Film

James Cameron's trademark blend of grandiosity, jaw-dropping technology and cornball populism is back — and mightier than ever — in Avatar, a vertigo-inducing sci-fi epic that's as predictable and tin-eared as it is savvy and technically adept.

Critic John Powers has a theory: The best movies to give are seldom the recent hits. Instead, a good gift DVD should transport you into a different world that you can immerse yourself in over and over. Check out his favorites for this holiday season.

Tom Ford has put his creative sensibilities to work in the service of a Christopher Isherwood tale: A Single Man, which marks Ford's big-screen directorial debut.

Critic David Edelstein says the Lord of the Rings director has violated Alice Sebold's celebrated novel with an adaptation marked by tawdry sentimentality and cheap mysticism.

German tenor Max Lorenz had a voice that could move millions — though Lorenz will be most remembered as Hitler's (and Wagner's) favorite. A new documentary about The Life and Times of Max Lorenz, chronicles the conflict and triumph of his unlikely voice and paints an intimate portrait, according to critic Lloyd Schwartz.

Invictus director Clint Eastwood and star Morgan Freeman — who was Nelson Mandela's pick to portray him — talk about telling the story of one pivotal public gesture the former South African president made shortly after his election, hoping to make a big statement that would help ease decades of racial bitterness and injustice in his nation.

Tobey Maguire and Jake Gyllenhaal are Sam and Tommy Cahill, one an upright Army captain on his way back to Afghanistan, the other a delinquent, newly paroled after a three-year sentence for robbery. But the real center of Jim Sheridan's movie isn't the brothers, but their whole teetering clan, which will collapse and rebuild itself in complicated new ways.

The Oscar-nominated 1979 film My Brilliant Career stars Judy Davis, as a young woman growing up in rural Australia at the end of the 19th century. Film critic John Powers gives Davis credit for creating the template for the Australian screen actress: bravery, incandescence, and occasional cussedness.

Director Jason Reitman likes to fill his movies with tricky characters, and then put them in situations that test their convictions. His latest project, Up in the Air, is no exception: George Clooney's character has made a career of firing people.

After a lifetime of acting, the 84-year-old Hal Holbrook is still racking up new accomplishments. Last year, he received his first Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his performance in Into The Wild. This year, he stars in a new film, That Evening Sun.