Film

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Thirteen, starring Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood.

Helen Stickler's new documentary, Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, tells the story of former skateboarding star Mark "Gator" Rogowski. Rogowski is now serving 31 years in prison for the rape and murder of a former girlfriend. Ken Park, a former skateboarder and friend of Rogowski, is interviewed in the film. Park is now the president and CEO of John Galt Media. Stickler is an Emmy-nominated writer, producer and director of documentary films and commercials.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new film American Splendor.

Her new film is Whale Rider, a re-telling of Maori legend in which a young girl challenges 1,000 years of tradition to fulfill her destiny — and win her grandfather's respect. The Maoris are the native people of New Zealand. Whale Rider won the Audience awards at the Sundance, Toronto and Rotterdam Film Festivals. Caro's previous film was Memory and Desire.

His new feature film, The Magdalene Sisters, is based on the real-life laundries run by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order in Ireland near the end of the 19th century. Girls considered wayward or unruly were sent there as punishment for their sins and forced to do labor under sweat-shop conditions. The last of the laundries was shut down in 1996. Mullan's film follows the lives of four young women and takes place from 1964 to 1969. Before writing and directing, Mullan was best known for his acting and starred in The Big Man, Riff-Raff, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews The Secret Lives of Dentists.

Most recently Hope Davis played the daughter of Jack Nicholson in the movie About Schmidt. Her other roles include Mumford, Next Stop Wonderland, Flatliners and Daytrippers. Davis is starring in the new film American Splendor, which took the 2003 Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize. She is also starring in The Secret Lives of Dentists.

Eitan Gorlin's latest film, The Holy Land, won the Grand Jury Best Feature Film prize at the 2002 Slamdance Film Festival. It's a love story, loosely based on his novella Mike's Place, A Jerusalem Diary, and his experiences as a bartender at Mike's Place, a popular bar on the Tel Aviv waterfront where Jews, Muslims, internationals, atheists and devouts congregate. Since the making of the film, Mike's Place was the site of a suicide bombing.

Filmmakers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini are the team behind American Splendor, which is a hybrid of fiction and documentary. Their previous documentaries are Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's and The Young and the Dead.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews The Magdalene Sisters by Scottish writer/director Peter Mullan. It's based on Ireland's actual Magdalene Asylums where Catholic girls accused of "moral crimes" (anything from getting pregnant, to being too attractive, to accusing a man of rape) were sent to work in laundries to atone for their sins. These virtual prisons finally closed their doors in 1996.