NYT > Movies

• Murder Most Musical
  “Sweeney Todd” is as much a horror film as a musical. It is also something close to a masterpiece.
• Behind the Music, This Time for Laughs
  “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” has a good beat and you can dance to it, though mostly you’ll probably just tap your foot.
• Good-Time Charlie’s Foreign Affairs
  “Charlie Wilson’s War” may be more of a hoot than any picture dealing with the bloody, protracted fight between the Soviet Army and the Afghan mujahedeen has any right to be.
• Once More Diving Into the Vaults, and Surfacing With Cinematic Pearls
  It’s been a good DVD year for old-movie buffs with ambitious and interesting projects from a wide range of distributors.
• P.P.S. Take Tissues to This Weepy About a Romance Tested by Death
  “P.S. I Love You” looks squeaky clean and utterly straight. Yet as directed by Richard LaGravenese, it has a curious morbid quality.
• Talk About Slippery Slopes
  “Steep” is an undeniably impressive visual spectacle that follows the sport of extreme skiing.
• Racing Around the Globe, Solving a History Mystery
  The hyperactive sequel “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” sends its archaeologist hero on a globetrotting quest that might have been devised after a long night of Wikipedia surfing.
• Movie Guide and Film Series
  MOVIES.
• Time on Your Hands? Curl Up With a Series
  It is not merely the season for giving but also of distraction and avoidance. It is, in other words, the time to hide out with the best of long-form narrative television.
• A Goofy Scheme to Get the Girl
  The Hungarian cartoon feature “The District!” is a last-minute shoo-in for the title of 2007’s most original animated film.
• Cereal as a Metaphor for Capitalism
  A business course on cutthroat capitalism disguised as a slacker comedy: That’s the kindest way to describe Michael Lehmann’s “Flakes.”
• From Memories, There’s No Escape
  In both novel and film form, “The Kite Runner” recounts a simple yet shrewd story about that favorite American pastime: self-improvement.
• Man About Town, and Very Alone
  In spite of its third-act collapse into obviousness and sentimentality, “I Am Legend” is among Will Smith’s better movies.
• The Folks You Meet on the Border Between Consciousness and Dreams
  “Youth Without Youth” is a narratively ambitious, visually sumptuous surrealist enterprise that tries to bend time and space together as neatly as the folds in an origami swan.
• Out of Warhol’s Inner Circle Into the Void
  “A Walk Into the Sea” is Esther B. Robinson’s documentary about Danny Williams, a former Harvard student who was a part of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene.
• Familiar Faces With a Digital Makeover
  Hollywood continues its tired milking of old television properties with “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” a slick updating of the musical-cartoon franchise.
• Harsh Realities and Mystical Power
  For his poetic fourth feature, “Half Moon,” Bahman Ghobadi returns to the desolation of the Kurdish borderlands and the enduring optimism of his people.
• Golden Globes and Oscars Are Drawn Into Strike
  The guild will not allow the Golden Globe show to use its writers, and is denying historical film clips to the Oscars.
• Master of ‘Rings’ to Tackle ‘Hobbit’
  A settlement announced on Tuesday between Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema could bring “The Hobbit” to movie theaters by December 2010.
• Disney Wonders if a Mermaid Can Follow a Trail Blazed by a Lion
  While “The Lion King” on Broadway took everyone by surprise, “The Little Mermaid” comes with one question: Can Disney ever do that again?
• Cinephiles, Pack Your Bags. An Uncut Version Awaits.
  The phenomenon of so many people visiting Hong Kong to see uncensored films has highlighted changing attitudes toward government censorship of the arts in China.
• New DVDs
  New this week is a Criterion version of “Two-Lane Blacktop,” the rarely seen “Chameleon Street” and a 90th Anniversary United Artists boxed set.
• Met Has New Rival in Operas at Movies
  The San Francisco Opera on Tuesday announced its own plan to transmit operas to movie theaters using a system it says is superior to that of the Metropolitan Opera.
• Evidence in Hollywood Wiretapping Case Is Questioned
  Lawyers for defendants in the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping case argued that evidence seized from the Hollywood private detective’s offices had been improperly obtained.
• A Warning From Behind the Curtain
  Media consumers have been watching the writers’ strike from the sidelines, but they might take notice if the awards season is replaced by marches and pickets.
• Sex! Drugs! (And Maybe a Little War)
  Mike Nichols, Aaron Sorkin and Tom Hanks find dark humor in a congressman’s foreign adventure.
• Vexing Questions of Jewish Identity
  Jamie Kastner calls his documentary “Kike Like Me” a “black comic road movie about identity.”
• ‘I Am Legend’ Has a Healthy Start
  “I Am Legend” hauled in an estimated $76.5 million in its debut to capture first place in the weekend box-office rankings compiled by the tracking company Media by Numbers.
• Sondheim Disme