The Iceman

Dating Edward Scissorhands undoubtedly helped Winona Ryder prepare for marriage to Michael Shannon in "The Iceman," a new film about the contract killer Richard Kuklinski, responsible for more than 100 hits before his arrest in 1986.

The Central Park Five, Killing Them Softly

The Central Park Five

Killing Them Softly

Ken Burns co-directed the documentary "The Central Park Five" with his daughter, Sarah, who had clerked at a law firm representing the five black boys wrongly convicted in 1989 of the rape and attempted murder of the Central Park Jogger, Trisha Mieli. Burns interviews the five men (four via video, one only on
audiotape), now free and in their late thirties, and their candor and strength of character are the film's greatest assets. Its weaknesses are overlength married with a lack of detail and specificity (it doesn't seem to understand exactly who was doing what where in the park that night any better than the trial jurors). What could have been a study in poor procedure à la Errol Morris' "The Thin Blue Line" remains vague and blurry. And the issues raised by the boys' confessions under duress were examined more rigorously and powerfully by a documentary from earlier this year entitled "Scenes of a Crime."