Ayelet Zurer

CHICAGO – “If you want a friend in Washington,” Harry S. Truman once said, “get a dog.” The same can be said for the film industry, as they keep producing canine quandaries. Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Sam Shepard and Elisabeth Moss cozy up to their own ‘Darling Companion.’

CHICAGO – Give Ron Howard an intimate character study like “Frost/Nixon,” and he’ll knock it out of the park. Give him a sprawling plot-driven thriller like…well, let’s face it: anything written by Dan Brown, and he’ll be consumed by the enormity of his subject. Yet while Howard’s “The Da Vinci Code,” failed on a human level, it did succeed in highlighting the tantalizing questions raised by Brown’s text, particularly the implications of historical distortion throughout the centuries. When the characters were allowed to simply analyze the story’s inherent mysteries, the film took flight.

Rating: 1.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Ron Howard’s “Angels & Demons,” the sequel to “The Da Vinci Code,” is an absolute mess, a film that tries hard to break free from the dull tone of its predecessor but ends up even more ridiculous, frustrating and generally worthless.

Previous | Image 1 of 17 | Next

Tom Hanks stars in Columbia Pictures suspense thriller Angels and Demons.

CHICAGO – This 17-image slideshow contains the official press images from Sony’s “Angels & Demons,” starring Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgard, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, and Armin Mueller-Stahl. The film, written by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman based on the novel by Dan Brown and directed by Ron Howard, opens on May 15th, 2009.