Featurettes/Behind-The-Scenes/Documentaries

Solidly built around a subtle yet commanding performance by Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda emerged as one of the most highly-praised dramas of 2004. In a role that demands his quietly riveting presence in nearly every scene, Cheadle plays real-life hero Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in the Rwandan capital of Kigali who in 1994 saved 1,200 Rwandan "guests" from certain death during the genocidal clash between tribal Hutus, who slaughtered a million victims, and the horrified Tutsis, who found safe haven or died.

Italy's rubber-faced funnyman Roberto Benigni accomplishes the impossible in his World War II comedy Life Is Beautiful: he shapes a simultaneously hilarious and haunting comedy out of the tragedy of the Holocaust. An international sensation and the most successful foreign language film in U.S. history, the picture also earned director-cowriter-star Benigni Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor.

The corsets and high waists of the 19th century meet the lush colors and visual splendor of India in Vanity Fair, a classic novel translated into modern celluloid by Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding). The very contemporary Reese Witherspoon (Legally Blonde, Election) at first seems to hit the wrong note as Becky Sharp, an orphaned girl who rises to the heights of society using her quick wits and feminine wiles. But as Vanity Fair unfolds, the movie's tone embraces both period decor and modern attitudes, searching for a bridge that will carry us more deeply into a different time.

Professional tennis makes an unlikely but surprisingly effective backdrop for a lively romantic comedy in Wimbledon. Peter Cort (Paul Bettany, Master and Commander), once ranked 11th in the world, has slipped to 119th and is heading into his last Wimbledon tournament when he runs into Lizzie Bradbury (Kirsten Dunst, The Virgin Suicides, Spider-Man), a rising star. The two strike up a whirlwind romance that gives his game new life--but she insists it's going to be nothing but a passing fling.

This Western has become a modest cult favorite since its release in 1993, when the film was met with mixed reviews but the performances of Kurt Russell (as Wyatt Earp) and especially Val Kilmer, for his memorably eccentric performance as the dying gunslinger Doc Holliday, garnered high praise. The movie opens with Wyatt Earp trying to put his violent past behind him, living happily in Tombstone with his brothers and the woman (Dana Delany) who puts his soul at ease. But a murderous gang called the Cowboys has burst on the scene, and Earp can't keep his gun belt off any longer.

Will Farrell followed up his star-making vehicle Elf, which matched his fine-tuned comic obliviousness to a sweet sincerity, with a more arrogant variation on the same character: Ron Burgundy, a macho, narcissistic news anchor from the 1970s.

After all the controversy and rigorous debate has subsided, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ will remain a force to be reckoned with.

With Sideways, Paul Giamatti (American Splendor, Storytelling) has become an unlikely but engaging romantic lead. Struggling novelist and wine connoisseur Miles (Giamatti) takes his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church, Wings) on a wine-tasting tour of California vineyards for a kind of extended bachelor party.

How's this for impressive trivia: Dodgeball faced off against The Terminal in opening-weekend competition, and 29-year-old writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber aced Steven Spielberg by a score of $30 to $18.7 in box-office millions.

If you spliced Charles Addams, Dr. Seuss, Charles Dickens, Edward Gorey, and Roald Dahl into a Tim Burtonesque landscape, you'd surely come up with something like Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Many critics (in mostly mixed reviews) wondered why Burton didn't direct this comically morbid adaptation of the first three books in the popular series by Daniel Handler (a.k.a.