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Carina Cha

Road To Perdition

Like all sons, 12-year-old Michael Jnr wants to know what his father does for a living. One day, he hides in his father's car in order to witness his father's working life - and ends up seeing a murder. Thus begins the pangs of American gangster life. Starring Tom Hanks, Jude Law, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Stanley Tucci. Directed by American Beauty's Sam Mendes.

Roger Ebert

The Chicago Sun-Times

'The movie has other strengths to compensate for the implacable progress of its plot. It is wonderfully acted. And no movie this year will be more praised for its cinematography: Conrad L Hall's work seems certain to win the Academy Award. He creates a limbo of darkness, shadow, night, fearful faces half-seen, cold and snow. His characters stand in downpours, the rain running off the brims of their fedoras and soaking the shoulders of their thick wool overcoats. Their feet must always be cold. The photography creates a visceral chill.'

Kenneth Turan

The Los Angeles Times

'Mendes, in only his second feature, has told this surprisingly resonant story with the potent, unrelenting fatalism of a previously unknown Greek myth. This is classic albeit sombre film-making, restrained and all of a piece, by a director who believes film can tell adult stories in an adult manner.'

Stephanie Zacharek

salon.com

'Sam Mendes' Road To Perdition is a cinematic achievement; it doesn't deign to be anything as alive as a movie. Over and over again, Mendes confuses gracefulness with tastefulness: he loads up on the latter, not realising a great movie is a kind of dance, not a perfectly executed dinner party. You could forgive Mendes if he simply didn't understand movies; there are plenty of directors who understand them perfectly well and make bad ones anyway. But Road To Perdition, like his American Beauty before it, feels like a movie that keeps wishing it were something else.'

Stephen Holden

The New York Times

'In surveying the world through Michael Jnr's eyes, the movie captures, like no film I've seen, the fear-tinged awe with which young boys regard their fathers and the degree to which that awe continues to reverberate into adult life.'

Halloween: Resurrection

In the eighth sequel to the 1978 original, Halloween: Resurrection refuses to die. Jamie Lee Curtis resumes her post as the sister of serial murderer Michael Myers. A group of teens wins a chance to stay in Myers' house for one night, which is to be broadcast live via the Internet. Naturally, nothing goes as planned and Myers' bloodlust is insatiable. Starring rapper Busta Rhymes and catwalk model Tyra Banks (above with Rhymes).

Peter Travers

Rolling Stone

'Face it: they'll keep milking this cash cow until its udders dry up. In John Carpenter's stylish 1978 original, Curtis, then 20, played a babysitter whose masked maniac of a brother, Michael Myers, kept slashing all her friends. (Myers is no relation to the creator of Austin Powers - though, come to think of it, we never did peek behind that mask.) The last sequel, in 1998, was called Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later. One wonders if Michael will still be making a stab at it in another 20 years.'

Frank Scheck

The Hollywood Reporter

'This latest instalment of the horror film franchise that is apparently as invulnerable as its trademark villain has arrived for an incongruous summer playoff, demonstrating yet again that the era of the intelligent, well-made B movie is long gone. Clearly reflecting a lack of effort on the part of everyone involved, the hopefully but inaccurately titled Halloween: Resurrection (helmed by Rick Rosenthal, who directed the second entry in the series) should be a fast theatrical fade, quickly finding its way on to the video shelves where it rightly belongs.'

Owen Gleiberman

Entertainment Weekly

'Slasher movies have become so bad that the famous mask worn by Michael Myers - the one that makes him look like a rubbery Sid Vicious - is now more expressive than most of the young actors who play his murder meat. What can you say about Halloween: Resurrection, a horror sequel that's maladroit enough to be a self-conscious rip-off of Blair Witch 2?'



What the critics say