Speaking of your parents, were they alive, how do you think they’d feel? Proud? Or concerned that your attitude shows, at best, a pathological need for attention, at worst, psychotic death wish.

The Harry Potter films have been, on the whole, getting progressively better with each installment. The first step was ditching the more commercially-minded American director Chris Columbus in favor of two filmmakers whose work you would not normally associate with these fantastic elements. For this fourth chapter, they chose British director Mike Newell, probably best known for the violent mob drama Donnie Brasco.

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Remember the famous Russian proverb: “The hungrier you get, the tastier the meal.” On the other hand, the French have a proverb: merde!

As the least well-known of Mel Brooks’s early films, The Twelve Chairs stands well apart from the others. It’s not a spoof of other films nor is it a balls-to-the-wall farce like The Producers. While it has its slapstick elements, it also has a kind of sweetness and elements of character drama not normally found in Brooks’s filmography.

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It’s good to be the king.

Apparently, Mel Brooks had run out of movie genres that warranted spoofing in their own movie, so he threw together this occasionally successful hodge-podge of historical epics. This movie probably would have worked better if Brooks had found a few more historical periods to include.

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Might I suggest you refrain from playing any tunes that remind them, the inmates that is, that they are in prison?

You think they forgot?

During the last Oscar ceremony, Jon Stewart cheekily referred to Walk the Line as “Ray with white people.” Like all successful humor, the joke has an element of truth to it. There are significant parallels between the two films and the lives of the men at the center of their stories.

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The future of cold is infinite. The future of heat is the future of cold. The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September…

John Madden’s adaptation of David Auburn’s stage play examines the situation of a young woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) living under two long shadows cast by her recently deceased father (Anthony Hopkins). Robert, the father, was a unparalleled math genius and Catherine, the daughter seems paralyzed by the pressure to follow in his footsteps. Robert was also crippled by severe schizophrenia that virtually ended his teaching career and Catherine fears the genetic legacy of her father’s mental illness.

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