed tennis star who lands an instructor's job at an ultra-exclusive tennis club in London. He is soon befriended by Tom Hewett, heir to a business empire, attracts the attention of his sister Chloe and is adopted by their ultra-rich family. His prospects soar.

But there's a catch: he also meets Nola Rice (Johansson) at the ping-pong table. And that would be that, except that Nola happens to be Tom's fiancée. They take one step over the edge, but survive it, and the danger passes. In the event, Chris allows Chloe's parents to complete the purchase: new career and expense account, new car and driver, new wife and impossibly expensive new flat overlooking the Thames.

Nola and Tom break up, she disappears, and everything seems fine. But then Chris sees her one day in the street, and the ride begins again. After breathless twists and turns, Chris finally decides to leave his marriage, but he has so much to lose and can't find the courage to carry it out. When his delaying backfires, he chooses the rational, most self-interested course of action.

Woody Allen's screenplay and directing are fantastic, and although the events may sound familiar, he makes you feel that you haven't, in fact, been here ever before. Contrary to the narrative speed of most films which I would call thrillers, he drags this story out and the deliberate, measured, infuriating pace is electrifying. (So is Scarlett Johansson, but that's an entirely different matter.) The tension mounts in irregular pounding heartbeats: danger passes, danger returns, danger grows, watch out!, danger passes, danger grows. The pace forces you to second-guess the plot before it has unfolded, and to do so again and again, but you never know which of the dozen possibilities is going to materialize. The movie is a constant fountain of distress, and in spite of Chris's insulation within a blanket of financial and social stability, Rhys Meyers really makes you believe that he is about to collapse under the pressure at any moment.

Not everything in the movie is entirely realistic, but it never intrudes into the experience. Other than a meddling matriarch, there are no indications of deep unease or uncontrollable mortgages in the family. In real life, people that rich just aren't as carefree as the Hewetts appear to be. But Woody Allen doesn't demand too much from us, unlike Spielberg this year, whose ridiculous détente in the double-booked safe house positively lampoons Munich.

Early in the film, Chris is reading Dostoevsky, and Match Point is largely concerned with Dostoevskian themes: the mental forces that drive a person to action, the motives behind a crime, choosing freedom vs. security, and absolute despair. Woody Allen previously explored these ideas in his 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanours, a movie which I know only by reputation. After the murders, Chris is assaulted by intense guilt--it's a very good thing that he meets up with Chloe at a tearful opera immediately afterwards or the game might have been up. As his situation spirals out of control, you get the sense that he may never personally get past what he has done.

His fate is determined. But not until the very end of this pins-and-needles nail-biter do you realize just how poignant that opening scene was.

The January doldrums are over and February, March, and April films are starting to raise their heads in theatres with openings, trailers, and posters. Here are some of the films I would like to see over the next two months. Of course, I won't see half of them, but this is what I will be choosing from before the summer torrent gets into gear.

Why We Fight
A documentary that won at Sundance in 2005 about the American war machine and the in and outs of why Americans fight.
Opened 10 February, but might be hard to find

Freedomland
A kidnapping drama. I'll put up with Julianne Moore in order to see Samuel L. Jackson any day.
Opens 17 February

Eight Below
Paul Walker tries to save eight huskies who have to be abandoned in Antarctica after an accident.
Opens 17 February

Date Movie
Alyson Hannigan in a spoof from two of the writers of the Scary Movie films.
Opens 17 February

Running Scared
Paul Walker again, this time in a mob movie about a man who has to find a gun used in a recent hit or lose his family.
Opens 24 February

Ultraviolet
Milla Jovovich as a super soldier in an Aeon-Flux-like sci-fi action movie.
Opens 3 March

16 Blocks
Bruce Willis has to transport a witness 16 blocks in 118 minutes amidst a sea of opponents, including cops, who don't want him to arrive.
Opens 3 March

V for Vendetta
Natalie Portman stars with shaved head in this futuristic thriller by the creators of The Matrix.
Opens 17 March

Thank You For Smoking
A comedy about the campaign for big tobacco, starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Rob Lowe and Katie Holmes.
Opens 17 March

American Gun
Donald Sutherland and Forest Whitaker in a series of stories about gun proliferation in America and its effect on people's lives.
Opens 22 March

Inside Man
Denzel, Jodie Foster, Clive Owen and a bank heist.
Opens 24 March

Basic Instinct 2
I don't think I am actually going to bother with this one, but it opens 31 March.

Take the Lead
The lives of a group of inner-city kids are changed forever, all because Antonio Banderas teaches them ballroom dancing.
Opens 7 April

Scary Movie 4
More of the same. The tag line is "the scariest movie you ever sawed." Please.
Opens 14 April

American Dreamz
Randy Quaid and Hugh Grant star in this comedy about a President who one day picks up a newspaper for the first time in four years and starts rethinking his views on the world, leading to a guest spot on a reality-TV show.
Opens 21 April

The Sentinel
An amazing looking action and spy thriller about a traitor in the government who is trying to kill the President. What's so special about this? Only Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland, and Eva Longoria. What else do you need to know?
Opens 21 April

The Rocket
A feature film biography of Maurice 'The Rocket' Richard.
Opens 21 April

Apocalypto
A mythic, Mel Gibson action-adventure epic about the fall of the Mayan civilization.
Opens 28 April

In Firewall, Harrison Ford is Jack Stanfield, vice president of Security at a small Seattle-based bank in the midst of merger talks, whose identity is stolen and family kidnapped one day as part of a plan to force him to rob his own bank.

Now, Lisa Schwarzbaum over at Entertainment Weekly has given Firewall a triumphant D- grade. She thinks the film is witless and derivative. The thing is, everything she says about why it's so bad is everything that I think makes it so much fun.

Ford reprises his role as Hollywood's most rapidly healing star. You may be able to think of one movie where he isn't bashed up by the end, but I'll bet you can't name three. Even his tame films end up looking painful: the Star Wars trilogy where he got frozen in carbon, American Graffiti where he rolled his hot-rod, and Regarding Henry when he got shot in the head. If reality counted for anything in the movies, by now he would look like Rambo.

Virginia Madsen, who plays Jack's wife Beth, says that she was looking for exactly this kind of role, one with a first-rate leading man in a studio picture. Although she hasn't any odes to the transubstantiation of Chardonnay to recite this time, much lamented by Schwarzbaum, she delivers a fine performance as a distressed and protective wife and mother. Her star climbs.

Paul Bettany is a great villain and Mary Lynn Rajskub--Chloe from 24--plays Ford's loyal secretary. There is even a funny double-entendre when Bettany's character forces him to fire her, and she responds with a scowl, "You bastard, Jack!"

Firewall is satisfyingly familiar and welcoming, because it is exactly what you would expect from a thriller starring Harrison Ford: lots of tension, races against time, courage against the odds, and complete emotional commitment by the actor, especially when he is thrashing a bad guy.

If you want a second opinion by someone who thinks more like me, try James Rocchi at cinematical, if not to provide a more balanced critique then at least to make it two out of three.

As part of my Steve McQueen binge (see my comments on Bullitt from last month), I rented The Great Escape, a roller-coaster thriller from director John Sturges, who also directed him in The Magnificent Seven. The image shown is what the DVD looks like if you are planning to rent it, but you can see the original movie posters for The Great Escape here: vertical and horizontal.

McQueen is joined by James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, David McFadden, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn and a host of other distinctive characters in this great adventure film.

During the Second World War, the Germans construct a special, high-security POW camp in order to confine the most difficult of all their Allied prisoners. But in so doing they inadvertently assemble the most talented team of escape artists in history.

The Great Escape is a suspenseful and sometimes comical story about how they pull off the largest military jailbreak of the war. And as the beginning of the film makes clear, all the events are true. They construct a high-tech tunnel with the scraps hanging around the compound, tailor new civilian clothes for the 250 men who are to escape, set up their own counterfeiting operation to forge fake passports, identity papers, and train tickets--and do all of it right under the noses of the Germans.

But then, as soon as you are reaching a triumphant climax, everything falls apart. The escape attempt is aborted halfway. Seventy-six get out, and then are hunted down as they flee in ones and twos.

Roger (Attenborough), the mastermind, is executed along with dozens of others on a grassy hillside. Garner's stolen plane develops engine trouble and lands him and Donald Pleasence right in front of a German patrol. McQueen is captured after a long motorcycle chase that terminates in a barbed wire barrier two feet from the Swiss border. We see only three make it successfully out of Germany, and Garner and McQueen arrive back in the camp to find out that 50 of them have been murdered, shot by the Gestapo.

"Roger's idea was to get back at the enemy the hardest way he could: mess up the works. From what we've heard here, I think he did exactly that."

"Do you think it was worth the price?"

"Well it depends on your point of view, Henley."

As a topsy-turvy mix of charm, excitement, triumph, tragedy and triumph again, The Great Escape does somersaults with your stomach and plays with your heart, and is never, ever boring.

The Legend of 1900 is the first English film of Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, better known for Cinema Paradiso, and stars Tim Roth and Pruitt Taylor Vince. Hopefully, either his next one will be better or this will be his last.

One day in January 1900 an engine room worker on the Virginian, a luxury steamliner, discovers an abandoned baby on board and names him "Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900." The child is raised aboard ship and at the age of eight he suddenly sits down at a piano and plays music unlike any that has ever been heard before. From the day he is born until the day he dies, he never sets foot on dry land.

Such is the story told in flashbacks after the Second World War by Max, played by Vince. At the beginning of the film he goes into a music store to sell his trumpet, and by a fortuitous coincidence learns that the Virginian is sitting in dock about to be demolished. As a younger man he had spent the best years of his life on the ship and became friends with 1900, played by Roth. Now, many years later, he realizes that his former friend must still be on board, even as it is about to be blown to smithereens.

If this sounds confusing, it is.

Unfortunately, the film is also terribly written by Giuseppe Tornatore, based on an Italian monologue. The cliché-ridden dialogue is constructed from strings of platitudes that probably sound excellent in Italian. When he is not reciting long, melodramatic speeches, Tim Roth spends most of the film staring into space like a deer caught in the headlights. And while Pruitt Taylor Vince can be compelling as a kidnapper (Trapped) or a psychopath (Identity), this straight-up role just feels a bit freaky. Stick to the esoteric, Pruitt.

So much of the film is not believable, and having it called a "fable" in its subtitle just doesn't solve the problem. At the end of the film, the Virginian, which has survived as a dirty hospital ship in the war, has been gutted down to its rusty iron skeleton and loaded with dynamite for its final demolition. Luckily, Max makes it on board in time to try to find and save 1900. After playing a secret song, lo and behold! he finds him in the bowels of the ship dressed in impeccably pressed tails.

I have mentioned before that I don't enjoy many foreign films. And the chances of my disliking a European film like this seem to increase proportionally with each award it has received from European festivals. The Legend of 1900 won several. As my brother would say, I liked it better the first time, when it was called Titanic. Except in this one they have removed the love story, the suspense, the tragedy, the chemistry between Leo and Kate, any historical significance, and replaced the brilliant digital effects with mediocre ones. And did they really use swear words like that in the year 1900?

Fundamentally, this is a really boring film about a musical prodigy who lives and dies never having stepped off a boat, dressed up with the costumes and art direction--not to mention Ennio Morricone's brilliant classical score--that are meant to make a movie memorable. I actually wish I hadn't rented it, although at least it gave me something to write about today.

The New World is director Terrence Malick's first film since The Thin Red Line. If you entirely missed its existence, it's no surprise. You might think that the story of Pocahontas has been done to death, and you wouldn't be blamed for it. You could also be forgiven for dismissing it, as I did, after realizing that Colin Farrell is the star of the show. How many really good films has he been in? Maybe Minority Report? The rest of them are either average quality movies, like Phone Booth, The Recruit, Hart's War, Daredevil, or are just terrible, such as Alexander and S.W.A.T. Even Veronica Guerin wasn't a particularly brilliant film aside from Cate Blanchett's performance.

But here he is, in a truly excellent film. Who knew?

I didn't, until the other day when I saw Ebert & Roeper both list The New World in their top five films of 2005. But even then, it is a film that is hard to describe. I know I can't do it justice, so you will just have to take my word for it and accept the opinions of the following critics. They have said it best. That's why they are professionals and I'm just a hack.

"Oscar-worthy [Q'Orianka] Kilcher delivers a gorgeous performance...A sense of raw true love develops between Pocahontas and [John] Smith...And director Terrence Malick successfully reimagines 17th century Jamestown, Virginia...and the critical time when Native Americans first encountered Europeans...A poetic, intoxicating masterpiece." -- US Weekly

"One of the best movies of the year. This is a work of great passion and visual poetry, with Colin Farrell in one of the best performances of his career and a 15-year-old actress making one of the most remarkable star debuts in recent years... She is the heart of Terrence Malick's beautiful masterpiece." -- Richard Roeper

“Terrence Malick's THE NEW WORLD is a visual tone poem orchestrated around the themes of innocence, discovery, and loss... this is resolutely a film of the imagination. As with all films in Malick's slim body of work, its imagery, haunting sounds and pastoral mood trump narrative... Malick and production designer Jack Fisk bring us into a primeval Eden that feels credible. The weirdly painted natives and white-skinned, armor-clad intruders eye one another suspiciously. Their worlds, goals and beliefs could not be more antithetical.

James Horner's sumptuous musical score, incorporating bits of Wagner, Mozart and others, emulates the steadiness of the wind while its repetitive refrains remind one of Philip Glass. The camera lingers on details of frontier life, but the exploration here is less scientific and historical than a spiritual quest for what was lost and what was gained in this clash of civilizations.” -- Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter

This is not an action flick, and has very little dialogue. It is a film of ambience. If you will, it could even have been successfully populated with silent film actors, so important are faces and long looks to the flow of the story.

I wasn't up to watch Mira Sorvino and Academy President Sid Ganis announce the Oscar nominations this morning, but here they are. The gay cowboys lead with eight.

Mira, of course, won Best Supporting Actress for Mighty Aphrodite in 1996.

Read the 2006 Academy Award Nominations here.

I read one critic commenting on Annapolis and conceding that every generation probably needs its "An Officer and a Gentleman." It's a fun, entertaining film with decent male leads and a cute girl, and for those reasons it is worth the money. But don't expect James Franco and Jordana Brewster to live up to Gere and Winger, or Cruise and McGillis--just enjoy Annapolis for what it is.

In fact, there are even some welcome throwbacks to greater movies of the past, such as the "Top Gun" moment when Jake tries to impress a pretty girl in the bar with talk of going to the Naval Academy, only to discover the next morning that she is one of his instructors. There is also the dilemma about quitting or not, right after the partner dies when attempting to eject from their F-14 fighter...oh, wait a minute, wrong movie. In this one, Goose attempts to commit suicide by jumping from a sixth-floor window after flunking out, but doesn't succeed, and is grateful for the second chance to make good on life. And Rocky doesn't attend to his managers' advice once he gets in the ring--yes, there's boxing.

At the end Jake and his tough commanding officer (Cole, played by Tyrese Gibson) develop a firm mutual respect and Jake and Ali get together like they should. You see, why wouldn't you want to see this film?

The new film Tristan & Isolde, directed by Ryan Reynolds, about a knight and a princess caught in a love triangle in medieval England, is a very enjoyable story of romance, intrigue, and tragedy that is well worth the price of admission, and I recommend it highly.

Now that that has been said, however, if you are going to see the film expecting to be introduced to a great medieval fable you are only deceiving yourself. Other than the names of the characters and the fact of the love triangle itself, there is not a strand of faithfulness to the original literary sources here. The traditional story has been almost entirely reinvented to construct a thoroughly modern romantic drama that will appeal to modern moviegoers.

The earliest stories of Tristan and Isolde are from medieval French romances and are set in Ireland, Cornwall, and Brittany in France. In a disconnected set of French romances from the late middle ages known collectively as the Vulgate Cycle, Tristan is absorbed by the Camelot and Grail myths and becomes the most popular of all the knights of King Arthur's Round Table. In Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, our most important source, Sir Tristram de Lyonesse is the son of Mark's sister, and travels to Tintagel in order to fight Marhalt to earn knighthood. They tilt in plain sight on an island, and although Tristan kills Marhalt, a poisoned wound forces him to seek out the Irish king, whose daughter is assigned to treat him. When it is finally revealed that he has killed their family member, Tristan leaves, and pledges himself as Isolde's noble knight forever. This isn't love, but only chivalry, and after a number of adventures with King Arthur's knights, Tristan convinces Mark to marry Isolde, and travels back to Ireland to escort her to Tintagel. Only then does the plot thicken.

Unwittingly, the two drink a love potion that is intended for Mark, and fall in unintended love. This makes their forbidden love a result of a random enchantment, and the rest of the story is about the chaos this wreaks in the natural order of things. Tristan and Mark's loyal friendship is gradually eroded, and they live out their lives as personal enemies, always scheming against one another. At the end of the stories, Isolde comes upon the dying Tristan and dies herself, either of heartbreak in his arms, or by suicide.

In Wagner's famous opera, Isolde is betrothed to Marhalt, whom Tristan subsequently kills. In his version, their love is spontaneous, and in the boat they agree that because of this betrayal they must seek atonement through suicide. Isolde's nurse replaces the poison with the love potion. They therefore reach Tintagel in an uncontrollable delirium that drives the story. Eventually, Tristan allows himself to be mortally wounded in a duel with Melot, who has accused him and Isolde.

The divergence between these traditions and the spirit of this movie couldn't be greater, unlike two of the most compelling,