Movies starring Cate Blanchett

Historical epics are often met with mixed reactions from the masses. For every singular triumph like 300, there are many more disappointments. So it should be no surprise that producers, eager to fill cold seats with warm bodies, have returned to...

The Gift is an example of how superior craftsmanship can transform a ho-hum genre entry into a sporadically gripping thriller. On the surface, there's nothing special about this movie - it's a run-of-the-mill supernatural murder mystery with all o...

The Good German, Steven Soderbergh's film noir homage, is nearly perfect when it comes to style and tone, but it concentrates so single-mindedly on the mechanics of the narrative that it loses sight of its characters. The movie meticulously steps ...

The mention of Pinocchio generally stirs up memories of the 1940 Disney animated feature, which (at the time) was the greatly anticipated follow-up to 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Today, Disney’s Pinocchio is regarded as one of the...

Dark, visceral, and brimming with suspense, Hanna is not the follow-up to Pride & Prejudice and Atonement one might expect from director Joe Wright. Nevertheless, here it is: an intriguing, original thriller that owes as much of a debt to the like...

Heaven represents the fusion of stoic contemplation with kinetic mysticism – German filmmaker Tom Tykwer's adaptation of the final screenplay by the great Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski (who wrote it with longtime partner, Krzysztof P...

In 2001, only a few months after the fall of the World Trade Center, Peter Jackson swept us away to Middle Earth with The Fellowship of the Ring. It was a wondrous three-hour achievement: the first major attempt at serious, big budget epic fantasy....

In 2005, genre fans were able to celebrate the day when the entire six-film Star Wars saga was available for public consumption. Nine and one-half years later, the same can be said of Peter Jackson's Middle Earth epic. As George Lucas learned, th...

The awkwardly-titled The House with a Clock in Its Walls is a classic example of a film that works better for children than adults. Seemingly made with the under-10 crowd in mind, the screenplay (credited to Eric Kripke, adapting the book by J...

It's an axiom of the filmmaking industry that any time an animated movie shows a profit, it instantly becomes the foundation for a franchise. Unfortunately, when money drives creative decisions, it's like the cart pulling the horse. Take away the f...