Susan Sarandon

From the character-building brutality of middle school gym class to the towers of psychobabble topping the best-seller list, Mr. Woodcock plants some succulent comedy in its antagonists and then lets the juice drain away. Mr. Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton) is the Captain Bligh of calisthenics, basketball and wrestling, and John Farley (Seann William Scott) is a former flabby student who has trimmed down in adulthood and written a self-help book, Letting Go. What brings them together 13 years after Farley leaves his class is Woodcock's courtship of Farley's captivating mom, Beverly (Susan Sarandon)

It's possible to see a torch being passed in "Anywhere But Here," a small coming-of-age drama in which Natalie Portman, the shy, lissome center of the movie, effectively steals the show from Susan Sarandon. Portman is too good an actress to make a show of this; her power lies in her ability to draw attention by doing what looks like nothing at all. And Sarandon is generous enough to cede her ground graciously."Anywhere But Here" is a pretty good movie, but it's a great example of class in action.

"Earthly Possessions" opens on Susan Sarandon, and it closes on Sarandon. In between, not a minute goes by when Sarandon isn't on screen. And what a delight it is to see this Academy Award-winning actress going full-throttle as an Anne Tyler heroine.Maybe that's all you need to know in terms of viewing choices tonight: HBO has Susan Sarandon in a film based on an Anne Tyler novel of the same name. Brand identity times three. If you're still not sold, let me just say that I haven't enjoyed another made-for-television movie this much all season.

When it comes to the national pastime, Hollywood hasn't always kept its eye on the ball.Sure, baseball has been a major player in any number of films. But how many of them have really been about the game, really looked at it as opposed to simply using it as a plot point? Or, to put it another way, how many baseball films are truly major-league efforts?Fortunately, among several stinkers, there are some good ones to keep fans occupied over the next few days, as they wile away the hours between World Series games.

"Stepmom" should set the gold standard for tear-jerkers for months to come. Tasteful, genuine and winningly acted by Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon and Ed Harris, this well-paced family melodrama recalls those well-appointed weepers of the 1950s, commonly called "women's pictures.""Stepmom" may concern itself with the relationship of two women who find an unexpected bond, but it is very much about modern-day American families at their most fractured. And if the image of a happily blended family it offers is pure fantasy, it will touch anyone who has first-hand experience with divorce, adult dating and less-than-perfect parents -- in other words, just about everyone.

Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" proved the heartiest, if not the bravest, movie of the year as it won four Oscars at last night's 68th Annual Acadmey Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Gibson. The film, a reaffirmation of "old movie values" in a period when movies have come under more and more criticism, told the story of Scottish patriot William Wallace who, in the 13th century, led an army against the English oppressors, won several battles but ultimately was captured and executed.

In case we hadn't noticed, Glamour points out this month that Hollywood's "most desirable women are over 35 and acting their age."The hot celluloid ladies include Ellen Barkin, 40; Meryl Streep, 46; Susan Sarandon, 49; and Michelle Pfeiffer, 38.That's great news for all of us who aren't getting any younger. However, the fact still remains that those actresses will never be paired with a sweet young thang the way older male actors are. Robert Redford, 58, can offer 33-year-old Demi Moore an indecent proposal, but when will we see Meryl Streep get busy with, say, 34-year-old Michael J. Fox?

Back in 1987, when "Bull Durham" was being cast, Susan Sarandon had to pay for her own flight from Europe, where she happened to be staying, to America for an audition.In 1991, when "Lorenzo's Oil" came around, she got tapped to play the female lead only after Michelle Pfeiffer took a pass.But last year, when "The Client" was being decided, Ms. Sarandon was the first choice. She hadn't even expressed interest.Director Joel Schumacher envisioned her and no one else in the plum part of Reggie Love, a scrappy attorney with a big but bruised heart.

"Freejack"? Man, they ought to call this one "Cheapjack"!According to "Freejack's" most arrogant conceit, it has seen the future and the future costs $3.98.Volkswagens wearing streamlined fiberglass skirts hurtle down the busy streets of a megalopolis at nearly 14 miles per hour. Teeming crowds of nine, possibly as many as 11, murmur in sprawling alleyways that must be at least a half a block long. Cheesy matte paintings of skyscrapers and animated signs are jerry-rigged into a stock shot of the Manhattan skyline, which means the lab is as close as the movie ever got to Gotham.

When you get right down to it, the Academy Awards show, from a fashion-watch point of view, was a bore.Cher left her feathered and sequined G-string at home. Kim Basinger didn't wear a one-shouldered cupcake wonder, Demi Moore wore a stunning lace gown instead of bicycle shorts and Barbra Streisand's derriere stayed under cover.Still, there was hope when Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon took the stage as presenters. The duo should have traded shoes. Ms. Davis looked like a cancan-dancing Amazon in a frothy white confection.

Coming off a rousing screening of his "film essay" PoliWood at New York's TriBeCa Film Festival, Barry Levinson is psyched to bring it to the Maryland Film Festival on Sunday. Levinson considers this multifaceted look at politics and Hollywood an ideal festival attraction "because it's the kind of piece that opens up discussion. It's full of ideas." With a cast of real-life characters ranging from New York Gov. David Paterson and Republican pollster Frank Luntz to Susan Sarandon, Josh Lucas and Anne Hathaway, the movie depicts the dangerous yet also humorous confluence of politics, celebrity and media.

My favorite of all time is Annie Savoy, Susan Sarandon's groupie literature professor in Bull Durham. She's sexy, smart, knows literature and baseball, and even references the Frank Robinson-Milt Pappas trade. I mean, come on. Groupie or not, that's a perfect woman. (For more, go to baltimoresun.com/cornersportsbar)

The Wachowski Brothers, the same overgrown boy wonders who concocted The Matrix, create a psychedelic candy store in Speed Racer, then get caught in it with their eyes popped, their brains blown and their pants down. It's a family film done as a trip film. It is a trip, but it's a bad trip. This new version of the Japanese cartoon series about a child auto-racing champ named, with charming obviousness, "Speed Racer," is live-actor, but not exactly live-action. The Wachowskis cast Emile Hirsch as Speed Racer, Susan Sarandon as Mom Racer and John Goodman as Pops Racer, then filmed them against a green screen, adding layer after layer of computer-generated imagery to create intricate props and sets and dizzying deep-focus panoramas.

Taking a page from Pennies From Heaven, the family and neighbors of Romance & Cigarettes' Nick Murder (James Gandolfini) act out by singing along to kitschy hits, such as Engelbert Humperdinck's "A Man Without Love." It's karaoke with a vengeance as Murder, a Queens, N.Y., construction worker, takes refuge from a dead marriage in the arms of an underwear shop clerk (Kate Winslet, ferreting humanity out of a crass other-woman stereotype). His wife (Susan Sarandon) and his daughters (Mary-Louise Parker, Mandy Moore, Aida Turturro)

Marlo Thomas stopped in at L.A.'s trendy Frida Mexican and immediately caught the eye of one of this column's handy helpers. Our guy complimented the new sparkling DVD release of Marlo's iconic That Girl sitcom. Mrs. Phil Donahue - of whom he said, "doesn't she ever age?" - was gracious and forthcoming: "I am thrilled about the shows being out. I did an audio commentary. And I have to credit the whole team - the cast and writers - for making the series so successful. Ann Marie was the first single girl on TV to have her own pad and a boyfriend.

From the character-building brutality of middle school gym class to the towers of psychobabble topping the best-seller list, Mr. Woodcock plants some succulent comedy in its antagonists and then lets the juice drain away. Mr. Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton) is the Captain Bligh of calisthenics, basketball and wrestling, and John Farley (Seann William Scott) is a former flabby student who has trimmed down in adulthood and written a self-help book, Letting Go. What brings them together 13 years after Farley leaves his class is Woodcock's courtship of Farley's captivating mom, Beverly (Susan Sarandon)

In the future, let's hope we can leave the word "trick" out of love stories or sex comedies unless it refers to a prostitute's client. The Lake House, in which a mailbox serves as a time portal for two lovers (Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock) is the latest in a series of gimmick-ridden romances. The increasing absurdity of the trick dashes any genuine emotion as the movie goes on. At the screening I went to, the gentleman in front of me turned around to me and my friends and asked whether we'd noticed that the film ended in a way that made its opening action, even on its own terms, impossible.

The Exonerated, a made-for-TV movie (9 tonight, Court TV) based on the off-Broadway play, tells the stories behind the headlines about flaws in our criminal justice system. Here are six heartfelt, in-depth autobiographies, conveyed by actors but based on interviews and true stories, telling of individuals falsely convicted, sentenced to death and freed many years later. The outlines of their stories are shocking enough, but Exonerated explores their intimate experiences and conveys the incalculable and irreversible human cost such injustice exacts.

John Clark ought to be a happy man. He has a successful law practice in Chicago. He's married to a beautiful woman who loves him. And they have two terrific kids. But - as we learn in Shall We Dance? - the spark has gone out of his life. If you're thinking midlife crisis, that doesn't quite do it. John (Richard Gere) isn't in crisis so much as he's in stasis. Let's call it a midlife rut. Shall We Dance? - the brassy new Hollywood remake of the delicate 1996 Japanese film - is about how this man rediscovers the romance within himself by enrolling in a ballroom-dancing class.

There's something disturbing, something funny and, yes, even something endearing about this Igby character, though I thank God there's no one like him or his ilk in my life. Igby is a malcontent, a button-pusher, a guy who lives to tick the world off -- if only because he's certain the world regards him the same way. And he's pretty good at it, too; in fact, Igby's the kind of teen-ager who would probably be good at whatever he chose to do, so smart and manipulative and full of unrealized potential is he. He's wasting all those gifts right now, and family precedent suggests he may continue wasting them.