Juwanna Mann (2002)

Comedy Rated PG-13

This would-be comedy, about a professional basketball player who tries out for a women’s team, is so astonishingly, obviously bad you’re left wondering who even considered going to see it. I suppose star Miguel A. Nunez Jr. has a few relatives who attended out of duty, but for the rest of us, the broad, redundant

Empire (2002)

Drama Rated R

Empire pits a Bronx drug dealer (John Leguizamo) against a yuppie broker (Peter Sarsgaard) after the broker coaxes the dealer to try his hand at high finance, only to disappear with the earnest money. What could have been a gritty exploration of cultural conflict instead spends too much time on the generic thug life of

My Date with Drew (2004)

Documentary Rated PG

You couldn’t imagine a more genial guy than Brian Herzlinger, whose movie documents his attempts to have dinner with longtime crush Drew Barrymore, yet the creepiness of the endeavor still lingers. He’s the kind of stalker you want to pet. That doesn’t mean you’ll want to watch My Date with Drew. Full of grainy, in-your-face

Next Best Thing, The (2000)

Drama Rated PG-13

Silly, superficial and even infantile, this misguided drama about a single woman (Madonna) who has a baby after a one-night stand with her gay best friend (Rupert Everett) thinks it’s making a brave social statement about the makeup of the new American family. But it’s too poorly crafted – check out the inept lighting –

Pollock (2000)

Drama Rated R

Occasionally interesting, but mostly a paint-by-numbers biography of American artist Jackson Pollock. Star Ed Harris, who also directed and produced, has moments of emotional power, but he never sews them together into a complete and revealing portrait of the man.

Shopgirl (2005)

Drama Rated R

Most romantic comedies bury the loneliness and disappointment that is inevitably a part of any romance in one tidy sequence, usually involving the hero or heroine walking despondently in the rain. Shopgirl – adapted from Steve Martin’s novella about a love triangle involving a drifting Los Angeles sales clerk (Claire Danes, sad and sweet), a

Treasure Planet (2002)

Action/Adventure Rated PG

Itself a source of classics, Disney brings a respectful touch to this animated, interstellar version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s revered “Treasure Island.” The story still focuses on the moral education of young Jim Hawkins, while the wonderfully inventive visual palette retains plenty of nautical details. It’s an anachronistic approach that leaves room for both pirates

Cinderella Man (2005)

Drama Rated PG-13

Director Ron Howard’s period drama takes an undeniably inspiring based-on-fact story – that of Depression-era boxer James Braddock (Russell Crowe), whose career saw an unlikely resurgence when fighting became the only way he could feed his family – and admirably lets the story tell itself. The facts have enough uplift here to override the need

Chronicles of Riddick, The (2004)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

You would never guess this is a sequel to the modestly budgeted 2000 science-fiction fright-fest Pitch Black, starring Vin Diesel as an ex-con and reluctant hero who can see in the dark. Chronicles bloats before your eyes – in terms of sets, special effects, narrative – as if it wanted to be another entry in

Dragonfly (2002)

Drama Rated PG-13

It’s hard to decide who’s more dull here: Kevin Costner or his movie. Costner stars as a doctor whose late pediatrician wife tries to contact him through her former patients, but the film can’t manage either the open-hearted romanticism of Ghost or the subtle spookiness of The Sixth Sense. Instead, director Tom Shadyac proves to