Tina Brown

As Secretary of State during the Clinton administration, Secretary Albright directed US policy in the Bosnian War. Ms. Jolie recently made her directorial debut with a film about the Bosnian War, In the Land of Blood and Honey.

Later, a panel about machismo in Central America between Sylvia Gereda, a Guatamalan journalist and Rosi Orozco will be hosted by actor Gael Garcia Bernal.

Green Party presidential hopeful Rosanne Barr will speak about television and cultural norms. In our opinion, she needs no moderation.

Star Trek

What’s the story: As the ads proclaim, “This is not your father’s Star Trek!” Though, to be honest, that’s probably just another way of saying, “You don’t need to wear a Klingon costume to see this movie!” J. J. Abrams’ long-awaited reboot of the iconic franchise goes all origin to find out how Captain Kirk (Matt Damon look-alike Chris Pine) became Captain Kirk, but apparently manages to keep things mainstream enough to appeal to Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike. Expect lens flares, space battles and Leonard Nimoy. For The Observer’s take, read Sara Vilkomerson’s rave here.

Who should see it: William Shatner.

Next Day Air

What’s the story: Hello, counterprogramming! Mos Def and Donald Faison star as a pair of deliverymen who mistakenly give a package of cocaine to the wrong guy. Needless to say, differences ensue. Think of this as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels meets Friday, but without either film’s charms

Who should see it: Ice Cube and Chris Tucker.

Rudo y Cursi

What’s the story: Real-life best friends Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna reunite onscreen for the first time since Y Tu Mamá También in Rudo y Cursi, a film about two brothers from a small Mexican farming village who rocket to stardom as soccer icons. (In keeping with the reunion vibe: Y Tu Mamá co-writer Carlos Cuarón directs and his brother, Alfonso, produces.) The trailer makes Rudo y Cursi seem like a Will Ferrell–John C. Reilly vehicle, but considering you’ll probably be lost in the dreamy eyes of Messrs. Bernal and Luna for two hours, quality of narrative won’t really matter.

Who should see it: Pelé.

In Blindness, a noxious, stomach-churning and deadly pretentious freak show by Fernando Meirelles, the talented Brazilian director of City of God and The Constant Gardener, the citizens of a big city are stricken by a plague that renders them sightless. A Japanese man goes blind in traffic. The same fate befalls the man who steals his car, as well as the eye doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who attends them both. Suddenly it’s happening all over town, as victims are quarantined in the cages of an abandoned mental institution. The doctor’s wife (Julianne Moore, who is lately working above and beyond the call of duty in one bad movie after another) pretends she’s blind, too, so she can bravely accompany her husband to the isolation ward. While the government and the scientists debate funding, cures and research, the populace is left to its own insanity and filth. In the darkness, panic ensues. Infected victims are preyed upon by other inmates, abused by the guards and forced to sleep in their own excrement. Gael García Bernal plays a bartender who takes over the food supply and declares himself king of the blind, raping the women in exchange for bread and water. As a microcosm of civilized society reduced to primitive lawlessness, they discover sex, violence, greed, hunger and murder, sacrificing their sense of pride, morality, dignity and self-respect. After the horror of the cages, the real hell awaits in the sunlight outside, as the grimy, ravaged and courageous Ms. Moore leads the survivors to file through empty railroad cars filled with decaying corpses, through streets of starving people fighting off packs of wild dogs feasting on human flesh. The extremes are so barbaric few audiences will sit through them, and despite the allegorical intentions, the apocalyptic literary views in the José Saramago novel upon which it is based fail to translate coherently to the screen. Finally, they see, but then the milky white film covers their eyes once more. Are they all going blind again? What does it all mean? Nothing about Blindness ever makes any real sense; you go away feeling lousy, and it is hateful to look at. I have never seen floors filled with the contents of waste from overflowing toilets (to put it politely) photographed with so much misguided artsy-craftsiness. Worst of all, the torture slugs along for more than two hours. It’s hard to believe the film’s Canadian screenwriter and co-star, Don McKellar, is the same man who won the 2006 Tony award for writing the delicious Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone. And it’s getting tiresome watching the glorious Julianne Moore waste her talents playing so many resilient, clueless sufferers. This is one movie where sightlessness might be a blessing.

rreed@observer.com

Variety reports:

Mr. Almodóvar's celebrated career has always been defined by an inescapable adolescence. This autobiographical movie, while totally original and unlike anything you've ever seen, indulges all of Mr. Almodóvar's favorite obsessions: homoeroticism, crime, music, kinky sex, religious hypocrisy and the folklore of motion pictures. Enrique and Ignacio, two schoolboy friends-and first loves-are sexually abused by a Catholic priest who profoundly affects (and infects) their lives. Sixteen years later, in the 1980's, Enrique (Fele Martinez), now a gay film director in Madrid, receives a surprise visit from Ignacio (Mr. Bernal), now an actor looking for a job in his next movie. Ignacio, who sometimes calls himself Angel, has written a short story about their school days, and as the director reads it in bed, we see it acted out.

The story, which hopscotches from one time frame to the next, is about the experiences the two men suffered together in the 60's and the jealous love of the priest that separated them. Ignacio invents a fictional reunion in the 70's, in which one boy is a suburban family man and the other is a drug-addicted transvestite named Zahara who poses as Ignacio's sister and demands that the priest who abused Ignacio cough up the money for a sex change or face exposure as a pedophile. Enrique loves the story-part memory, part fantasy-and wants to buy it for his next film. But the handsome, clean-cut Ignacio insists on playing the drag queen, who may also be Angel. Is Ignacio really Angel, or just an actor who wants a great career-defining role? Soon the characters in the story end up as actors in the film and multiple stories intertwine, with Mr. Bernal playing multiple roles, including Ignacio; his gay younger brother Juan, a ruthless hustler whom the priest falls for; and the ill-fated drag queen Zahara. To further complicate things, different versions of the story are told from varying points of view, like Rashômon. Murder, religious hysteria and all manner of sexual variations ignite in a labyrinthine, impossible-to-describe combination of Fellini, pornography and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Prepare to be devastated.

Bad Education is a breathless and brilliant departure from Mr. Almodóvar's usual farces and emotionally crippling melodramas, but diehard fans will not be disappointed. His signature themes of artifice and reality, sex and death may be served colder than usual, but the film is hotter than a blast furnace. It's the work of a true artist, a cinematic artichoke-peel it and find a new revelation in every layer. The movie explodes with the passion of a dedicated cinephile who runs old Hollywood musicals and murder mysteries in his head, but Mr. Almodóvar also captures Spain's massive political and social changes through subtle details-Fascist posters, penises and crucifixes-reminding the audience that the director's own rise to importance as an icon is irrevocably linked to the artistic and sexual liberation of post-Franco Spain. The lavish, color-saturated cinematography and the rich, pulsating music drive the film to a level of volcanic exhilaration that is practically orgasmic. Mr. Almodóvar's fantastic and unconventional film-and Mr. Bernal's astonishing passion, tenderness, vulnerability and magnetic velocity in it-are blazing headlights in an often bleak and blurry year.

Coal for Noel

At the movies, seasonal solutions for the holiday blues are in short supply this year. From the numbing Polar Express to the moronic National Treasure, Santa is delivering thistles instead of sugarplums. To the irritating stocking-stuffers already glutting the Yule market, you can add a few more lumps of coal: Noel, directed by actor Chazz Palminteri, is one of those unpleasant fiascoes meant to lodge a lump in the throat at Christmas, but it only ends up making you want to bludgeon the elves with their own toy-shop hammers. In this fermented plum pudding, a disparate group of neurotic New Yorkers narrowly survive despair with the aid of a twinkling bum who turns out to be either a defrocked priest or the angel from It's A Wonderful Life-boringly played by Robin Williams, who can barely stifle a yawn, in a cameo that remains unbilled for obvious reasons. He's supposed to be a secret, but what the hell. He's about as spiritual as Groucho Marx, and looks miserable about it.

Sure, Christmas Eve in the big city can be lonely and daunting. Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a mob of last-minute shoppers fighting over a Pottery Barn corkscrew or the last pair of calf-length cashmere socks at Barneys? Everything is picked over, and everybody except you seems to have somewhere to go and only 30 minutes to get there. Somehow, despite all resolutions to the contrary, I almost always get mangled in this morass of half-hearted Night Before Christmas ho-ho-hokum, drowning in insincerity, freezing in the snow, unable to find a cab and wishing I were dead.

A lot of New Yorkers are in the same boat, but rarely are they all as depressing and borderline schizophrenic as the sad sacks in Noel. Among the isolated individuals stuck in orbits far outside of the usual holiday cheer, we are asked to believe luscious, resourceful and vibrant Susan Sarandon as Rose, an emotionally fragile children's-book editor unable to get a date, wary and distrustful of the men who ask her out, and trapped in a drab life as a sole caregiver for an ailing mother who is in the last stages of Alzheimer's. In another part of town, a hunky police officer from central casting named Mike (Paul Walker) comes home to find his hot Latin fiancée Nina (Penélope Cruz) decorating the Christmas tree with a gay friend. Mike's unwarranted jealousy explodes, he goes berserk and smashes the apartment, and Nina moves out just a few nights before their wedding. Elsewhere, a homeless street hustler named Jules (Marcus Thomas) tries to recapture a childhood Christmas he spent abandoned in a hospital and hires a professional thug to break the bones in his hand so he can end up in the emergency room of the same hospital where Rose's mother lies catatonic. The despondent Rose ends up in a bleak saloon full of cynical partygoers, where she wins a "Why I Hate Christmas" contest and then stares at the television above the bar; the TV offers Christmas advice on how to gorge on all the fruitcake you want and then go on a crash diet through New Year's without a stomach pump. Meanwhile, the hunky cop has a disturbing run-in with Artie (Alan Arkin), an old delicatessen waiter who falls madly in love with him, believing Mike is the reincarnation of Artie's dead wife.

Enough torture. They all end up in the same hospital, with Robin Williams, as the ex-priest who left the church after 20 years because he lost his faith, counseling them all on how to get through Christmas without singing 83 choruses of "Silent Night." The movie's biggest problem is that it has no clear focus on what it wants to say. On one hand, it convinces its hapless characters they are part of a force beyond control that is playing chess with their fates. On the other hand, it suggests that in the midst of chaos, everything happens for a reason. Would you believe a script, by David Hubbard, in which these suicidal saps all find a happy Hollywood ending by Christmas morning? They still have no place to go, but they all have "something to live for." Noel is supposed to be a feel-good movie guaranteed to melt a bucket of ice. Ice is just what I needed-for the massive headache it gave me. This is the kind of Christmas turkey that makes you long for Halloween.

Bridget's Bust

In Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Renée Zellweger again balloons from a size-six dress to a size 14 to play the chubby, accident-prone, chain-smoking, calorie-counting, sex-craving cow from the 2001 film Bridget Jones's Diary. It's a sequel that should have been buried six feet under. The action takes place six weeks after the first movie ended-or, in Bridget's vernacular, "71 glorious shags later." Now living with dashing human-rights lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and rising to the top of her career as a television journalist despite her sagging hips and bulging bosom, she still has a talent for making a fool of herself for love, jamming her size-nine foot in her mouth at all the wrong moments. The serpent rises again in Eden in the form of dashing, lying, arrogant and exasperatingly self-adoring former boyfriend Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), who is assigned to share the camera with this klutzy, whoopee-cushion-shaped Blondie in an improbable TV travel show from which the movie milks all of its laughs to stay alive. In the Alps, Bridget skis down the slopes in the wrong direction. In a skydiving maneuver that backfires, she parachutes from the sky into a pig pen of manure in a jumpsuit the color of an orange Dreamsicle. In Thailand, she gets stoned on magic mushrooms, is wrongfully arrested for drug smuggling, and is thrown into a Thai prison where, instead of slashing her wrists, she cheerfully teaches her cellmates how to perform Madonna's "Like a Virgin." Obviously these people never saw Midnight Express, Return to Paradise or Brokedown Palace. After winning an Oscar, this is a demeaning experience for Ms. Zellweger, made doubly depressing by an ugly wardrobe in which no self-respecting trailer trash would be caught dead. There doesn't seem to be any need for this sequel. Puerile and stupid, it has no flashes of wit; it reveals nothing insightful or interesting about the characters. They just seem oversexed and obnoxious. I'm through with Bridget Jones. She ran out of charm faster than diet pills.

'Anyone Who Loves … '

Ten years ago, a terrific singer named Sara Zahn was one of the brightest and most promising young song stylists in the cabaret galaxy. She headlined at Michael's Pub, the Russian Tea Room and Rainbow and Stars, and won critical raves for a CD of Carolyn Leigh lyrics that is still a dog-eared favorite on my music shelf. Then the great rooms closed, music took a dive, and Ms. Zahn took a sabbatical, attending to the normal stuff of life: marriage, kids, house in Jersey, divorce, second husband-you get the drift. Excelsior! Sara Zahn is back, at a swell little club in Chelsea called Helen's (212-206-0609), with a new act called, appropriately, "Bouncing Back for More!" Glittering in an amber gel every weekend in November, Ms. Zahn is a cause for jubilation. The central focus is still a thrilling chunk of songs by Carolyn Leigh and her world-renowned collaborators, Cy Coleman, Lee Pockriss, Morton Gould and Jule Styne, but there are dazzlers by Leonard Bernstein, too. With a voice that rings clearer than a silver knife on Baccarat crystal, Ms. Zahn illuminates the subtext of "Killing Time," the last great song Ms. Leigh wrote before she died in 1983, at age 57. And she stops the heart with a rarely performed Charles Strouse–Alan Jay Lerner masterpiece called "Anyone Who Loves," about topics more relevant now (gay marriage and war) than they were when they were written 22 years ago. Get these lyrics and tell me I'm wrong:

Anyone who loves people anywhere ….

Anyone who loves, they deserve

a prayer.

We're only living by the hour,

While the sages with the power

Play their games of peace and war

With no shred of pity for …

Anyone who lives …

Anyone who loves.

We've only got a handful of intelligent, sophisticated lovers of superior American art songs left, and they often stay home in bed. Sara Zahn is one of the rare and eloquent ones, elegantly gowned with a smile in her voice, who picks her material like prize peonies for a perfect, camera-ready vase. I don't care where she's been; I just hope she hangs around for years to come.

The second installment is darker and more schematic than the first, and in the opinion of this aging Muggle, not as much fun. With characters and setting already established, director Chris Columbus and writer Steven Kloves cut through the exposition and hurl you right into the narrative. As Harry (saucer-eyed Daniel Radcliffe) returns to his second year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, something evil is slithering through the rusty old drain pipes, turning the students into petrified statues of stone and threatening to close the place down. But first there's some funny business about the ghastly summer Harry has just spent with his horrible relatives, the Dursleys, who have nailed his windows shut. Harry is rescued by his redheaded pal Ron (Rupert Grint), but they can't get through the magic gate at London station, so they miss the Hogwarts express train and are forced to travel back to school in a flying Ford Anglia. Incurring the wrath of sourpuss potions professor Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) when their car crashes into the academy's centuries-old Whomping Willow tree, the young wizards are saved from expulsion once again by kindly old headmaster Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris, in his final role). The film settles down to business as usual at Gryffindor dorm, where eccentric witch Minerva McGonagall (Maggie Smith) conducts classes in how to change small animals into water goblets. The old gang is back, and there are a few new additions, notably the malevolent Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs), the father of Harry's arch-nemesis, Draco, and a ruthless villain with a snake-headed cane and waist-length blond hair, and a dashing new professor named Gilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh), who teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts classes. Gilderoy is a vain, pompous celebrity wizard who spends a lot of time answering his fan mail and autographing copies of his autobiography, Magical Me .

This setup is amusing and too lengthy for its own good, but when the film gains momentum, the horrors that await the students come fast and furious. Harry hears evil voices. Warnings appear on the wall written in blood-something about a chamber of secrets hidden for a thousand years in which a hideous monster lies dormant. Somebody has unlocked the chamber, and the whole school turns against Harry, thinking he's the descendant of the wizard who put the curse on the place. Determined to find the chamber, prove them wrong, save his adorable girlfriend Hermione (Emma Watson) from death and free the school from the curse, Harry must concoct a slug repellent made from screaming mandrake plants and face Aragog, a humongous tarantula in the Dark Forest who controls an army of flesh-eating spiders. The plot leads to the master villain Lord Voldemort, the murderous wizard responsible for the trademark scar on Harry's forehead. Voldemort was defeated by Harry in the first installment, but now he's trying for a comeback through the blank pages of a secret diary discovered by the dastardly Malfoy. By the time Harry encounters the monster in the bowels of Hogwarts, the big showdown seems almost anachronistic, and the foaming, fanged reptile will hardly raise a hair on the head of anyone who has already seen the Alien movies. Most of the kids around me covered their eyes and screamed in horror, but I found Eminem in 8 Mile twice as scary.

None of this makes one bit of sense, but children don't ask questions and take everything at face value, anyway. They won't give a fig that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is so convoluted that it loses coherence fast. What do they care if there are too many plot twists, too many extraneous diversions for no other purpose than to pad the running time, and so many villains at cross purposes that I couldn't tell them apart? The kids have read the books, studied the symbolism and know what's coming next. In my opinion, the movie will scare the living daylights out of young children and confuse the hell out of grownups. At nearly three hours, this one is also something of an endurance test. Still, the special effects and magic tricks are clever, the thrills are undeniable, the characters invented by J. K. Rowling are as charming as they are bizarre, and repeat business is guaranteed. (A word of advice to the filmmakers who are busily counting their percentages: Make future Harry Potters quickly, before the young cast members outgrow their roles. In one scene, the cherubic little Harry raises his trouser cuffs. He's already got very hairy legs.)

If I enjoyed this follow-up to the first Harry Potter less than I did the original, blame it on my loss of innocence. In all fairness, I must report that the children of varying ages in my audience never coughed, fidgeted or romped up and down the aisles for bathroom breaks. If I was baffled and bored, they were enthralled and enchanted-which is exactly what the Harry Potter market aims for. I surrender cheerfully. Movies for 10-year-old audiences should really be reviewed by 10-year-old critics.

Sharp Mexican Morality Tale

For adult fare, I prefer Carlos Carrera's Mexican film The Crime of Father Amaro , a sharp morality tale about a priest who breaks his vows of celibacy for the love of a beautiful girl that will probably raise the hackles of the Catholic Church to new heights of indignation. When it opened in Mexico, it was picketed and denounced by irate Catholics in the same way Miramax's forthcoming release of the brilliant Irish film The Magdalene Sisters is being protested here. That didn't stop it from becoming the highest-grossing Mexican film in history. Such apoplexy not only seems pointless in light of all the religious scandals that are making headlines daily, but also laughably belated, considering that it's based on a famous book by Portuguese novelist José Maria Eça de Queiroz first published in 1875. Don't these people ever get tired of slugging it out in public over matters of faith that should remain private?

To the small Mexican town of Los Reyes comes a handsome, newly ordained 24-year-old priest. Father Amaro (played by Gael García Bernal, the hottest actor in Mexico) is a favorite of the bishop and will soon be going to Rome for more devout study, but first he must get some field experience. In Los Reyes, he is assigned to an older, cynical priest, Father Benito, who has long been involved in money-laundering for mobsters and forbidden sex with women. Father Amaro watches the corruption surrounding him with shocked silence-but when he meets the virginal, extremely religious Amelia, the 16-year-old daughter of Father Benito's longtime lover, his own weaknesses as a man slowly build. As the unsophisticated priest succumbs to Amelia's innocence and sweetness, the groundwork is laid for the film's central theme-the difficulty of forced celibacy for the clergy. As Father Amaro struggles with the church's demands and his own inner passions, Mr. Carrera examines other complex relationships-the ecumenical politics of the church, and issues of power and economic depression in the poor regions of a country where the peasants are often victimized by the very priests they trust for spiritual guidance. The church, Mr. Carrera suggests, doesn't always serve the faithful and often looks the other way when it suits a purpose. In the story, a good priest is condemned and excommunicated for helping local guerrillas, while a bad priest is revered despite his sexual proclivities and his close relationship with the parish drug lord. Father Amaro abhors this kind of duplicity, yet remains closeted when it comes to his own clandestine affair with the impressionable Amelia. It's important to point out that the film doesn't denounce the church; it merely serves as a wake-up call for the human rights of the men who serve it. Father Amaro is no saint: He's a human being, subject to the same human temptations as everyone else. The film doesn't condone his fallibility. When his lust leads to Amelia's pregnancy and abortion, he pays for his "crime," with tragic consequences for everyone involved. Ironically, his faith is still sacred, and with the help of the bishop, his ambitious religious career continues to flourish.

The story is timeless, but when adapted to the modern age, it makes for a wrenching film-never preachy or sentimental, and refreshingly non-judgmental about the fundamental and contradictory issues it raises. At a time when the priesthood is under constant attack and the scalding reverberations of clerical sin are being felt all the way to the Vatican, it's also a work of intense relevance. While Mr. Carrera creates a stunningly real, three-dimensional study of souls in torment, he also displays a profound sense of compassion amid the misery, chaos and seeming expendability of life that affirms the humanity of his characters.

The performances are all vivid and sincere, but it's the talent and charisma of the film's star that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Mr. Bernal, the sensation of last year's surprise hit Y Tu Mamá También , is the sexiest Mexican import since Dolores Del Rio, and the screen's most sensitive priest since Montgomery Clift in Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess . In addition to his devastating good looks, the boy can really act. With Mr. Bernal's swimming-pool eyes and an almost ethereal sensuality, his naturalistic portrayal of the conflicted Father Amaro is haunting, hypnotic, vulnerable and deeply affecting. Here is an actor obviously attracted to controversial assignments. After playing the carnal priest in this film, he will next star in Pedro Almodóvar's Bad Education , playing a young man sexually abused by a priest in Spain. If this isn't an international star in the making, my name is Donald Duck.

One final note: According to an alarming press release from the folks publicizing the film's American opening, the conservative element in the Catholic Church in Mexico has been pleading with President Vincente Fox to censor The Crime of Father Amaro as a "sacrilege," appealing to his stature as Mexico's most openly Catholic president. Mr. Fox's government not only refused the boycott, it also selected The Crime of Father Amaro to represent Mexico in the contention for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award. In these repressive times, that's the kind of progressive thinking in the war against hypocrisy the world could use a lot more of.