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It may be too late for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to hope for Oscar nominations. (Both Potter and The Two Towersare being ignored by Academy members for one of their most spectacular achievements—makeup—in favor of The Time Machine!)

But it can't hurt that this week the Vatican came forward with an official opinion on whether the boy wizard is an evil influence on youngsters. The representative for the Catholic Church did not specify whether the Pope had advance-ordered Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the next installment in J.K. Rowling's phenomenally successful series of novels. Meanwhile, Movieguide's Ted Baehr continues to argue that the Goblet of Fire will lead kids straight to the eternal goblet of fire with its "selfish, occult, New Age worldview." He calls it "visual terrorism."

Elsewhere, Greeks are being championed as God's gift to the big screen this year. Gary DeMar (RazorMouth) saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and exclaims, "Of all the reviews I've read, no one really gets the movie's importance." He goes on to elaborate on the secret of Nia Vardalos's success.

While these reviewers are looking back at past favorites, a crop of foreign films that have earned raves overseas are finally showing up in American theaters.

City of God , the critically acclaimed film from Fernando Meirelles, takes viewers to a troubled barrio in Brazil. This "city" is actually a sprawling government housing development for homeless people of the Rio de Janeiro region. In this relatively un-policed community, drug lords run the show. Using a cast of young people who really live in these conditions, Meirelles focuses his story on a teenage boy named Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues).

Rocket struggles to stay clean, but it is impossible to avoid encounters with the temperamental gang members—they are his neighbors and his friends. Fortunately, Rocket has higher ambitions. He wants to be a photographer, which puts him in good stead: the egotistical gang leaders are eager to get their defiant faces in the paper while the papers want exciting material. Rocket thus walks a thin line between criminal corruption and artist integrity. He wants to tell the truth, but he risks his life in doing so.

Rocket's story parallels that of a trigger-happy drug dealer called Li'l Ze (Firmino da Hora), whose growth from an angry child to a bloodthirsty warlord is the film's most troubling thread. There is a clear moral: you can't play with the devil without being burned.

City of God begins in the '60s, jumps to the '70s, and ends in the '80s. During the end credits, we are treated to real news clips that reveal just how true-to-life the film has been. What sets this film apart as more than just another gangster epic is the searing intensity and authenticity of Meirelles's vision, supported by his tremendous skill with a camera. The result is every bit as solid a film as Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas and much more successful than Scorsese's Gangs of New York. Meirelles gets better performances out of these untrained kids than most American directors get out of Hollywood stars.

Bob Nusser (Preview) gives City of God a "negative acceptability rating" because of "graphic violence, rough language, sexual content, and drug abuse." And Movieguide's critic argues, "The filmmakers are happy with just chronicling the disease that took control of this slum, not in offering any positive solutions."

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February (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47