5 yen to philippine peso

5 yen to philippine peso Last week I looked at a couple of ASX 200 shares that Bell Potter has named as best buys for 2025. You can read about the first two . Now let's take a look at a couple more that have made its list for the year ahead. They are as follows: ( ) The first ASX 200 share that could be a top buy in 2025 is building products company Brickworks. Bell Potter believes that the company is well-placed to benefit from interest rate cuts next year. It explains: We see BKW as a high delta exposure to interest rate cuts and by extension a stock to own as we edge closer to the cycle pivot point (Bell Potter's base case for our first cut is 1H CY25). Specifically, we see a scenario unfolding where BKW could realise double digit mark-to-market NTA growth p.a. quite comfortably in coming years through positive revals (i.e. cap rate reversal), ongoing property development and rent reversion (BKW remains ~28% underrented and 50% short-WALE), as well as continued SOL outperformance. This is a growth story we think few ASX-200 industrials can currently match. The broker has a buy rating and $32.00 price target on its shares. ( ) Bell Potter is also feeling very bullish about Polynovo and thinks it could be an ASX 200 share to buy in 2025. It describes itself as a disruptive medical technology company making products that simplify the management of acute complex wounds, redefining healing with meaningfully differentiated patient outcomes across multiple wound etiologies. After treating 50,000+ patients across 41 countries, Polynovo notes that it is investing for growth via new products, indications, and markets with a view to treat millions more. Commenting on its bullish view of the stock, the broker said: PolyNovo is a leader in the market for dermal replacement wound care products in the United States. Novosorb has gained excellent traction in the US hospital sector over recent years which has seen dozens of surgeons commence using the product for complex wound repair. FY25 revenues are likely to grow at >30% off a revenue base of $110m and the company is also expected to generate earnings and record its first full year of cash flow positive operations. In the clinic, PNV is expected to report headline data from the clinical trial in full thickness burns and this will likely lead to an upgrade in the registration from a 510K to a pre market approval (PMA) and improved pricing. Bell Potter has a buy rating and $3.00 price target on its shares.Republicans won big in a relatively high-turnout election. How did it happen?Congress has always favoured power over Constitution: Rajnath during Lok Sabha debate

SOUTH LEBANON - The Lebanese army and UNIFIL have completed preparations for a gradual deployment in Khiyam after clearing it of unexploded ordnance and redeploying in the checkpoints that had been evacuated before the Israeli ground incursion. Following the retreatment of the Israeli occupation forces from the outskirts of the border city towards Sarda in the Wazzani plain, dozens of families are waiting for the moment to reenter their war-ravaged city to retrieve the bodies of martyrs from the rubble and rebuild their homes. The redeployment of the Lebanese army in northern Khiyam coincided with an Israeli Hermes drone martyring 3 citizens who were checking their homes. Najib Mikati, the caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister, has described the attack as “a blatant betrayal that violates all the pledges made by the parties that sponsored the ceasefire agreement. The United States and France are required to declare a clear position on what happened and to curb the Israeli aggression.” The steadfast town of Khiyam has an honorable history of defending the Lebanese territory and confronting the Israeli enemy. Every inch of the land in Khiyam tells a story of heroism and the name of an honorable martyr is engraved on every stone. The city has suffered greatly as a result of the Israeli occupation since the 1982 invasion, when the enemy turned its military barracks into detention centers, and practiced the most heinous forms of torture until the liberation in 2000. During the 2006 war, the Khiyam plain was the cemetery of the Merkava. Khiyam proved to be resistant to defeat. Since October 2023, the heroic scene has been repeated as Khiyam has sacrificed its best heroes for the sake of Palestine. After Khiyam, the Lebanese army is expected to be redeployed in all eastern border towns as the enemy postpones the implementation of the truce within 60 days. It is doing what it failed to do during the war as it continues to bombard homes. In 72 hours, the Israeli enemy destroyed 80% of the capabilities of the Syrian army, which will need an entire generation to rebuild. Will the Lebanese army be able to protect Lebanon? It is not surprising that the Lebanese army will fail to do so as the Zionist-American colonialism does not want powerful armies in the region, plain and simple. Hence, Observers believe that the re-deployment of the Lebanese army will not prevent the continuation of Israeli violations. Since the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon in 2005, Lebanon’s pro-US political factions have prevented the Lebanese army from cooperating with any country that Washington does not like. The best evidence of this is what happened in 2008 when Vladimir Putin decided to give Lebanon MiG-29 fighter jets, tanks, and artillery with weapons and ammunition. Washington, however, quickly thwarted it along with various other offers. Instead of confronting the US-Israeli hegemony, Lebanese Army Commander Joseph Aoun presents himself as a presidential candidate who seeks not to anger Washington.‘Wheel of Fortune’ Fans Beg Ryan Seacrest to Change His ‘Forced’ Bonus Round Move

Innofactor Plc Stock Exchange release, on November 25, 2024, at 20:00 Finnish time Innofactor's Board of Directors has appointed Anni Wahlroos as Debuty CEO for Innofactor Group as of November 25, 2025. She will continue as the Chief People Officer of the Innofactor Group and as a member of the Group's Executive Board, reporting to CEO Sami Ensio. Wahlroos has been with Innofactor since 2015 and has been a member of the Group’s Executive Board since 2022. "I am grateful and humbled by the trust placed in me. At Innofactor, we have the most amazing professionals and clients in the Nordic countries, and it has been a joy and an honor to do my dream job with them for the past ten years. Innofactor's new strategy, the rapidly changing world, and artificial intelligence bring exciting opportunities for the future as well," says Anni Wahlroos. "I am very pleased with Anni's appointment as our Deputy CEO. Over the past ten years at Innofactor, Anni has demonstrated exceptional expertise and commitment to the company and her work. A skilled and motivated staff is at the core of Innofactor's operations – PeopleFirst. I am confident that Anni will continue to develop Innofactor and help the company achieve its growth targets also in the future," says CEO Sami Ensio. Espoo, November 25, 2024 INNOFACTOR PLC Board of Directors Additional information: Sami Ensio, CEO Innofactor Plc Tel. +358 50 584 2029 sami.ensio@innofactor.com Distribution: NASDAQ Helsinki Main media www.innofactor.com Innofactor Innofactor is the leading driver of the modern digital organization in the Nordic Countries for its about 1,000 customers in commercial and public sector. Innofactor has the widest solution offering and leading know-how in the Microsoft ecosystem in the Nordics. Innofactor has about 600 enthusiastic and motivated top specialists in Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The Innofactor Plc share is listed in the technology section of the main list of NASDAQ Helsinki Oy. www.innofactor.com #ModernDigitalOrganization #PeopleFirst #CreatingSmiles #BeTheRealYouUltimate Christmas song rich list including artist who makes £1m a YEAR from number one hit (and it’s not Mariah Carey)Trump Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth believes NATO should be 'scrapped' and remade Pete Hegseth faces intense scrutiny as Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon Sign up for the latest with DailyMail.com's U.S. politics newsletter By SARAH EWALL-WICE, SENIOR U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM IN WASHINGTON, DC Published: 18:50 GMT, 25 November 2024 | Updated: 19:14 GMT, 25 November 2024 e-mail 7 View comments Former Fox News personality turned President-elect Donald Trump 's pick to lead the Pentagon Pete Hegseth is facing intense scrutiny for his past words and actions including writing that NATO should be scrapped. Hegseth is gearing up for what could be a brutal Senate confirmation fight after he was named Trump's nominee for defense secretary where he could face tough questions on his world views. In his 2020 book American Crusade, Hegseth leveled a series of criticisms against the NATO alliance, calling for it to be remade. 'NATO is a relic and should be scrapped and remade in order for freedom to be truly defended,' Hegseth wrote. He also argued the 'defense of Europe is not our problem; been there, done that, twice.' NATO was established in the aftermath of World War II and currently has thirty-two member countries including the U.S. and Canada. Hegseth also lobbed similar accusations to those Trump has made about NATO for years. 'NATO is not an alliance; it’s a defense arrangement for Europe, paid for and underwritten by the United States,' he wrote. Pete Hegseth is under intense scrutiny as Trump's nominee for defense secretary. The former Fox News personality wrote in his book that NATO should be 'scrapped' and 'remade.' He also suggested one of his books that the U.S. should ignore the Geneva Conventions' rules of warfare The president-elect has long accused member nations of taking advantage of the U.S., falsely accused members of not paying their bills, and repeatedly threatened to pull the country out of the alliance. Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Friday in Florida where they discussed a range of security issues, according to a NATO spokesperson. The president-elect's defense secretary nominee not only claimed NATO is a relic but also claimed Europe had ' already allowed itself to be invaded.' 'It chose not to rebuild its militaries, happily suckling off the teat of America’s willingness to actually fight and win wars,' he claimed. Separately, the defense secretary nominee took issue in his book not just with the alliance but with its members, specifically Turkey. 'Why is Islamist Turkey a member of NATO?' he wrote. Hegseth argued Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is an ' Islamist with Islamist visions for the Middle East.' NATO was not the only post-WWII agreements Hegseth has taken aim at. He has also dismissed the Geneva Conventions and its protocols. Trump with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Palm Beach, FL on November 22 Pete Hegseth following meetings on Capitol Hill on November 21. He is under a microscope for his writings, claiming women should not serve in combat and allegations of sexual assault which he denies The Geneva Conventions are treaties that include rules aimed at limiting the brutality of war. In his 2024 book The War on Warriors, Hegseth questioned what the U.S. should do if enemies do not honor the Geneva Conventions. ' What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us?' Hegseth wrote. 'Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism? Hey, Al Qaeda: if you surrender, we might spare your life. If you do not, we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs,' he went on. Hegseth argued the U.S. is ' just fighting with one hand behind our back – and the enemy knows it.' He argued 'w ho cares what other countries think?' Hegseth's argument for ignoring the Geneva Conventions comes as he has also long defended service members accused of war crimes during his time on television, arguing they were just doing their job. While Hegseth has been tapped to lead the Pentagon with its three million service members and civilians, critics point out that he has no senior military leadership or national security experience. Pete Hegseth shared this image of himself on social media from his time serving in Iraq He served in the Minnesota National Guard and then the Army National Guard where he was an infantryman in Iraq and counterinsurgency instructor in Afghanistan. He was also part of a security platoon at Guantanamo Bay. On Sunday, Senator Tammy Duckworth, a combat veteran, called him a 'a pretty low ranking guy' in the military who never even had a position commanding a company. While Hegseth's writings and comments about the military and policy are under the microscope, he is also facing criticism for arguing women should not serve in combat. Earlier this month he repeated ' we should not have women in combat roles.' He claimed it has not made the U.S. military 'more lethal.' Meanwhile the 44-year-old nominee is also hampered by an allegation of sexual assault. Hegseth was accused by a woman of an assault at a California hotel in 2017. He denied the allegations. Hegseth was not charged as prosecutors said there was not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but Hegseth did pay the woman off to keep her quiet. Politics Share or comment on this article: Trump Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth believes NATO should be 'scrapped' and remade e-mail Add comment

As it turns out, more than just Americans were curious to check out live football games and a Beyoncé peformance on Netflix. The streamer’s big “NFL Christmas Gameday Live” stunt drew a broadcast network-level audience in the U.S., and it prompted subscribers in more than 200 countries to check out some part of the nearly nine-hour telecast, which started with the Kansas City Chiefs at Pittsburgh Steelers followed by Baltimore Ravens at Houston Texans. At the halftime of the latter game, Houston-born superstar Beyoncé performed a short set of tunes from her “Cowboy Carter” album. It was a heavily promoted appearance by Queen Bey designed to draw attention to the fact that the games were on Netflix — making its debut as a NFL live game partner — and to bring more casual viewers to the streamer’s big Christmas Day experience. Netflix cited Nielsen measurement showing that the Ravens-Texans game averaged 24.3 million viewers while the earlier Kansas City Chiefs-Pittsburgh Steelers bout brought in 24.1 million viewers. Those are more than respectable numbers for Netflix’s first outing and on the high end of what CBS, Fox, NBC or ESPN might garner with a highly anticipated NFL or college football game. Those numbers do not include the entirety of Netflix’s coverage, which began at 11 a.m. ET with pregame coverage and ran through the post-game forensics on the Texans’ 31-2 pounding by the Ravens. And the reinging champ Chiefs made quick work of the Steelers with a 29-10 victory. “Bringing our members this record-breaking day of two NFL games was the best Christmas gift we could have delivered,” said Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer. “We’re thankful for our partnership with the NFL, all of our wonderful on-air talent, and let’s please not forget the electrifying Beyoncé and the brilliant Mariah Carey.”best Christmas gift we could have delivered,” said Bela Bajaria, Netflix Chief Content Officer. “We’re thankful for our partnership with the NFL, all of our wonderful on-air talent, and let’s please not forget the electrifying Beyoncé and the brilliant Mariah Carey.” “We’re thrilled with our first Christmas Gameday on Netflix with NFL games being streamed to a global audience,” said Hans Schroeder, NFL executive vice president of media distribution. “Fans in all 50 states and over 200 countries around the world watched some of the league’s brightest stars along with a dazzling performance by Beyoncé in a historic day for the NFL.” Netflix has laid out $150 million to carry Christmas Day NFL games for three years. The deal guaranteed the streamer two two games in year one and at least one game for 2025 and 2026. The agreement is risky for the NFL given the chance for blowback from passionate football fans who don’t have access to Netflix. That sentiment was prevelant on social media during Wednesday’s daylong telecast. But Netflix made it through eight hours-plus of live game coverage as well as pre-and post-game shows without a major tech meltdown, which in and of itself is a victory for the streamer. Netflix is increasingly leaning into live sports and events as its overall business evolves and as sponsorship deals become a priority for the ad-supported tier. At the same time, Netflix offers the NFL easy, uniform access to high-end TV consumers around the world in one fell swoop. The league has invested significantly in recent years in efforts to make American football more popular in Europe, Latin America and other key territories, with a schedule of regular-season games played in such cities as London, Munich, Frankfurt, São Paulo, Mexico City and Toronto in recent years. The global nature of Netflix’s platform and subscriber base makes it hard to compare the audience turnout on Wednesday to other NFL telecasts. Last year, NBCUniversal’s Peacock streamer grabbed about 10 million viewers with its exclusive Dec. 23 telecast of a Buffalo Bills-Los Angeles Chargers game, which aired on a Saturday night with less promotion than Netflix showered on its experiment. More to come Sign up for . For the latest news, follow us on , , and .

A Nov. 14 Instagram post ( , ) uses a meme with an image of former President Jimmy Carter to claim U.S. educational achievement has plummeted. “In 1979 I created the Department of Education,” reads on-screen text in the image. “Since then America went from 1st to 24th in education.” X owner Elon Musk made the same claim in a on X, formerly Twitter, that was reposted 98,000 times. The claim also circulated widely on . How we pick and research claims | | There is no evidence to support the claim. While multiple studies have compared U.S. students to their peers in other countries, none show they ranked first in 1979, nor do any say they ranked 24th in 2024. There isn’t a definitive way to rank a country’s education quality, but multiple studies show results contrary to the trend claimed in the post. , a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, told USA TODAY that the claim is “completely inaccurate.” “These are very rough comparisons, but it can be said that U.S. middle school and secondary students have always done poorly on international tests of mathematics compared to students in other developed countries and have done better in science and reading,” Carnoy said. Many U.S. adults believe the country is either average or below average at teaching students science, technology, engineering and math, according to a released in April. : But the measuring students' reading, math and science skills from countries show more of a mixed bag. In 2022, the test – called the – found five education systems with higher average reading scores than the U.S., 25 with higher math scores and nine with higher science scores. The test has , when 32 countries participated. That year, eight countries had higher math scores than the U.S. and seven countries had higher science scores. U.S. students performed “about as well on average” in reading compared to students in other participating countries. U.S. News & World Report ranked the U.S. as the in 2024 as part of its , which are based on an international survey of nearly 17,000 people who were asked “whether a country has a well-developed public education system, whether respondents would consider attending university there and if that country has a reputation for top-quality universities.” The news outlet has only ranked countries in that way for . There is no evidence of any widespread decline in student achievement in the U.S. since 1979, Carnoy said. U.S. math scores have been below many other countries for decades. In the mid-1960s, U.S. 13-year-olds were outperformed in math by students in all but one of the 11 other countries that participated in the First International Mathematics Study, while U.S. students in their last year of high school were ranked last, according to a published in 1992. A similar study of math skills conducted in the early 1980s broke the results down by category, and found the U.S. was near the bottom in most of them. A different published by the National Center for Education Statistics in 1993 analyzed two decades of results. It says “overall trends in science, mathematics and reading suggest few changes in levels of educational achievement.” National Center for Education Statistics charts of reading and math scores for and in the U.S. don’t show significant declines since 1979. Rather, math scores are up since then while reading is at about the same level, according to the latest test results from 2022 and 2023. The rate in the U.S. for the 1979-80 school year was 71.5%, far below the 87% reported for the . The college enrollment rate for those who completed high school has risen from to , according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is important to recognize the U.S. doesn’t have only one education system – instead, each state has its own, Carnoy said. “Student performance in some states has increased greatly in the past 30 years, and not so much in other states,” he said. Carter that created the Department of Education on Oct. 17, 1979, the federal government had “for too long failed to play its own supporting role in education as effectively as it could.” It wasn’t the first time that the U.S. had a Department of Education, though. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson signed a bill that created the country’s first Department of Education, but it was in the Department of the Interior about a year later “due to concern that the department would exercise over local schools,” according to the current Education Department website. President-elect Donald Trump has eliminating the Department of Education, calling it a “bloated and radical bureaucracy.” USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response. also debunked the claim. , Nov. 19, Email exchange with USA TODAY Pew Research Center, April 24, National Center for Education Statistics, accessed Nov. 20, National Center for Education Statistics, accessed Nov. 20, National Center for Education Statistics, accessed Nov. 20, National Center for Education Statistics, accessed Nov. 20, National Center for Education Statistics, accessed Nov. 20, National Center for Education Statistics, accessed Nov. 21, National Assessment of Educational Progress, accessed Nov. 21, U.S. News & World Report, accessed Nov. 20, Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 23, Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed Nov. 21,

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By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row partly to stop Trump from pushing forward their executions. Related Articles National Politics | Elon Musk’s preschool is the next step in his anti-woke education dreams National Politics | Trump’s picks for top health jobs not just team of rivals but ‘team of opponents’ National Politics | Biden will decide on US Steel acquisition after influential panel fails to reach consensus National Politics | Biden vetoes once-bipartisan effort to add 66 federal judgeships, citing ‘hurried’ House action National Politics | A history of the Panama Canal — and why Trump can’t take it back on his own Trump criticized Biden’s decision on Monday to change the sentences of 37 of the 40 condemned people to life in prison without parole, arguing that it was senseless and insulted the families of their victims. Biden said converting their punishments to life imprisonment was consistent with the moratorium imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder. “Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” he wrote on his social media site. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!” Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations. The president-elect wrote that he would direct the department to pursue the death penalty “as soon as I am inaugurated,” but was vague on what specific actions he may take and said they would be in cases of “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.” He highlighted the cases of two men who were on federal death row for slaying a woman and a girl, had admitted to killing more and had their sentences commuted by Biden. On the campaign trail, Trump often called for expanding the federal death penalty — including for those who kill police officers, those convicted of drug and human trafficking, and migrants who kill U.S. citizens. “Trump has been fairly consistent in wanting to sort of say that he thinks the death penalty is an important tool and he wants to use it,” said Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing at Ohio State University’s law school. “But whether practically any of that can happen, either under existing law or other laws, is a heavy lift.” Berman said Trump’s statement at this point seems to be just a response to Biden’s commutation. “I’m inclined to think it’s still in sort of more the rhetoric phase. Just, ‘don’t worry. The new sheriff is coming. I like the death penalty,’” he said. Most Americans have historically supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to decades of annual polling by Gallup, but support has declined over the past few decades. About half of Americans were in favor in an October poll, while roughly 7 in 10 Americans backed capital punishment for murderers in 2007. Before Biden’s commutation, there were 40 federal death row inmates compared with more than 2,000 who have been sentenced to death by states. “The reality is all of these crimes are typically handled by the states,” Berman said. A question is whether the Trump administration would try to take over some state murder cases, such as those related to drug trafficking or smuggling. He could also attempt to take cases from states that have abolished the death penalty. Berman said Trump’s statement, along with some recent actions by states, may present an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider a precedent that considers the death penalty disproportionate punishment for rape. “That would literally take decades to unfold. It’s not something that is going to happen overnight,” Berman said. Before one of Trump’s rallies on Aug. 20, his prepared remarks released to the media said he would announce he would ask for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers. But Trump never delivered the line. One of the men Trump highlighted on Tuesday was ex-Marine Jorge Avila Torrez, who was sentenced to death for killing a sailor in Virginia and later pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbing of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old girl in a suburban Chicago park several years before. The other man, Thomas Steven Sanders, was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and slaying of a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana, days after shooting the girl’s mother in a wildlife park in Arizona. Court records show he admitted to both killings. Some families of victims expressed anger with Biden’s decision, but the president had faced pressure from advocacy groups urging him to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The ACLU and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were some of the groups that applauded the decision. Biden left three federal inmates to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018 , the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle L. Price and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

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Maybe the thought first occurred to you during the end of March, when a graceful, modern update of a Shakespearean comedy and a groundbreaking science-fiction movie opened on the same weekend. Or perhaps it was the wave of summer releases that hit screens, from the single most anticipated blockbuster ever to Stanley Kubrick’s swan song, that made you think something special was starting to happen. Or it could have been the tsunami of zeitgeist-surfing movies — all from a generation of filmmakers who, having come out of the Sundance labs and/or cut their teeth on music videos, would resurrect the maverick spirit of the ’70s auteurs — that convinced you that 1999 wasn’t just shaping up to be a pretty good year at the movies. It was turning into a genuinely great year at the movies. In fact, after the Golden Age apex of 1939 and the New Hollywood highlight of 1974, the last gasp of the ’90s is now considered to be one of single best 12-month stretches of American moviemaking ever. Add in the number of international films that were finally making their ways to our screens during those 12 months, and it would turn out to be a banner annum for American moviegoing as well. Not to mention that the lineups at both Cannes and Venice would earmark this as a standout year for the festival circuit as well. Thanks to a perfect storm of talent, timing, and taste, 1999 would quickly be viewed as a major milestone for the medium. And a quarter of a century later, it only looks that much more like a pinnacle. So, in honor of the 25th anniversary, we’ve ranked the top 99 movies of 1999 — the best of the best, the box-office stand-outs, the big-name blockbusters, the brilliant indies and foreign-language landmarks, the bold documentaries, and a few of the batshit cult-movie outliers that helped define a truly outstanding year to be a movie lover. A quick note about our selection process: For better or worse, we’re going by both release dates tied to a movie’s theatrical run in America *and* film festival premiere dates. So, for example, you’ll see Audition, Ghost Dog, Ratcatcher and Beau Travail here, even though each of these extraordinary works didn’t officially grace American screens for a week or longer until 2000. Yet you will also see a few leftovers from previous years, such as Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Princess Mononoke and Run Lola Run, since they didn’t get full U.S. releases until 1999. (There’s one notable exception, which we’ll single out below.) After the success of his 1994 low-budget hit Clerks and its more mainstream follow-ups Mallrats and C hasing Amy, slacker wonderkind Kevin Smith attempted this ambitious riff on Catholicism, which was deemed to be “polluted” by the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property. The film’s Weimer Nineties casting is cute: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are fallen angels trying to exploit a Papal loophole to get back into heaven; Chris Rock is a Black apostle written out of the Bible because of racism, Salma Hayek is a celestial muse turned earthbound stripper; George Carlin drops by as a New Jersey bishop trying to give the Church a cool new image; and Alanis Morrissette appears as God. By mish-mashing references to Star Wars , The Piano, and Home Alone in with its riffs on stuff like the Virgin Birth, Sodom and Gomorrah, and plenary indulgences, the movie also genuinely reflected the experience of Catholic kids raised in the Seventies and Eighties who’d transmogrified their ambivalence towards of the faith of their upbringing into an equally iconic embrace of a new moral system – the Church of Pop Culture. Today, we might call Smith’s attitude “lol something matters.” —Jon Dolan You can understand why writer-director Troy Duffy’s crime thriller helped signal the end of a certain type of tough-guy movie that plagued the decade — even by the ’90s indie-filmmaker-watches-first-two-Tarantino-movies-too-many-times standards, the abundance of self-conscious flourishes, proto-edgelord offensiveness and performances for which “bad” is too kind a descriptive is a lot to take. But you also get why this film still has a cult following, especially once the Irish-American MacManus brothers (played by Sean Patrick Flannery and future Walking Dead MVP Norman Reedus) decide to go from South Boston ruffians to full-on vigilantes, one hail-mary at a time. Plus it has one of Willm Dafoe’s more gloriously eccentric performances, and considering we’re talking about this guy , that’s saying something. —David Fear In West Canaan, Texas, they worship God, guns and the gridiron state champions known as the West Canaan Coyotes — just not in that order. In this community, star quarterback Lance Harbor (Paul Walker) is considered the second coming of Roger Staubach, and whatever Coach Bud Kilmer (Jon Voight) says is akin to gospel. As for the team’s second-string QB, Jonathan Moxon (James Van Der Beek), he’s content to warm the bench and read the paperback of Slaughterhouse Five he has stashed in his playbook. Then Harbor gets hurt, Moxon has to sub in, and he discovers firsthand the agonies and ecstasies of end-zone heroism. Director Brian Robbins’ fan favorite is best remembered today for its jock-jam soundtrack, the late Ron Lester’s performance as offensive guard/good ol’ boy Billy Bob, and extolling the seductive virtues of “whip-cream bikinis.” In terms of portraying high-school football’s cultural hold on Lone Star small towns, it isn’t fit to hold Friday Night Lights’ jockstrap. But it does give you a Hall-of-Fame sports movie villain in the form of Voight’s monomaniacal coach, whose tyranny on and off the field is truly terrifying. —D.F. It may not reach the cinematic heights of his early classics Billy Madiso n and Happy Gilmore , but Adam Sandler’s contributions to the Class of ’99 features all the regular Sandler Players (Steve Buscemi as a bum, Rob Schneider as a delivery-man buddy) and hits all the reliable beats. To wit: Kinda-loser-with-heart-of-gold Sonny Koufax hatches a scheme to impress folks, which involves cavorting around Manhattan with an “adopted” five-year-old son (played by twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse). He teaches the kid the joys of pissing on public buildings and tripping passing rollerbladers. Then Sonny falls for a very pretty, very accomplished woman — in this case, Nineties staple Joey Lauren Adams. Yes, the film’s attitude about the fairly random gay couple Sonny hangs with, while progressive-seeming at the time, reads much less so today. And yes, Sonny’s obsession with his friend’s fiancée (Leslie Mann) having waitressed at Hooters feels, dare we say, slightly misogynistic. But even at his knowingly frattiest, Sandler is nothing less than endearing. —Maria Fontoura Wes Craven took a break from his master-of-horror duties to helm this based-on-a-true-story melodrama about Roberta Guaspari, a single mother who gets a job teaching the violin to kids in East Harlem. Everyone from her fellow teachers to the students’ parents are skeptical of what appears to be another stranger with a savior complex, until Guaspari ends up empowering these young musicians; when the successful program is later in jeopardy thanks to citywide budget cuts, a host of real-life virtuosos come to the rescue. After Scream became a hit, Craven leveraged his industry currency to convince his Miramax patrons he was the right man to bring this to the screen. The result feels like a lot of the other semi-schmaltzy the studio put out in the late 1990s, though it helps that Meryl Streep is playing Guaspari, and that everyone from Angela Bassett to Cloris Leachman to Gloria Estefan is filling out the supporting cast bench. —D.F. Frank McCourt’s harrowing memoir of an Irish childhood characterized by poverty, hardship and tragedy got the prestige-lit event-movie treatment — it was released on Christmas Day in 1999 — and while it didn’t have quite the impact that the bestselling book did, it still left audiences dazed and reeling. No one would ever accuse Alan Parker ( Midnight Express, Angel Heart, Pink Floyd: The Wall ) of being subtle, and the director treats the squalor and the familial strife like he’s directing a war movie. What keeps this from devolving into standard poverty porn are the performances, notably Emily Watson as Frank’s long-suffering Ma; Robert Carlyle as his well-meaning drunk of a dad; Joe Breen as the young Frank (a literal poster boy, given that it’s his face peering out from a stark, black-and-white picture in the film’s marketing image); and Michael Legge as the teenage Frank, who manages to write his way out of hell and into heaven, i.e. the Statue of Liberty’s home. —D.F. It will forever be known as the 007 movie starring Denise Richards as an American nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones. [ Feel free to add your own snarky comment here. ] Yet the 19th James Bond films, the third to star Pierce Brosnan, and the last time the MI6 agent was licensed to kill in the 20th century has its moments, including a riff on The Spy Who Loved Me ‘s ski chase and Brosnan being both straddled and strangled by top-notch femme fatale Sophie Marceau. Throw in Robert Carlyle’s Renaud, a chilling variation on the unfeeling Bond villain in that he literally has lost his sense of touch, Robbie Coltrane reprising his Goldeneye Russian mobster and the longest pre-credits sequence in the series’ history, and it’s enough to make you forget the franchise was in danger of running in fumes. (You know this is a very much a late ’90s entry as well, given that Goldie plays a henchman and you can hear turntablist scratching added to John Berry’s theme music .) Brosnan would play Bond one more time, in 2002’s Die Another Day, before ceding the role to the actor who’d recast the iconic character for the 21st century . —D.F. You can’t overstate the cultural saturation of Austin Powers in the late Nineties — he shagged the zeitgeist, baby! Mike Myers and Jay Roach created a global obsession with the Swinging London spy who got frozen in 1967, then defrosted to battle his nemesis, Dr. Evil. The original 1997 Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was a comedy polished with love and finesse, and while the summer-of-’99 sequel was an obvious bash-it-out quickie, it was still popcorn-pukingly funny. You got Myers once again doing double duty; Heather Graham as CIA agent Felicity Shagwell; Verne Troyer as Mini-Me; a music interlude from Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello, a lunar base divided into Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa; Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger”; and the Russian assassin Ivana Humpalot. The third Powers entry may have sunk the franchise, but this second one kept the grooviness factor on 10. —Rob Sheffield A.K.A. the movie in which a pre- Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. gets slapped by Mike Tyson — and that’s maybe the fifth or sixth wildest thing that happens in writer/director/ accused sexual predator James Toback ‘s satire on race, celebrity, and cultural appropriation. Brooke Shields is a documentary filmmaker making a movie about the impact of Black culture on white teens; Ben Stiller is a corrupt cop trying to get a basketball player (portrayed by New York Knicks’ Allan Houston) to throw a game; everyone from Claudia Schiffer to members of the Wu Tang Clan show up at one point another and improvise scenes. It’s the sort of film that opens with an explicit interracial threesome in Central Park and only gets more messy, outrageous and provocative from there. It’s unforgettable, at the very least. —D.F. A 17th-century Italian violinmaker believes he has finally crafted the perfect instrument — then tragedy strikes, and after varnishing it in a blood-red hue, he demands this cursed item be stricken from his sight. Over the next few centuries, the violin will change hands a number of times, and end up affecting the lives of German child prodigy, a British wastrel, a Chinese apparatchik and an American appraiser (Samuel L. Jackson) who becomes obsessed with this legendary instrument when it comes up for auction. This multinational production from French-Canadian filmmaker François Girard ( Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould ) is a good example of the extravagant, globetrotting costume dramas that filled arthouses throughout the decade, and gives Jackson a nice chance to play against type. —D.F. “I killed the teen dream. Deal with it.” With these gentle words, Rose McGowan takes her place in history as the teen-movie villain-queen canon. McGowan, Julie Benz, and Rebecca Gayheart play a trio of mean girls who rule the halls of Reagan High, until they accidentally snuff a rival with a piece of candy. It was arguably the darkest teen comedy since Heathers — and it remains one of the funniest. Writer/director Darren Stein made this a nonstop barrage of Wildean bitch-quips (“I don’t believe we’ve met, what with the cruel politics of high school and all”) and Nineties fashion. Plus it’s got a hell of a soundtrack, too, with the Donnas rocking the prom. McGowan chews up her “Satan in heels” role, especially when she orders her minions, “You are gonna walk into that school and strut your shit down that hallway like everything is peachy fucking keen !” — R.S. Martin Scorsese reunited with his Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader for yet another nocturnal tour through the mean streets of New York City, and this time God’s Lonely Man isn’t a cabbie but a paramedic, perpetually working the graveyard shift and perilously perched on the edge of sanity. As played by somewhat restrained (for him) Nicholas Cage, this burnt-out EMT keeps hallucinating the ghost of a young woman he couldn’t keep from flatlining and getting paired with a series of increasingly more unstable partners. Salvation comes in the form of Mary (Patricia Arquette), who our hero meets during a call involving her father, but even she can’t totally save his soul. The closest thing to God in this world is a dispatch operator who keeps sending them through Gotham’s seven circles of hell, and is blessed with the voice of Scorsese himself. It’s a flawed movie, to be sure, yet it’s still proof that even the auteur’s minor works can still be wild rides. —D.F. To say that time has not been kind to the Best Picture Oscar-winner of 1999 would be the understatement of the year — and that notion still applies even if you don’t factor what’s happened regarding the movie’s lead actor in the past seven years . Sam Mendes’ satirical look at the “perfect” American family was considered a significant statement on the fragile, fractured mindset of the paterfamilias at the end of the American century, and while you wouldn’t call Lester Burnham’s midlife crisis aspirational, the movie definitely treats regression back to his teen self as something like suburban liberation. The shot of a plastic bag whirling in circles, courtesy of Wes Bentley’s boy-next-door videographer, is no longer a shorthand for existential ennui or finding the finding the beauty in the mundane; the movie’s signature image of a teenage cheerleader naked under roses, however, has become twice as icky. Even at the time, the idea that this was the standout movie of a standout filmmaking year felt questionable. Yet it still went home with five Oscars, so.... —D.F. The MCU was not even a glint in Kevin Feige’s eye when this parody of superhero teams — sprung directly from the pages of Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot Comics — hit screens in the middle of ’99. (For context: The first X-Men movie was still a year away from being released.) When the beloved do-gooder Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear) is kidnapped by his nemesis Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush), Champion City suddenly finds itself without its main champion. For such Grade-Z superheroes as Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller), the Blue Raja (Hank Azaria) and the Shoveler (William Macy), however, this is finally the opportunity to prove they belong in the big leagues. Quicker than you can “Avengers Assemble!”, they’ve recruited a handful of equally ambitious also-rans under the moniker “Mystery Men” — such as Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell), the Bowler (Janeane Garafalo) and Spleen (Paul Reubens), whose superpower is toxic flatulence — and try to save the day. At the dawn of the new millennia, this was a mildly funny comedy with a handful of alt-comedy and A-list talent. Now, in an age when every third-tier Marvel group gets their own franchise, it’s a hundred times more hilarious. —D.F. Walter (Robert De Niro), a bigoted retiree who suffers a stroke, must learn to regain his speech by seeing a singing coach, a transgender woman named Rusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman). The odd-couple pairing, was one of the first Hollywood movies to focus on trans characters, a community that filmmaker Joel Schumacher had observed firsthand. (“The people that inhabit Flawless are very real for me,” the writer-director said . “Schumacher, “These are interesting communities and people pass them by without even noticing them.”) With modern eyes, we can see how this film would be made differently today — for instance, a trans actor would play Rusty, although Hoffman’s performance is exceedingly lovely and nuanced, eschewing stereotypes. Nonetheless, the movie stands as a bold step into a world that, to that point, mainstream American cinema had been too timid to touch. —Tim Grierson Spike Lee returns to the long, hot New York summer of 1977, when a serial killer known as “the Son of Sam” had everyone in the five boroughs on edge. If you’ve read Jonathan Mahler’s invaluable history Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning, then you know this was a crazy year, from the Yankees’ Reggie Jackson breaking records to looters breaking shop windows during an epic blackout. For Lee and his cowriters Victor Colicchio and a pre- Sopranos Michael Imperioli, all that terror and chaos was mostly a good excuse to dive into cultural divides and the neighborhood tribalism that’s still part of NYC’s DNA. It’s a bit of a spirit-of-’77 hodgepodge, complete with disco and punk scenes, a Plato’s Retreat interlude, and the era’s paranoia dialed up to 11, along with a straight-outta-early-Scorsese storyline in which John Leguizamo’s nice Catholic hairdresser struggles with a serious Madonna v. Whore complex. Both the camerawork by Ellen Kuras and the acting — notably Adrien Brody as a part-time male hustler and full-time CBGB’s habitue, and Mira Sorvino and Jennifer Esposito as two Brooklynites navigating respectively rocky relationship terrain — keep this from devolving into late ’70s cosplay. —D.F. Many were thrown by the fact that David Mamet, the poet of the four-letter word, would be interested in something as genteel as Terence Rattigan’s play, set in upper-crust England in the 1910s. But at heart, Mamet has always cared about ethics and behavior — why we’re drawn to do the things that we do — and so it was no surprise that his adaptation would focus on moral codes and the sinister strictures of social mores. Sir Robert Morton (Jeremy Northam) is a renowned defense attorney hired to represent Ronnie Winslow (Guy Edwards), a teenage naval cadet accused of stealing a postal note, resulting in his expulsion. This is no simple courtroom drama, however, with Mamet equally focusing on how the trial affects the Winslow family — in particular, the boy’s prideful father (Nigel Hawthorne), who risks his reputation on the word of his son. Nobody drops a F-bomb, but the man behind Glengarry Glen Ross and The Spanish Prisoner remains fixated on duplicity, self-deception, and how the people around us are far more unknowable than we could possibly grasp. —T.G. Celebrated author John Irving adapted his own bestselling novel, which tells the story of Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire), who grows up in an orphanage in Maine. The doctor who runs the home, Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine), also performs secret abortions, and trains young Homer, a reluctant pupil, in obstetrics. After Charlize Theron’s Candy shows up (on the arm of Paul Rudd, in a rare dramatic role as a World War II fighter pilot) in need of Larch’s services, Homer is suddenly inspired to leave the orphanage and experience life — which includes apple-picking (for work), fornicating with Candy (for pleasure), and uncovering dark family secrets about his fellow pickers that compel him to use his ill-begotten doctoring skills. Directed by Lasse Hallström, the film won Irving a screenplay Oscar as well as a second Best Supporting Actor statuette for Michael Caine. But its most lasting contribution to the culture may be Larch’s ritual bedtime farewell to his charges. Say it with us now: Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England. —M.F. A frustrated writer (Jeremy Theobald) begins pathologically stalking random strangers on the streets of London, partially out of a need for inspiration and partially out of boredom. One of his marks turns out to be a thrill-seeking thief named Cobb (Alex Haw), who is less interested in stealing things for profit than the perverse glee of disrupting people’s lives. Soon, the stalker is recruited to join as a partner in crime. Then he spies one of their victims in a bar — a sultry blonde (Lucy Russell) — and decides on a whim to approach her. Nothing is ever quite what it seems here, however. Made on a shoestring budget and shot in black & white, this modest, clever thriller played a few festivals and got a brief run in the spring of ’99. It might’ve been just another one of those come-and-go indie projects were it not for the fact that its first-time filmmaker, a 28-year-old named Christopher Nolan, was about to become one of the defining writer-directors of the 21st century. And when you watch this inside-out neo-noir now, you can see that so many of the thematic obsessions and stylistic tics associated with the Oscar-winner’s work were all there, right from the very beginning. —D.F. Every screenwriter faces two great fears: losing their edge and losing their position in an industry that already treats them like lepers. Stephen Phillips, the sad-sack scribe at the center of writer-director-comic genius Albert Brooks’ comedy, happens to be dealing with both issues at once. Luckily, his best friend (Jeff Bridges) thinks he has the solution: work with a muse — it turns out they’re real! — who can help get his career back on track. Then Phillips meets this high-maintenance mythological woman played by Sharon Stone, and every aspect of his life is completely thrown into chaos. Brooks’ farce works better as a satire of Hollywood fickleness than a self-directed star vehicle for his neurotic persona (Martin Scorsese’s rant about remaking Raging Bull, “but with a thing guy... like, really thin!” remains a hilarious self-own, while the joke in which James Cameron is advised to “stay away from water” plays 20 times funnier post- Avatar sequel). To say Stone steals the movie suggests that Brooks didn’t hand this to her on a silver platter from the get-go; the divine-diva-run-amuck role feels tailor-made for her strengths as a comedian, and dear Zeus, does she ever make the most of it. —D.F. It’s a scenario familiar to most of us: One minute, you’re making sweet, sweet love to your husband on your expensive boat, the next you’re waking up with his blood all over you, he’s nowhere to be found and the cops, unsurprisingly, have lots of questions. This revenge movie became one of the big surprise hits of 1999, and helped establish Ashley Judd as a name-above-the-title lead outside of the Indiewood world. Accused of murdering her spouse, her everywoman is sent to prison, only to discover that — spoiler alert! — her husband (Bruce Greenwood) faked his death and left her to take the fall. Thanks to the titular legal ruling, she can’t be convicted for the same murder twice, which clears the path for her to hunt him down and actually kill the rat bastard. Meanwhile, her parole officer Tommy Lee Jones, who has plenty of experience hunting down fugitives , is hot on her trail. Is it ridiculous? Of course! Is it also the sort of late ’90s star B movie that turns solid actors into A-list movie stars, and makes you miss when these kind of films were part of a well-balanced moviegoing diet? Also yes! —D.F. Disney’s big animated movie of ’99 wasn’t a fairy tale, an ancient fable, or a princess-driven musical — instead, they opted for a tween-friendly take on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famed king of the jungle. Raised by Glen Close’s motherly ape, the man-cub will grow up to sound like Tony Goldwyn, look like Eddie Vedder circa Ten and have the agility of Tony Hawk on a half-pipe. Everything’s hunky-dory until British explorers show up, complete with a hunter intent on bagging and selling the jungle’s simian residents. On the plus side, they’ve also brought a comely young lass named Jane (Minnie Driver) and, well, you know the rest. We may eventually forgive the soundtrack’s insipid Phil Collins’ song “You’ll Be in My Heart” for winning the Oscar over “Blame Canada!,” though that day won’t be today. But awards snafus aside, the Mouse House’s animation is particularly on-point, the set pieces move like gangbusters (see: this fight between Mama Ape and a leopard over Lil’ Tarzan ) and Driver gives her heroine the perfect mix of wit, grit and romantic grace. —D.F. It was the end-of-the-decade romp that set out to be a mash-up of every teen rom-com ever made—it’s practically a Now That’s What I Call High-School Prom Movies! sampler. But it’s pure charm, thanks to the power couple of Rachel Leigh Cook and Freddie Prinze Jr. It’s your basic Pygmalion -via- Breakfast Club makeover: Can the misfit art student turn into the prom queen just by taking off her glasses? Can the hero make a stupid bet but still win her heart at the end? Can you imagine a high school with Kieran Culkin, Paul Walker, Anna Paquin and Lil’ Kim? And most importantly, can Usher play the prom DJ who sends everyone home happy with “The Rockafeller Skank”? The answers are: Yes, yes, yes, and check it out now, the funk soul brother. She’s All That was the last movie Gene Siskel ever reviewed; he came through with his final thumbs-up. —R.S. Jim Carrey went full Method-acting madness to play divisive comedian Andy Kaufman; he was so devoted to diving into the role that, in fact, that he drove everyone from his fellow cast members to director Milos Forman around him on set crazy. (Costar Danny DeVito looks like he’s ready to slug him at any moment.) The performance and the biopic remain remarkable, however, with one genius paying homage to another. Kaufman cannonballs from one outrageous subversion of celebrity niceties to another, from wrestling women to reading the entirety of The Great Gatsby to an audience in defiance of his club audiences. Few artist portraits are as playful or as combative, offering no middle ground for the viewer — you’re either on Kaufman’s (and Carrey’s) uncompromising wavelength or your sense of humor needs a tuneup. In a decade in which “selling out” was still considered a sin, Man on the Moon found hilarity and poignancy in an unapologetically joyous original insisting on being himself. —T.G. The star of Bull Durham and Field of Dreams returns to the mound for one more affectionate ode to America’s pastime. You don’t need to know a splitter from a 98-mile-an-hour heater to appreciate the salty pathos Kevin Costner brings to Billy Chapel, an aging Detroit ace looking to close out his career with a perfect game — that is, if he can keep his mind from wandering to Kelly Preston’s dream-girl-who-got-away, introduced through flashbacks that lay out the bumpy course of their romance. Sam Raimi, the Evil Dead maverick calling the pitches, forgoes his usual demonic fastball in favor of a style as relaxed as a Sunday on the couch with a double header on the tube. It’s a right-down-the-middle Dad Movie — and a nice victory lap for an actor who always looks at home with his eyes on home plate. —A.A. D owd Fresh off her visually stunning, Tony-winning Broadway adaptation of The Lion King , director Julie Taymor attacked the big screen with an equally bold vision, turning one of Shakespeare’s least-loved tragedies into a striking, absurd extravaganza. Anthony Hopkins, at his most scene-chewing virtuosic, makes a meal out of Titus Andronicus, the mighty Roman general who returns home victorious after slaying the Goths, his impetuous execution of the eldest son of the defeated Goth regent Tamora (Jessica Lange) backfiring when she becomes Queen of Rome, setting the stage for a series of increasingly twisted reprisals between the two combatants. Written when the Bard was young and looking for a bloody, gruesome hit that would strike a chord with the masses, Titus Andronicus lacks the elegance of his later masterworks like Hamlet or King Lear. But Taymor’s visual flair, cheeky irreverence and inspired extravagance argue that it may be Shakespeare’s most shamelessly entertaining drama. In her impertinent, lavish retelling, revenge is a dish best served cold — and also with a bit of a wink. —T.G . There had been screen adaptations of August Strindberg’s 1888 drama about the sexual tension between a Count’s daughter and her father’s personal valet both before and after director Mike Figgis ( Leaving Las Vegas, The Loss of Sexual Innocence ) gave us his interpretation, including a well-respected 2014 movie starring Colin Farrell and Jessica Chastain. But there’s something about this ’99 iteration, starring Saffron Burrows as the title character and Peter Mullan as the object of her fancy and her cruelty, that taps into the more feral aspects of the story’s master-and-servant dynamic. The handheld camerawork only ups the instability of the situation, making you feel as if everything will either explode or unravel at a moment’s notice. It’s proof that the play could still be a powder keg more than a century after the fact. —D.F. The 1990s were a weird decade for Woody Allen. (We’re talking professionally — personally is a whole other discussion.) He made some of his biggest hits ( Bullets Over Broadway, Mighty Aphrodite ), one bona fide masterwork ( Husbands and Wives ), and a lot of miscellaneous debris. But he closed the 20th century out on a surprisingly high note, with this cross between a mockumentary about a fake jazz -guitar legend named Emmet Ray (Sean Penn) and an oddball rom-com. A contemporary of Django Reinhardt, Ray is talented jerk with big ideas; you wouldn’t think he’d fall for the mute laundress (Samantha Morton) he meets at the beach, and yet they make for a cute couple. It’s only later that he realizes she’ll be the one who got away, and that heartbreak makes for good artistic inspiration. And while Penn provides the proper amount of lowdown, it’s Morton’s absolutely sweet, silent-comedy take on his object of affection that truly makes the movie work. —D.F. Oscar Wilde’s 19th century play gets a late-20th century Miramax makeover, complete with Masterpiece Theater -worthy production design, a Brit cast who excelled in adding extra bite to Wilde’s witty bon mots (lookin’ at you, Rupert Everett and Jeremy Northam) and a host of late 1990s stars (Julianne Moore, Minnie Driver, and a positively babyfaced Cate Blanchett). Everett’s Lord Goring, “the idlest man in London,” wants nothing more than to traipse around the city and indulge in his every lascivious whim. Then a blast from his past, Mrs. Cheverly (Moore), shows up, with political maneuvers, blackmail and revenge on her mind. “Are you not just a little bit please to see me?” she asks Goring. “Possibly even less than that,” he replies. If you just tittered a little reading this as you took a sip of Earl Grey tea, then this adaptation is most certainly for you. —D.F. Joe (David Strathairn), a small-town Alaska handyman, is trying to live down a tragic mistake from his past. He falls for a singer, Donna (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), who’s dealing with her own emotional baggage. The limbo of the title refers not just to this frozen hinterland but to the hesitant main characters who risk giving love a try, only to have their lives upended by a shock twist involving Joe’s brother. As always, filmmaker John Sayles has a sharp eye for the customs and rhythms of the world he chronicles, which give this movie a richness that extends to the weathered, weary performances from Strathairn and Mastrantonio. As for the film’s divisive ending, it speaks eloquently to the anxiety of the unknowns that await us all — from day to day, we’re never sure if we’re living in a gentle comedy or a dark thriller. —T.G. Some advice to filmmakers hoping to turn classic kids-lit into memorable movies: Get Michael J. Fox to voice your animated, anthropomorphized heroes. The former Marty McFly is the definitely the secret sauce that makes Rob Minkoff’s take on E.B. White’s famous book — about a tiny white mouse who is adopted by humans, and must eventually choose between his biological rodent parents and his new Homo sapien family — work way better than you’d expect it to. There’s an innocence and joy he brings to his miniature CGI hero, especially in scenes with his initially reluctant new brother Jonathan Lipnicki, as well as a pathos to lines such as “I feel an empty space inside me, and I just wanna know what was there before.” The rest of the cast is nothing to sneeze at, of course — this breezy, enjoyable kids’ flick is the answer to the trivia question, “What movies features the talents of Geena Davis, Hugh Laurie, Nathan Lane, Chazz Palminteri, Dabney Coleman, Steve Zahn, Jennifer Tilly, Julia Sweeney, Brian Doyle-Murray, Estelle Getty, David Alan Grier, Bruno Kirby and comic legend Stan Freberg?” But it’s Fox who gives this “little” movie a big heart. —D.F. Starting with its extended, single-shot opening — which immediately connects the dots between the theater space, the politically active artist and trod-upon everyday people — writer-director Tim Robbins’ boisterous drama shows that its willing to risk wearing both its ambitions and its intentions all over its sleeve. Combining the behind-the-scenes workings of the Federal Theater Program, Orson Welles attempt to stage the lefty musical The Cradle Will Rock for the FTP, and Nelson Rockefeller’s commissioning of Diego Rivera to paint a mural in the lobby of Rockfeller Center (along with a few other burbling subplots), this look back at the complicated relationship between commerce, the arts and agitprop is itself a work of agitprop, sounding the alarm about what happens when creative types cozy up to corporate bigwigs. Robbins raided his Rolodex for the fit-to-burst ensemble cast, which includes Bill Murray, Cherry Jones, Hank Azaria, Emily Watson, Susan Sarandon, John Turturro, Paul Giamatti, Vanessa Redgrave, Rubén Blades, two Cusacks (John and John) and both members of Tenacious D. And while no one would accuse it of being anything less than unganily, it’s the sort of overly sincere big swing we could use more of right now. —D.F. “Just what the hell did you do to the sharks!?” asks Samuel L. Jackson, with the same booming outrage he’d later reserve for motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane. The pseudoscientific answer to his question might have put a toothy grin on Michael Crichton’s face. Crossbreeding Jaws with Jurassic Park , junk-cinema maestro Renny Harlin unleashes a school of brainy maneaters — some brought to life via the prehistoric wonder of animatronics — on a water-logged research facility. The improbabilities mount faster than the bodies. Is that Michael Rapaport as a brilliant scientist? Did that shark just try to cook LL Cool J in an oven? What gives this glorified B-movie some real bite is the merciless glee in which it chows down on its overqualified cast. No role is so big that it guarantees survival. No monologue is so inspirational that it can’t be ferociously cut short. —A.A.D. Tim Burton applies his Grand Guignol mall-goth vibes to Washington Irving’s short story, about a hapless man named Ichabod Crane who has a first-hand encounter with local urban legend “the Headless Horseman.” This time around, Crane gets promoted from schoolteacher to a New York City police constable sent upstate to investigate a series of mysterious decapitations; he also goes from the gangly, lanky figure of the Disney cartoon to resembling Johnny Depp, who pairs well with Christina Ricci’s pale-skinned heiress Katrina Van Tassel. The vibe here channels a lot of vintage Hammer horror and the 1960s Edgar Allan Poe cycle of films from American International Pictures, and while the overal pedigree is strong (Francis Ford Coppola is an executive producer, Seven ‘s Andrew Kevin Walker wrote the screenplay and god-tier cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki shot it), it’s very much a Burton film from start to finish. —D.F. In the West Virginia town of Coalwood circa 1957, you either work in the mines or you teach kids who will eventually grow up to work in the mines. You don’t usually go on to become a rocket scientist. But young Homer Hickam — look how baby-faced you were, Jake Gyllenhaal! — watches the recently launched Sputnik go blazing through the night sky, he suddenly becomes obsessed with building his own rocket. His friends and the school brainiac help him build miniature prototypes. His working-class father (Chris Cooper, in is his other big toxic-repressed-male role of ’99) disapproves of such foolishness. A kindly teacher (Laura Dern) thinks this project will not only take him to the national science fair, but possibly be his ticket to a brighter future. Director Joe Johnston also made The Rocketeer, so he’s clearly down for the cause as well. A lovely biopic about a real-life dreamer — Hickam would becoime a real-life aerospace engineer at NASA — which adds a nice bit of grit to its Norman Rockwell-esque Americana. —D.F. Before she was Carmela Soprano, Edie Falco gave us the title character in Eric Mendelsohn’s black-and-white indie gem: an aspiring actor with a unflappably upbeat attitude. She’s on her way to make it big in the moving pictures in Hollywood, USA, i.e. the same Tinseltown that just chewed up and spit out her old high school crush, a would-be filmmaker named David (Aaron Harnick). Meanwhile, both of their respective sets of parents — including the great Madeline Kahn, in her final film role — seem to be stuck living lives of quiet desperation and an extremely symbolic eclipse is enveloping their hometown of Babylon, Long Island, in darkness. It’s a great example of how the New York wing of late-1990s independent filmmakers were combining the wry DIY aesthetic of Hal Hartley, etc., with the whimsical humanism of their Park City cohorts. That Mendelsohn’s character study won him the Best Director award at that year’s Sundance isn’t the least bit shocking. —D.F. Ralph Fiennes had already demonstrated he was an expert at showing simmering passions coming to a spilling-over boil courtesy of The English Patient three years earlier — and for this adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel about jealousy, adultery and Catholic guilt, he happily turns the temperature up even further. Tracing an on-again, off-again obsession intertwined with WWII, this look at the fallout of a tempestuous affair between Fiennes’ novelist and Julianne Moore — who’s the wife of an old acquaintance — balances prestigious stiff-upper-lip period drama with explicit scenes of two lovers in a mutual state of heat. Indeed, there may not be a more dizzying, swoonworthy moment in either actors’ filmography (or director Neil Jordan’s back catalog) than the couple walking out a restaurant after a faux-polite conversation and suddenly kissing each other compulsively under a raincoat. And as in Greene’s novel, there are matters of faith that complicate their infidelity, adding a whole other layer to their unbridled lust during wartime. —D.F. The tagline for Ang Lee’s stab at a ’70s-style revisionist Western set during the Civil War was that soldiers “didn’t fight for the Blue and the Gray... they fought for their friends and their family.” It helps set the context for his unusual, highly visceral take on the War of Southern Aggression, given that we’re asked to ride with pro-Confederate guerrillas like Quantrill’s Raiders and Missouri’s “Bushwhackers” — any recognizable, binary notions of good-vs.-evil and us-vs.-them get muddied from the moment the movie hits the ground running. The scenes of battle aren’t designed to be rah-rah rousing, and in following Tobey Maguire’s young, German immigrant (who takes up the Confederate cause out of revenge) and Jeffrey Wright’s former slave as they seek shelter in between raids, you get to see their more personal conflict play out off the battlefield as well. Kudos go to singer Jewel Kilcher as well, who makes the most of her role as a widow who crosses their path. In a year filled with so many extraordinary movies across the board, it was easy for something like this to fall through the cracks. Now that Lee’s longer “director’s cut” is out in the world, this is one of those ’99 movies ripe for rediscovery. —D.F. Who better to tackle Herman Melville’s 1852 novel Pierre; or, the Ambiguities — a “curiosity of literature” filled with sex, subversiveness and a warped spirituality that had critics calling its creator immoral — than a filmmaker who understood what it was like to push envelopes and piss off tastemakers? Like the Moby Dick author, Leos Carax was coming off a magnum opus (1991’s The Lovers on the Bridge ), and the French writer-director’s adaptation manages to tap into his romanticism (capital and lower-case R versions) and a palpable sense of rage. Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu, a.k.a. Gerard’s kid) has a doting mom (Catherine Deneuve), a fiancé (Delphine Chuillot), and a successful novel under his belt. Then, one night in the forest, he encounters Isabelle (Yekaterina Golubeva), and falls so head over heels for her that not even the disclosure that she’s his half-sister can stop them from an amour most fou. What follows is extremely unsimulated sex, a waterfall of blood, some incredible Scott Walker songs, and the sense that you’ve either witnessed the demented work of a genius or the work of a demented genius. We favor the second one. —D.F. Based on Denis Johnson’s short-story collection, this stark, starling indie film follows FH (Billy Crudup), a junkie flailing through the 1970s, eventually clawing his way to recovery. Premiering at Telluride in 1999 and released in the States the following year, the movie is raw but funny, seeing in its shambling protagonist the sort of idiosyncratic antihero who wouldn’t have been out of place during the New Hollywood era. The supporting cast features a who’s who of dazzling character actors and rising stars, including Samantha Morton, Denis Leary, Jack Black and Michael Shannon. But the focus is always on how heroin’s promise of transcendence is undermined by the ugliness of all it takes from its luckless users. —T.G. What, you thought Tony Soprano had a lock on the whole Mafia-boss-goes-to-therapy racket? This Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal comedy, about a cosa nostra capo getting in touch with his feelings thanks to a reluctant, neurotic shrink — we’ll let you guess which actor portrays which character — hit theaters a few months after HBO’s flagship show premiered. But the idea had been percolating way before Tony started freaking out over a family of ducks, and plays the idea of a tough-guy gangster not for pathos but strictly for laughs. It helps that the legendary Harold Ramis is calling the shots (he also contributed to the script alongside Kenneth Lonergan and The Larry Sanders Show writer Peter Tolan), and that De Niro also seems to be having a blast both channeling and making fun of his past Mob-movie turns. To paraphrase the man himself: You’re good, you. You are very good, Analyze This. Read it in a De Niro voice and it sounds better. —D.F. Following a prolific period in the 1980s when he produced several classics in quick succession, including Castle in the Sky and My Neighbor Totoro , legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki went five years between 1992’s Porco Rosso and this epic fantasy tale, and you can feel the effort and care in every frame of the film, which made his allegiance to the natural world as overt and impassioned as any in his remarkable, environmentalist oeuvre. Set in medieval Japan, Princess Mononoke chronicles a growing conflict between the human world and the spirits who protect the forest — in the middle of that feud is a noble prince, Ashitaka, who’s on a journey to rid himself of a terrible curse. This beautifully hand-drawn drama — the lengthiest of Miyazaki’s films — took two years after its Japanese premiere to finally reach the United States, where it was released by Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein, who dared to suggest trims to the master. Thankfully, Miyazaki wasn’t having it. “I did go to New York to meet this man, this Harvey Weinstein,” he recalled in 2005 , “and I was bombarded with this aggressive attack, all these demands for cuts.” With great pride, Miyazaki added, “I defeated him.” —T.G. George Festrunk and Mr. Robinson, together at last! Franz Oz’s sublimely silly showbiz satire casts Steve Martin as a modern Ed Wood shooting a Z-grade science fiction opus guerilla-style, with a movie star who doesn’t even know he’s in the movie. Eddie Murphy is that star, a vain, flakey A-lister being clandestinely filmed (re: stalked) by the amateur production. Murphy also plays the actor’s nerdy twin brother — a bit of inspired dual casting that allows this gifted chameleon to both spoof his own celebrity and offer another gentle caricature of misfit sensitivity, à la The Nutty Professor . Oz clowns on everything from the insidious influence of Scientology to the sexual quid pro quo driving so much casting without ever stooping to mean-spiritedness. That’s the joy of his farce: It looks at the cynical truth of Hollywood through widely innocent eyes, all while colliding the unexpectedly simpatico shtick of two comedy legends. —A.A.D. Like every 007 before and after him, Pierce Brosnan has played a few debonair ladykillers outside of the tuxedo, too. A mere three months shy of reprising the role of James Bond in The World is Not Enough (see above), he unofficially refined it, deviously tweaking his preppy charisma to portray a suave art thief in this effortlessly stylish remake of a 1968 Steve McQueen caper. Rene Russo matches Brosnan step for step as the smart, sexy insurance investigator on his tail; the two dance wittily around their mutual attraction, before surrendering to it during the kind of steamy Hollywood love scene now as rare as an original Monet. Most actual Bond movies would kill for their chemistry — or for a scene as nimble and playful as the closing heist, which Die Hard director John McTiernan sets to the jaunty, timeless accompaniment of Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman.” —A.A.D. The ’90s loved the aesthetics of the 1960s. (Remember that every present hippie smiley face?) But maybe no film did kitschy ’60s aesthetics better than Andrew Fleming’s delightful but also delicious political comedy. Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams are two goofy girls who accidentally stumble upon the Watergate break-in. They soon become persons of interest for both Richard Nixon himself (a perfect Dan Hedaya) and Woodward and Bernstein (Will Ferrell and Bruce McCulloch), all while maintaining their gloriously cluelessness. Tricky Dick never stood a chance. —Esther Zuckerman This love-letter to indie-rock heroes Fugazi was a lot like the band’s music: uncompromising and intense, at times a bit tedious but ultimately uniquely rewarding. Dispensing with crutches like narration or contextual hand holding, filmmaker Jem Cohen, a trusted friend of the band for years, deep-dives into a impressionistic blur of live and studio footage, as well as interviews with the band and their fans (including an adorable clip of singer-guitarists Ian McKaye and Guy Picciotto on a cable access show hosted by a teenage girl). The performance clips are often spellbinding, including an instantly legendary moment from a show in a high school gym where Picciotto sings suspended upside down from a basketball hoop. And the band’s unparalleled integrity and determination come through in every grainy, disjointed, process-obsessed, passion-filled minute. —J.D. Anthony Hopkins isn’t the only stocky Brit with a deranged chef on his resume of ’90s roles. To his alphabetical right stands Cockney tough guy Bob Hoskins, who brings a rather subtle, subdued menace to this haunting thriller about an Irish teenager who goes looking for her lost love and instead falls into the clutches of a seemingly kindly cook with some dangerously unresolved mommy issues. Just don’t expect cheap serial-killer thrills — not with Atom Egoyan behind the camera and keyboard. The Exotica director fractures his William Trevor source material into another puzzle-box tragedy of childhood trauma, predatory men, and a past that keeps bleeding (via a trickle of flashbacks) into the present. The sound design, an overlapping din of voices, industrial noise, and staccato violin, suggests the room tone of a disturbed mind. But it’s the English bulldog in the lead who really opens a window into that space, letting us see the pitiable boy behind the madman. —A.A.D. There’s a part of us who gets giddy at the idea that, having thrilled to Kate Winslet’s performance in Titanic, a gaggle of recently converted Winslet-ites then flocked to see this truly cracked psychodrama, about a young Australian woman who falls under the spell of a cult-like leader while in India. Once she’s eventually cajoled back to her hometown in Sydney, Winslet’s character is sequestered with an American (Harvey Keitel) who’s an expert in deprogramming brainwashed ex-cult members. Let’s just say that neither of them plan on giving up without a fight, and that the lines of what is and isn’t acceptable social behavior gets severely blurred in Jane Campion’s underrated take on spiritual voids and sexual power plays. Had Winslet’s previous movie not already been named Hideous Kinky, that title would have been equally appropriate here. —D.F. Most tales of how we tamed the wild, wild west leave out some of the more grisly footnotes — luckily, director Antonia Bird’s berserk frontier-horror parable is more than happy to fill in the gaps. A traumatized army lieutenant (Guy Pearce) is transferred to a remote outpost in California after the Mexican-American War had left him “unfit” for normal duty. He’s barely settled in with his fellow misfits and scallywags when a mysterious Scottish drifter (Robert Carlyle) shows up on their doorstep. It seems he was a member of a settlers’ party heading West through the Sierra Nevadas, and after they became stranded without food for several weeks... let’s just say that desperate times begat desperate measures. The soldiers accompany him to the scene of the crime to rescue his fellow survivors , at which point they discover that both old habits and new appetites are hard to shake off. A singular mix of revisionist Western, stalker flick, survivalist thriller and, yes, even wackadoo comedy, Ravenous distinguished itself as one of the sickest jokes of 1999 — a reminder that America’s origin story includes cowards, cannibals and good old-fashioned psychopaths. —D.F. In 1975, Bob Dylan released “Hurricane,” a song that decried the false conviction of middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was given lifetime sentences for the 1966 killing of three people in a New Jersey bar. Director Norman Jewison chronicles his story in a stirring biopic that is part sports film and part courtroom drama, starring Denzel Washington, masterful as usual playing a man lethal in the ring but powerless in the face of a cruel legal system. The protest anthem helped keep Carter’s case alive in the culture years after he was initially incarcerated (he eventually had his conviction overturned in 1985). Yet the movie aided in putting a human face to this torn-from-the headlines story of racism and injustice, as well as reminding audiences of the work that activist groups (like the one led by Liev Schreiber in the film) do to free the innocent from prison. —T.G.

It was an eventful Monday night in Philadelphia, where tempers flared and referees messed up. While they managed to grab the win over the San Antonio Spurs , it wasn’t all good. 76ers’ KJ Martin suffered an injury to his left foot. An MRI revealed the injury to be a stress reaction on Tuesday. The Sixers are attempting to climb up the Eastern Conference standings after starting the season in dismal fashion. Martin’s injury only adds to the season’s injury struggles going back to the Sixers preseason. 76ers Injury News Forces Improving Forward On Ice Philadelphia 76ers’ KJ Martin Goes Down With Injury The good news for Martin is that his injury will only need two weeks before being re-evaluated, as PHLY Sports’ Kyle Nuebeck reported. So, providing his foot heals nicely over the next couple of weeks, Martin could be back on the floor sooner rather than later. For him, that is the hope. Martin has come on strong of late after a slew of injuries the 76ers have grappled with, providing the six-year forward with an opportunity to log more minutes and take on a larger role with the team. He has averaged 20 minutes per game this season. He’s also shooting a career-best in field goal (61.6) and three-point (38.1) percentage. Coming into the season, his second in Philly, Martin wasn’t expected to carry a significant role given the several players ahead of him on the depth chart. However, since the door opened for him to play more, he has produced at a high level. His production has aided him in becoming a more significant part of Nick Nurse’s rotation. Martin has even started in six of the 76ers last dozen games, where he has averaged 8.8 points in 24 minutes per game. It’s a disappointing development for Martin, who has filled in nicely for the Sixers. Given that they could be active as the trade deadline approaches, his future in Philly is more uncertain now. Martin’s contract is trade-friendly, so we’ll see how his status with the team amounts as the weeks go by. Is Philly on the Up? Apart from Martin’s injury and Jared McCain ‘s a couple of weeks ago, the Sixers have played it relatively safe in the last few weeks. By that, I mean, no major injuries to star players. Joel Embiid got through the injury to his face and is playing again, although he’s only playing every second game lately. Paul George has laced up in seven consecutive games and nine of the Sixers last ten. As for Tyrese Maxey , he has been lighting it up since his return from a lengthy absence. The Sixers have won seven of their last ten matchups. They remain closer to the bottom of the East than the top. However, they are winning more than they’re losing these days. Are we seeing something similar to what the Milwaukee Bucks started to put together in mid-November? At 10-17, the Sixers still have much work to do. That being said, it’s not impossible for them to move up the standings more over the next few weeks if they continue to win more than lose. In keeping the main thing the main thing, it all comes down to the availability of their stars—Embiid more so than George and Maxey. The Sixers are just 27 games into the season, and time remains on their side for now. The East is full of underperforming teams. They should be in their most aggressive mode to take advantage of a weak conference. This article first appeared on Last Word On Sports and was syndicated with permission.SHANGHAI: China’s CATL, the world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker, on Tuesday launched a new EV chassis that it says can withstand a 120-kph (75-mph) frontal impact without catching fire or exploding, as it touts safety as a key selling point. The chassis has a battery capable of running for about 1,000 km (621.37 miles) on a single charge and reduces the time required for mass production of a vehicle to 12-18 months from the traditional 36 months or longer, CATL said. The company aims to sell the new EV platform - called “panshi” in Chinese, which translates to “bedrock” - to premium car makers seeking to accelerate development and reduce costs. “Due to the extremely high crash speed and intensity, there has been no previous instance of any new energy vehicle daring to challenge a 120km/h frontal pole impact test,” said Ni Jun, CATL chief manufacturing officer. The speed for a frontal impact safety test in the commonly used China New Car Assessment Program is 56km/h. Chinese EV brand Avatr, which is co-owned by CATL, state-owned Changan Auto and technology giant Huawei, will be the first to develop EV models based on CATL’s Bedrock chassis, Chen Zhao, president of Avatr said at the press conference. He did not specify when such a model would be launched. Such EV platforms are also known in the industry as “skateboard chassis”, or flexible platforms that combine electric motors, batteries, controls and suspensions. Other players in this area include Chinese EV maker Xpeng and Shanghai-based engineering firm Launch Design. The chassis is crucial to CATL Chairman Robin Zeng’s ambitions to push the Chinese battery giant towards further growth. Besides this, CATL is also looking into micro power grids and is building a battery swapping service. CATL has a global market share of roughly 37 percent in EV batteries, according to battery market tracker SNE Research. Zeng disclosed the panshi project to Reuters in November, saying it could slash the cost of developing a new EV from billions of dollars to just $10 million and could make a niche EV firm profitable by selling just 10,000 cars a year. This in turn could open the industry to new EV players in economies without established automakers, and Zeng said at the time that CATL had shown the panshi technology to Porsche for a potential luxury EV and to investors in the United Arab Emirates eager to start a local EV brand. The company has been working on developing EV platforms with battery integrated to the chassis directly since 2020 and has formed partnerships with automakers including Vinfast, BAIC and Neta to develop models based on the platform over the past two years. — ReutersFLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — New York Jets running back Breece Hall could play Sunday at Jacksonville after missing a game with a knee injury. Hall has been dealing with a hyperextension and injured MCL in his left knee that sidelined him last Sunday at Miami. But he was a full participant at practice Friday after sitting out Wednesday and Thursday. Hall was officially listed as questionable on the team's final injury report. “He looks good right now,” interim coach Jeff Ulbrich said. “So it’s promising.” Hall leads the Jets with 692 yards rushing and four touchdown runs, and he also has 401 yards receiving and two scores on 46 catches. A pair of rookies helped New York offset Hall's absence last weekend, with Braelon Allen rushing for 43 yards on 11 carries, and Isaiah Davis getting 40 yards on 10 attempts and scoring his first rushing touchdown. “We’re hopeful and we’ll see how it goes,” Ulbrich said of Hall. The Jets will get star cornerback Sauce Gardner back after he missed a game with a hamstring injury, but New York's secondary appears likely to be without cornerback D.J. Reed because of a groin injury. Reed was listed as doubtful after he didn't practice Thursday or Friday. “It’s been something that’s kind of lingered here and there,” Ulbrich said. “It’s gotten aggravated and then it went away, and then it got aggravated again. So, it’s just dealing with that.” Backup Brandin Echols is out with a shoulder injury, so veteran Isaiah Oliver or rookie Qwan'tez Stiggers could get the start opposite Gardner if Reed can't play. Kendall Sheffield also could be elevated from the practice squad for the second game in a row. Ulbrich said kick returner Kene Nwangwu will be placed on injured reserve after breaking a hand last weekend at Miami. The injury came a week after he was selected the AFC special teams player of the week in his Jets debut, during which he returned a kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown and forced a fumble in a loss to Seattle. “To put him out there with a broken hand, just thought it’d be counterproductive for him and for us as a team, so it unfortunately cuts the season short and what a bright light he was,” Ulbrich said. “What an amazing future I think he has in this league. With saying that, he’s already been a really good player for quite a while, so (it's) unfortunate, but he’ll be back.” Offensive lineman Xavier Newman (groin) is doubtful, while right guard Alijah Vera-Tucker (ankle) and RT Morgan Moses (wrist) are questionable. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL