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2006 was a good year for Denzel Washington on the big screen, because he starred in two high-grossing, high-quality thrillers: "Deja Vu" and "Inside Man." Just as "Deja Vu" was "Vertigo" as a time-traveling action movie, "Inside Man" was director Spike Lee's 21st century update on Sidney Lumet's "Dog Day Afternoon."

Written by Richard Gerwitz, "Inside Man" follows a hostage situation during a robbery at a Manhattan bank. Washington plays NYPD hostage negotiator Detective Keith Frazier, squaring off against the robbers' leader, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen). The story didn't begin with Lee (Ron Howard was in talks to direct "Inside Man" first), but he made it his own. "Inside Man" is definitely more of a crowd pleaser than something like "Do The Right Thing," as seen by it also being Lee's highest-grossing film to date, but it's absolutely a Spike Lee joint.

Lee's range as a director comes in...

In a remarkable career spanning over 60 years, Kurt Russell has just about done it all. He's been a Disney child star, an action hero, a serious dramatic actor, an unabashedly silly comedic lead, and Elvis Presley. Though Russell was never a box office titan on par with contemporaries like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis, he is worshipped as a god by genre fandom for having played such iconic s***kickers as Snake Plissken in "Escape from New York," R.J. MacReady in "The Thing" and Jack Burton in "Big Trouble in Little China." Those last two were flops theatrically, but they've gone from being cult favorites to bona-fide mainstream classics. As a result, Russell, at the age of 73, might be more beloved now than he's ever been.

For Russell fanatics, there's a lively discussion to be had over what his best performance outside of that aforementioned holy trinity of John Carpenter movies might be.

The 1970s was the Golden Age of the “Movie of the Week” with the three networks –ABC, CBS and NBC — not only offering theatrical flicks several days a week, but also made-for-tv movies. These ran the gamut from the silly — 1973’s “The Horror at 37,000 Feet” — to such acclaimed award-winning fare as 1970’s “Tribes,” 1971’s “Brian’s Song” and “Duel,” 1972’s “That Certain Summer” and “The Glass House,” 1974’s “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and 1975’s “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom” and “Love Among the Ruins.”

I have especially warm memories of ABC’s “Love Among the Ruins,” which marked the only film pairing of Oscar-winning legends Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier. I was a junior in college when it originally aired and I recall an Sro crowd at the Brooks Hall TV lounge at Allegheny College in Meadville (Sharon Stone’s hometown) Pa to watch the exquisite romantic comedy.

Joe Wright's "Anna Karenina" (November 16) looks to be a highly original take on the Leo Tolstoy classic, but it's certainly not the first time (or even the 10th) that the Russian romance has been adapted for the big screen. Below, a compare-and-contrast of six film versions. "Anna Karenina," 1935: Greta Garbo stars in the title role, with Fredric March as Vronsky. Clarence Brown ("National Velvet" and another Garbo vehicle, "Anna Christie") directs. This was Garbo's second outing as Anna K., with her first go-around in 1927's "Love" (see below). The film's budget is estimated at just north of $1 million, with the domestic take at $865K. The film is 100% Fresh, and Emmanuel Levy writes: "In her 23rd film, Garbo's luminous performance, as the adulterous protag of Tolstoy's novel, is way above the mediocre level of the narrative and direction; the film is a remake of 'Love,' in which.

The warning signs for Battle: Los Angeles were there for us when Sony made the unprecedented decision to not screen the movie for U.K. blogs in an attempt to avoid the critics mauling they must have known was coming. A heavy U.S. embargo has just been lifted on the movie (notice – just hours before it opens tomorrow) and the backlash against Battle: La is thunderous and defeaning.

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert has given the movie half a star (!);

“Battle: Los Angeles” is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. Its manufacture is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of its makers, who don’t even try to make it more than senseless chaos. Here’s a science-fiction film that’s an insult to the words “science” and “fiction,” and the hyphen in between them. You want to cut it up to clean under your fingernails.

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