Anthony Hopkins

IT wasn't actually a mutiny on "The Bounty," but during the production of that 1984 seafaring tale, star Anthony Hopkins and director Roger Donaldson didn't quite hit it off. "There was no secret that we had a tough time," says Donaldson ("The Recruit"). "We could have killed each other. If anybody had said to either of us, 'You will be working with each other again one day,' we both would have said, 'You have to be joking.'

NBC sent out five episodes of its "Silence of the Lambs" prequel "Hannibal," and although the reasons to stop watching (when in doubt, impale a woman!) too often outweighed the reasons to continue (Hugh Dancy, tracked by a dangerous dream deer), I swallowed my bile and soldiered on. And indeed, Episode 5 proved an epiphany. No spoilers here, but it costars Eddie Izzard, whose natural gift for twinkling malice threw everything into perspective. The problem with "Hannibal" is not the graphic violence or the absurd back-story tweaks - Dancy's Will Graham is no longer just a super-great FBI profiler with a photographic memory, he's a shivering, night-sweating, natural-born empath, whatever the heck that is - or even the fact that it is rather late to a very crowded serial-killer crime scene.

There always seems to be something endlessly fascinating going on inside the characters played by Anthony Hopkins, and it's not merely the suggestion of an inner life. The men he's played -- whether it's Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs"; Stevens, the preternaturally stoic butler in "Remains of the Day"; C.S. Lewis in "Shadowlands"; or Richard Nixon in "Nixon" -- all share a seemingly oxymoronic quality of Zen unconsciousness.

Few directors put up as convincing a mask as Alfred Hitchcock or were as adept at using that public face to sell their work to the wider world. But what was the master of suspense really like in his private moments? Do we even want to know? With Anthony Hopkins as the great helmsman and Helen Mirren as Alma Reville, his wife of more than 50 years, "Hitchcock" puts major league star power at the service of its peek-behind-closed-doors premise. But whatever that relationship was like in real life, this is one cinematic portrait of a marriage we could have lived without.

NBC sent out five episodes of its "Silence of the Lambs" prequel "Hannibal," and although the reasons to stop watching (when in doubt, impale a woman!) too often outweighed the reasons to continue (Hugh Dancy, tracked by a dangerous dream deer), I swallowed my bile and soldiered on. And indeed, Episode 5 proved an epiphany. No spoilers here, but it costars Eddie Izzard, whose natural gift for twinkling malice threw everything into perspective. The problem with "Hannibal" is not the graphic violence or the absurd back-story tweaks - Dancy's Will Graham is no longer just a super-great FBI profiler with a photographic memory, he's a shivering, night-sweating, natural-born empath, whatever the heck that is - or even the fact that it is rather late to a very crowded serial-killer crime scene.

IT'S at least 104 degrees in the shade in the foothills outside Lancaster. Anthony Hopkins is nursing a ruptured Achilles' tendon and limps toward a tiny patch of cover from the sun, blinding dirt swirling all around him. In between setups for his new movie "Slipstream," Hopkins can't retreat to a cushy, double-wide Starwaggon -- the low-budget production can't afford it -- and when production wraps for the night, he'll crash not in a Four Seasons but a nearby Comfort Inn.

Anthony Hopkins may no longer hold the title of World's Greatest English-Speaking Film Actor (the un-Oscared Ian McKellen would seem the better candidate, given Hopkins' recent, careless choices), but he's still a weighty, penetrating presence. Cuba Gooding Jr., conversely, could dance across a carpet of potato chips without displacing any salt. So while their matchup may not be quite heaven-sent, it seems at least to be the stuff of weirdly intriguing dynamics.

In one sense, you could say Brad Pitt landed the role of a lifetime in "Meet Joe Black." He got a chance to play Death. "Listen, when it came to playing Death, it was a little bit of a mystery to me, still is," Pitt said with a sly laugh from the set of the film, which opens Friday. "I mean, how do you 'play' Death? You can't do any research, can you?" Keeping Death real was just one challenge director Martin Brest faced in bringing "Joe Black" to life.

The Jonathan Demme of "Something Wild" or "Melvin and Howard' or "Stop Making Sense" might not be the first director one would think of for suspense or bloody terror; his touch has always seemed lighter, his interests more quirky and off the mainstream. So much for pigeonholing. Demme's vision of "The Silence of the Lambs," Thomas Harris' truly terrifying novel, is stunning.

Two of our best actors are giggling like a pair of seventh-graders. This was not part of the plan. The plan called for two of our best actors to pose solemnly for photographers in front of a stark, black-and-white tableau, summoning all the gravitas that their distinguished personas could muster. After all, both Anthony Hopkins and Morgan Freeman are playing iconic American figures in "Amistad," a significant American movie.

"I put up with those people who look through me as if I were invisible because all they can see is the great and glorious genius, Alfred Hitchcock. " - Alma Reville Hitchcock, as portrayed by Helen Mirren in "Hitchcock" It's not easy being a great man's wife. This fall, several high-end dramas go behind closed doors of tough marriages to explore how formidable women routinely get a lot of grief, but not a lot of credit, for spurring their husbands on to mighty accomplishments.

Director Sacha Gervasi sat at the back of Hollywood's Grauman's Chinese Theatre last year when "Shame" enjoyed its centerpiece gala screening at the 2011 AFI Fest. He returned to the historic theater Thursday night with his own movie, "Hitchcock," and during a tearful introduction, Gervasi repeatedly acknowledged he could scarcely believe he was there. "We actually just finished the film 20 minutes ago," Gervasi joked while acknowledging the movie's editor, Pamela Martin. "Can we still take notes, Pam?"

Beyond the economic and political ramifications of globalization, consider its effect on movie stories: the cross-cultural slice-and-dice, á la "Babel," that too often passes for meaning and resonance. In"360,"the new border-hopping feature from"City of God"director Fernando Mereilles, the faux profundity runs deep, infecting nearly every exchange in each vignette, whether the setting is Berlin, Bratislava or Paris. Mereilles avoids touristy shots of his multiple locations, yet any sense of realism is undone by contrivance.

Two new movies will compete against a royal rival this weekend. "The King's Speech," which just scooped up 12 Oscar nominations, is expanding its run and is expected to contend for the top box-office spot alongside a pair of new releases: "The Rite," starring Anthony Hopkins, and the Jason Statham action vehicle "The Mechanic. " Pre-release surveys indicate that "The Rite" is most likely to win the weekend with ticket sales of $15 million to $20 million, with most interest coming from adult males.

Offering moderately scary Roman Catholic "gotcha!"s to a global film audience of all creeds, "The Rite" comes from the director Mikael Hafstrom, whose previous film was the stylish supernatural thriller "1408. " This one's more conventional, but that's the exorcism sub-genre for you. The crucifix-shaped shadow of "The Exorcist" hangs heavy over each new contributor to the mythology. At one point in "The Rite," Rome's most aggressive devil exterminator, played by Anthony Hopkins, answers his young protege's mutterings with the retort: "What did you expect?

Human foibles, in major and minor keys, are the chords that Woody Allen has been pounding for roughly 45 years. So it should come as no surprise that in his new frothy and fitful romantic black comedy, "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger," everyone must take a spin around the dance floor with the disillusionments, deceptions and dissatisfactions of life. Allen has put his latest morality and mortality tale in the hands of his usual complement of fine actors, who play interlocking couples each fraught in their own way. It starts with the dizzy delight of Gemma Jones as Helena, the matriarch in the meddling middle of it all. By the time we meet her, she's attempted suicide after being divorced by her wayward husband, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins)

the kind of unfocused kids who make parents weep. "I was bad at everything. I used to sit in the back of the class my whole school career. My father said to my mother, 'There's something radically wrong with this boy.' He despaired of me," says Sir Anthony Hopkins with a chuckle. "I was always picking fights. Because I thought that was what the girls would like," says Ryan Gosling. "I'd pick on the toughest guys because the girls liked them. So if I beat them up the girls would like me.

Anthony Hopkins has played Hitler. He's been Bruno Hauptmann in "The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case." He's portrayed vengeful killers and a deranged ventriloquist, Hamlet's scheming uncle Claudius and Captain Bligh. Just don't ask him to be charming. "When a director says, 'Could you please be more charming,' I just die!" says the veteran British actor who has won two Emmys, various BBC awards and a host of English stage honors. "It's terrible, but I just freeze up. I can't do charming.

Here's the surprise of the new incarnation of "The Wolfman," starring Benicio Del Toro -- there isn't one. No bite either, or humor, or camp. And the real killer . . . almost no spine-tingling dread. So I guess this is a kind of a horror story after all. Also starring, and squandering, the talents of Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt and Hugo Weaving, the film is built around the ancient myth of the cursed creature -- part man, part wolf, part of the time -- who battles to control the monster he discovers inside.