Mansfield Park
Directed by Patricia Rozema Starring Frances O'Connor, Jonny Lee Miller, Embeth Davidtz, Alessandro Nivola, Harold Pinter, Lindsay Duncan
Cinema's first Jane Austen adaptation directed by a woman, Mansfield Park is the fourth feature film from Patricia Rozema, the adventurous Canadian director of I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and White Room. Her radical yet felicitous treatment captures the author's independence of spirit and sly sense of humour in this story of repressed passion, class divisions and social hypocrisy. Frances O'Connor is wonderfully expressive as the impoverished Fanny Price who is taken in by her wealthy relatives, most of whom regard her as an inferior.
The Insider
Directed by Michael Mann Starring Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora, Philip Baker Hall
Nominated for seven Oscars including best picture, Michael Mann's factually based drama is a sleek, meticulously crafted production featuring Russell Crowe in a riveting performance as an American tobacco company executive who turns whistle-blower. The strong cast features Al Pacino as the producer of the current affairs show, 60 Minutes, with Christopher Plummer as the show's presenter, Mike Wallace. While the film captures a chilling atmosphere of paranoia and corruption, it unwisely shifts the emphasis from the message to the messenger as it settles into its third hour.
Love's Labour's Lost General
Directed by Kenneth Branagh Starring Kenneth Branagh, Alessandro Nivola, Alicia Silverstone, Natasha McElhone, Matthew Lillard, Nathan Lane, Richard Briers, Timothy Spall
Branagh's breezy, good-humoured adaptation of Shakespeare's light romantic comedy involves transposing it to a late 1930s setting and embellishing it with song and dance numbers composed by George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. Branagh himself looks altogether too old to be among the romantic young octet at its centre.