Trevor-6

Ron Howard directs this admittedly incomplete biography of mathematician John Forbes Nash (Russell Crowe), from his years at Princeton, to his descent into madness and his recovery. Crowe does great work, though his fidgeting is difficult to watch at times, and Connelly, Bettany and Harris support him perfectly. Unlike most biographies, the movie doesn't come off as a series of vignettes from the subject's life, it's all tied together very nicely and cleanly. It's a fascinating story, no matter how much of it was left out, though it may not be Best Picture material, but then few movies are.

It's not really an improvement over George Pal's 1960 film, except for the vastly superior effects, but the 1978 made-for-TV version is practically an embarrassment next to this updated take on H.G. Wells' classic story. Directed by Wells' great-grandson Simon Wells, whose previous experience is solely non-Disney animation like Prince of Egypt, the story follows Professor Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) as he first travels back in time to try to save the life of his fiancée (Sienna Guillory), and then forward in time to find out why he failed. Most of the movie takes place some 800,000 years in the future, when humanity has been divided into two sects, the peace loving Eloi and the Morlocks, who hunt the Eloi for food. I found it a little hard to believe that so many New York City artifacts survived all those centuries (the Eloi use them to teach their children English), but I was willing to let it all slide because the movie was otherwise enjoyable. Don't listen to the critics, if you like science-fiction, you'll probably enjoy The Time Machine.

Yet another entry in the video game to movie sweepstakes. Last year's Tomb Raider movie made a lot of money, but critics weren't kind (not that that matters), and Resident Evil looks to be in the same boat. Milla Jovovich stars as a temporary amnesiac who's dragged into an underground laboratory to help shut down a maniacal super computer, along with her husband (Eric Mabius) and a cop who happened to be around when she was grabbed by a special military unit, which includes Michelle Rodriguez, who needs to find at least one role where she isn't constantly angry. Directed by guilty pleasure specialist Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon), Evil borrows a lot from other movies, which is probably a fault of the game and not the screenplay. You can see bits of last year's 13 Ghosts (killer building), as well as Frankenstein (man-made monster), Night of the Living Dead (zombies) and even Speed (there's a scene on an underground train where one person wants to go faster and another shouts that it would make them fly off the tracks, and I thought to myself that that's exactly what happened in the 1994 thriller), among others. Most of those comparisons can only be made after the movie's over, since the action rarely lets up. Originality has never been important to science fiction/horror/action movies, they all happily feed off of their elders, so I can't really hold that against this movie. It's good fun and would make a good double bill with Tomb Raider (perhaps Jovovich or Rodriguez could join Angelina Jolie for the inevitable sequel).