Best picture picks offer variety

From Staff Reports

Haven't seen the movies up for best picture? Here's your chance to get familiar with them before the big show on Sunday.

• "American Beauty." Starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening.

"American Beauty" is a gloomy comedy that examines the fascist roots of the ideal suburbanized family. It delves into a paradise that’s all too familiar – a synthetic urban sprawl where an ordinary nuclear family lives, but has difficulty breathing. Lester and Carolyn Burnham were once a happily married husband and wife, but lately, their love has mutated into hostility – a confining, material lifestyle has brought out the worst in them. Kevin Spacey, in his best performance, solemnly grins at his character’s acute, pathetic midlife despair; he’s trapped in a dead-end job, a lousy marriage and a home without feelings. "American Beauty" is a prophetic Pandora’s box – a stinging, saddening gospel of the future of the American family. The mystery lurking behind Lester’s death doesn’t hide behind the obvious, but consists of it. The Xeroxed two–story home and the flower–lined picket fence are the kind of happiness that is only skin–deep, and the film blisters through such shallow dreams.

• "The Cider House Rules." Starring Michael Caine, Tobey McGuire, Charlize Theron and Paul Rudd.Caine plays Dr. Wilbur Larch, a physician in charge of caring for the residents of St. Cloud's orphanage and uttering those bedtime words. Homer Wells (Maguire), his surrogate son and apprentice obstetrician, suddenly decides to leave the orphanage, hitching a ride with a couple who came to St. Cloud's for an abortion, played by Charlize Theron and Paul Rudd.

Homer gets a job on Wally's (Rudd) mother's apple farm as a day laborer and eventually earns respect from the others who sleep in the Cider House. Wally, a fighter pilot, goes back to the war, and Candy (Theron) eventually shacks up with Homer while he is away. Meanwhile, Dr. Larch is finding out the difficulty of having spent too long as "the caretaker of many, father to none." As he plagues Homer in repeated attempts to manipulate him back to the orphanage, his own place at St. Cloud's is threatened.

• "The Green Mile." Starring Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan and David Morse.

"The Green Mile" is quite similar to "The Shawshank Redemption," another movie adapted from a book by author Stephen King. The movie is set in the 1930s, during the Depression, around a set of death row prison guards. When a black man is brought to await his death after being convicted of the rape and murder of two young girls, the guards find that the man is strangely gentle for a murderer. The inmate, played by Duncan, also possess a surreal healing power that allows him to help others – including himself.

• "The Sixth Sense." Starring Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette.

Drama, horror and suspense combine in to one action-packed thriller in "The Sixth Sense." The movie leaves the viewer feeling sympathetic for eight-year-old Cole Sear (Osment) who has a special, yet chilling, talent: He can see and communicate with dead people. Cole is afraid to tell anyone about this, though, because he fears they either will not believe him or they will make fun of him. He keeps the secret from everyone, even his mother, Lynn Sear (Collete), who does not understand why her son acts so strangely all the time.

Eventually though, Cole does open up to Dr. Malcome Crowe (Willis), a psychiatrist that helps him try to deal with the problem. Together the two work through why Cole sees dead people – usually because they died with unfinished business and want Cole to help them finish it so they can rest in peace. Cole and Malcome also figure out how Cole can help them and how he can stop living in fear and be as normal as possible.

The ending is somewhat surprising, mainly because you do not want to believe it's true. If you pay close attention throughout the entire movie you can probably guess the main surprise, but even if you do, it's still shocking to see how it plays out with the plot and characters.

• "The Insider." Starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino.

In a year of movies stark with controversy, it's surprising nobody saw "The Insider," a tense, dark thriller from director Michael Mann, back in November. The reason why many people may have avoided it was that they were afraid it was going to tell them to stop smoking. But that's not the film's message at all. The film blares with intensity as a docudrama about broadcast journalism, and the corporate cutthroats willing to prevent damaging, yet detrimental stories from reaching the public.

Russell Crowe, in a sharp, brilliant performance, stars as tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, a recently fired tobacco employee who knows his firm increased the nicotine in their cigarettes to make them more addictive. Because of what he knows, he's dogged into an interview with "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman, played by a subdued Al Pacino, and "60 Minutes" journalist Mike Wallace, played with legitimate edge by Christopher Plummer. The film, from spark to aftermath, ignites into an emotionally trenchant drama about the ethics of modern journalism.

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