Film

Film critic Stephen Schiff reviews the new comedy "Defending Your Life," starring director Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep as a recently deceased couple who fall in love while living in a squeaky-clean purgatory.

Peebles is the son of the legendary director Melvin Van Peebles. His film New Jack City is set in Harlem, and features a grim, gritty, and violent world of crack dealers and users.

Film critic Owen Gleiberman reviews "Class Action," the new courtroom drama starring Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as father-daughter lawyers on opposite sides of a high-profile lawsuit.

Film critic Stephen Schiff calls the new biopic wrongheaded; Stone's version of the sixties, Schiff says, is both trite and incoherent.

In the new thriller, Hopkins plays Doctor Hannibal Lecter, a brillant psychiatrist turned sociopath killer, who also holds the key to the identity of another crazed killer. He tells Terry how he developed the character, including his distinctive voice. Earlier in his career, Hopkins was a stage actor.

Stoppard wrote the award-winning plays "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," "The Real Inspector Hound," and "The Real Thing;" and the screenplays for "Empire of the Sun," "Brazil," and "The Russia House." He's just made his debut as a film director in the movie adaptation of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead." During his early life, he lived in India and Singapore.

Stephen Schiff reviews the new film starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins. He says that, despite its macabre premise, the movie is oddly comforting and fairy-tale like.

Coltrane played Bob Hoskin's friend in "Mona Lisa," Falstaff in Kenneth Branagh's "Henry the Fifth," and Eric Idle's partner in crime in "Nuns on the Run." He stars in the new comedy, "Perfectly Normal."

In honor of Saint Valentine's Day, film critic Owen Gleiberman reviews the 1946 romance, "Humoresque," with Joan Crawford and John Garfield. He says no recent romance films capture Hollywood's early edginess.

Film critic Owen Gleiberman reviews the new comedy, written by and starring Steve Martin. He says that, unlike Woody Allen's Annie Hall, this movie both celebrates and revels in the town's absurdities.