The Best Offer

Giuseppe Tornatore, who wrote and directed the affectionate tribute to moviegoing “Cinema Paradiso” in 1990 and also made my top-ten list with “Malena” in 2000, returns with a film I enjoyed thoroughly and admire more the more I think of it.

The Book Thief

"The Book Thief," based on Markus Zusak's bestseller, takes us to Germany before and during WWII, where Rosa (Emily Watson) and Hans (Geoffrey Rush) await their two new foster children.

The Eye of the Storm

Who’d have thunk it? A film uniting Charlotte Rampling, Judy Davis, and Geoffrey Rush would be one of the most boring, depressing and suffocating of the year. Rampling stars as Elizabeth Hunter, a senescent Australian matriarch who feels it’s unbecoming for a lady to die before she chooses. That’s bad news for her two money-grubbing children, Basil (Rush), a once-knighted thespian whose King Lear has made him the laughingstock of London, and neurotic, unhappily divorced Dorothy (Davis), who married a prince and only got to keep her title. They’ve come to Sydney to pack Mummy off to an old-age home, but she seems to relish their frustration. She’s not going anywhere.