Film

LET'S BAN movie critics from reviewing historical films. That way, we'll make their lives - and ours - easier to sit through. Film criticism is a noble profession, focusing on an exciting and vibrant art form. But critics and I often are on different wavelengths. Any film universally panned by critics, I'm sure to like. Those that most critics praise, I'm sure to detest. I first became leery of critics years ago, when I went to see "Picnic at Hanging Rock" at the Charles. The plot was about three girls who mysteriously disappear on a picnic.

Where have all the grown-ups gone? Not to the movies.That's the message in the surprising results of the Hollywood Christmas season.Movies for kids are doing swell. Steven Spielberg's much anticipated "Hook," despite a spate of less than admiring reviews, has proven stubbornly critic-proof, though it still is falling far short of the revenue torrents generated by "Batman," the director's own "E.T." or even last summer's "Terminator 2." But after a somewhat dismal start, the movie has consistently finished first since its Dec. 11 opening, and has made close to $60 million in its first three weeks of release.

When do art and politics meet -- and which should take precedence? A PBS presentation of a fascinating documentary on German film pioneer Leni Riefenstahl poses the question.* "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl" (8 p.m.-11 p.m., MPT, Channels 22, 67) -- The filmmaker wrote in her memoirs that she once told Adolf Hitler she could never make political films. Yet she eventually produced movies that critics charged extolled the Third Reich -- including a documentary on the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, which won a Golden Lion film award at the Venice Film Festival, ahead of Disney's "Snow White."

The raw material for the Showtime documentary "Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" languished in Francis Ford Coppola's garage for more than a decade.Gathering dust was more than 60 hours of footage shot by Mr. Coppola's wife, Eleanor, of her husband and his cast and crew at work in the Philippines during the making of this before-its-time epic on the Vietnam war."After 'Apocalypse Now' we were really trying to consolidate our lives and make it through," said Mr. Coppola during a recent interview in Los Angeles.

Kiefer Sutherland looks exhausted as he sinks into a plush chair in his New York hotel suite and puffs on his next cigarette.The actor was up all night shooting a new film and had only a few hours' sleep before he began a weekend of promotion for the Walt Disney movie "The Three Musketeers," which opened nationally Friday.Still, Mr. Sutherland was being Responsible. And Accessible. And Nice.For all his reputation as a bit wild, a bit moody and a bit unfriendly to the news media, Mr. Sutherland is now showing that he is a supportive player in Hollywood, willing and eager to help make his films successful.

Paris, j'etaime, an intriguing little film in which 21 directors offer romantic cinematic snippets set in the city on the Seine, opens today at the Charles Theatre. What a great idea for a film, giving people who love a city the chance to commit that passion to film. Which led me to wonder, why shouldn't Baltimore be afforded the same sort of treatment? A bunch of creative people love this city very, very much. What if a dozen of the city's biggest boosters were offered the chance to direct 10-minute cinematic snapshots of Baltimore as they see it?

Well, here it is.The death movie, as everybody knows. Late in the filming of "The Crow," an actor pulled the trigger on a blank-loaded .44 Magnum and, against an enormous mountain of odds, fired a bullet that had been wedged into the barrel the day before into star Brandon Lee, killing him.The death was doubly, perhaps even triply, fraught with meaning. Lee was the son of the brilliant martial arts star Bruce Lee, who himself died at an early age under mysterious circumstances. But even in the movie, which opened Friday, death was a character: Lee had been playing a rock musician killed at an early age, who returns from the grave to kill his slayers.

ARLINGTON, Va. - Rarely has a movie before its release attracted the kind of buzz surrounding Mel Gibson's self-financed The Passion of the Christ. On Ash Wednesday today, people get to see the reason for months of debate and controversy. What has been lost in the debate about the film and its alleged anti-Semitism - I've seen the movie, and there isn't any - is the central message of Christ's suffering and sacrifice for the redemption of humanity. That message cannot be missed in the film, but it probably will be ignored by most reviewers.

HOLLYWOOD / / Long before the summer thriller snakes on a plane slithers into theaters in july, potentially venomous fans started rattling. The film's title says everything you need to know about the plot: On a trans-Pacific flight, a Hawaiian mobster trying to eliminate a protected witness uncorks a carton of poisonous serpents. But as Web sites posted details during pre-production and shooting last summer, B-movie fans began to react. They wanted more creative snake attacks, more gore, more nudity and more of star Samuel L. Jackson's signature four-syllable f-bombs.

Movie fans will have full dance cards, if not stockings, this Christmas with such movies as Oliver Stone's "Any Given Sunday," the Andy Kaufman bio-pic "Man on the Moon" and such highly anticipated adaptations as "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Angela's Ashes" scheduled to open on Christmas Day.So friends and family of the celluloid-obsessed face a challenge in keeping them home for the holidays. Luckily, lively, informative and entertaining books about all manner of films and filmmakers are arriving in stores this season, sure to bring joy to any cineaste who happens to find one of them under the tree.