No Man's Land, Bosnia-Herzegovina-Slovenia-Italy-France-UK-Belgium, 2001, 98 min. Starring Branko Djuric, Rene Bitorajac, Filip Sovagovic, Georges Sovagovic. Directed by Danis Tanovic. During the Bosnian war, three men, two Croats, one Serb, find themselves trapped in a trench between the two enemy lines, with no escape and the potential to die at any minute, as one of the Bosnians is lying on a mine that will explode if he moves. The absurdity of war is certainly an aspect of the film, but while various people outside of the situation try to find a way to deal with it – a UN commander, officials on both sides, an English reporter – the heart of the film lies with the simpler story of men lying in dirt and festering in a hatred they may be incapable of transcending.

Amelie, France-Germany, 2001, 129 min. Starring Audrey Tatou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Yolande Moreau. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. One half of the team that brought us the nightmarish alternate worlds of Delicatessen and City of Lost Children comes back with this thoroughly sweet, very different kind of fantasy. Tatou plays the title character, a waitress who strives to help all around her find happiness, and finds true love herself in the process. The warmth and magic that course through the film are almost overwhelming as Jeunet paints the city of Paris in exquisite colors, giving the proceedings the feeling of a fairy tale, with Tatou glorious as its own "Tinkerbell." A completely quirky, unabashedly romantic delight.

About Schmidt, USA, 2002, 125 min. Starring Jack Nicholson, Kathy Bates, Hope Davis, Dermot Mulroney. Directed by Alexander Payne. Nicholson goes against type – way, way against type – playing a recently widowed, retired insurance salesman who travels across the country to see his daughter before she marries a man he believes to be no good for her. Payne and writing partner Jim Taylor, who previously did the terrific dark comedies Citizen Ruth and Election, give us a portrait of a man who never really became the sum of his parts, and had no inkling of what that might mean until some of those parts disappeared. Nicholson's restraint in this deliberately-paced character study is phenomenal, finely supported by the rest of the cast, particularly Davis as his daughter and Bates as the feisty mother of the groom.

Chicago, USA-Canada, 2002, 113 min. Starring Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly, Taye Diggs. Directed by Rob Marshall. Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart are two murderesses vying for the spotlight in Capone-era Chi-town. Bob Fosse's 1975 Broadway musical languished in production hell for years while attempt after attempt was made to find a way to bring it successfully to the screen. Turns out it was worth the wait. First-time director Marshall seems a logical choice, seeing as how he's well known for his work on the stage, and yet what makes the film successful is the avoidance of a stage bound feeling by making the musical numbers the byproduct of Roxie's feverish imagination. Dazzling production values and some amazingly fast footwork make this one of the most entertaining, sexiest films in years.

The Hours, USA, 2002, 114 min. Starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Ed Harris, John C. Reilly, Miranda Richardson. Directed by Stephen Daldry. Three different stories of three different women in three different times, all linked by one thing: a novel. Virginia Woolf writes her classic Mrs. Dalloway, a 1950s housewife is distracted from planning a party by reading that same book, and a modern day woman plans a party of her own for a writer friend dying of AIDS, her experiences mirroring those of the book's main character. While the three separate stories are linked, they aren't in such a way as, say, the stories in Pulp Fiction. Each is its own separate entity, despite thematic similarities, or in certain cases, thematic counterpoints. That Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was adapted at all is impressive; that it was adapted so successfully is a sheer wonder.