The Sun Recommends
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Wondering what else is in theaters this weekend? Here are six films recommended by The New York Sun’s critics that you can still catch around town.
BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN
R, 82 minutes
Embodying the worst aspects of the Eastern European stereotype, Borat Sagdyev (Sacha Baron Cohen) jaunts across America, spouting his sexist and anti-Semitic beliefs to unsuspecting people as if, of course, they share his point of view. But Borat’s questions aren’t what’s funny. What’s funny is that his unsuspecting targets give him answers.
As Borat skips coast to coast, he effortlessly makes a fool of everyone he encounters along the way (the release contract offered to those appearing in the film was rumored to be vague at best). People who were hoodwinked into participating have already begun going public with their complaints, the biggest one being, “I’m not really like that.” But the brilliance of the Borat character, and the reason the movie is so funny, is because they are really like that.
Despite some side-splitting moments involving bewildered Americans, the film works best when it drops the social satire and simply erupts with pure anarchy. In fact, it’s a good lesson for all comedies: Spend less time making points and more time showing fat naked men wrestling, and you’ll be on the right track.
— Grady Hendrix
THE BRIDGE
Unrated, 93 minutes
When documentarian Eric Steel’s camera settles into a classic beauty shot looking north from Golden Gate Park toward the fabled bridge, something happens that transforms the bridge into an icon exerting a very different magnetism than the one tourists have flocked to for decades. Clearly discernible in the choppy grey tide between Golden Gate Bridge’s two towers is a small but distinctive splash — the first of many in this harrowing, tragic, and deeply disturbing film. Using footage from cameras continuously covering the bridge itself and interviews with family members and witnesses, Mr. Steel’s “The Bridge” documents a single year in the Golden Gate Bridge’s reign as the suicide capital of the world.
— Bruce Bennett
THE PRESTIGE
PG-13, 128 minutes
Magic is in the air with “The Prestige,” not because it’s the second movie about magicians from a major studio in nine weeks, nor because the title itself refers to the structure of an illusion, but because the trickery, or should we say wizardry, of director Christopher Nolan is more impressive here than it’s ever been before.
We’re fascinated by the drama here, not by the trickery; more interested in watching two master magicians duel than seeing all the levitations, transformations, and dissections they could ever throw at us. Thankfully, Mr. Nolan needs no gimmick. He doesn’t need to fool us into oohs and aahs. He’s already fooled us into seeing this engrossing bit of stagecraft as real theater.
— Steven Snyder
MARIE ANTOINETTE
PG-13, 123 minutes
By Hollywood standards, Sophia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” is well researched, its sins mainly those of omission (although not entirely: Contrary to what’s shown in the movie, the real queen drank very little), not that those are trivial. This is a Marie Antoinette without the necklace (that scandal is never mentioned), but who keeps her neck. The last three to four years of her life, years in which she finally achieved a certain tragic dignity, don’t feature at all, but perhaps they don’t need to. After all, we witness her refusal to abandon Louis XVI as the revolution grew, and we see the bravery with which she faced the mob that had stormed Versailles.
But for all this film’s cleverness, it would not succeed without the extraordinary, almost hypnotic, performance by Kirsten Dunst as the fabulously indulged, fabulously abused Marie Antoinette of Ms. Coppola’s vision.
— Andrew Stuttaford
THE QUEEN
PG-13, 97 minutes
In all the decades of Queen Elizabeth II’s painstakingly (and sometimes painfully) dutiful and tenacious reign, there has only really been one brief, bizarre period, of just about a week, when there was the slightest danger that the Windsors might, like so many of their less fortunate relatives in so many less fortunate countries, be asked to pack their bags. It’s that interlude that is the focus of “The Queen.”
Watch Her Majesty carefully enough and it’s just possible to detect that the smile, the wave, the small talk, and all the rest of it are acts of will, the work of an actress, a pro, trapped in a role that will last a lifetime. Dame Helen Mirren catches this perfectly.
— A.S.
THE DEPARTED
R, 149 mintues
Like its milieu, Irish-Catholic Boston, “The Departed” has plenty in common with the mean streets that Martin Scorsese has trod before, without the watershed setting or the whiff of Grand Guignol that complicated the mix in his last violent romp, the period piece “Gangs of New York.” It has plenty more, too. For both these reasons, it’s awfully fun to watch.
The same could be said for the two informers at the center of the story, which is borrowed from the 2002 Hong Kong policier “Infernal Affairs.” Ostensible gangster Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and ostensible police sergeant Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) are both the opposite of what they appear to be. Billy, a strung-out undercover cop, puts his life on the line cozying up to Boston’s biggest crime lord, Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Colin, the spit-and-polish young star of the special investigations unit, coolly foils every sting.
— Darrell Hartman