Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

Drama Rated PG

In 1931, three biracial girls were removed from their Aboriginal families by the Australian government as part of a program meant to “civilize” them. Escaping from their captors, the children walked more than 1,200 miles back to their home, mostly by following an endless fence meant to keep rabbits out of farmland. Director Phillip Noyce

Pokemon 4ever (2002)

Family Rated G

This installment in the Japanese animated franchise offers elaborate nonsense seemingly designed to torture parents. The animation remains rudimentary – most of the characters look like they’re only half-drawn – while the hammering music and sound effects probably would alarm Amnesty International. As for the overriding concept of the Pokemon universe, in which kids train

Rollerball (2002)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

MGM Pictures repeatedly delayed the release date of this remake, apparently waiting for the movie to become watchable. The studio should have kept waiting. Astonishingly inept, the film is a rushing blur of incoherent action sequences, stilted narrative patches and a chase scene filmed, for no clear reason, in the green tint of night-vision goggles.

Raise Your Voice (2004)

Drama Rated PG

More cable fare from Hilary Duff, Raise Your Voice essentially spends its entire running time trying to convince Duff of her wonderful singing abilities. She plays a sweet-natured teen who loves to belt it out with her school choir until a series of orchestrated tragedies and plot complications strips her of love for music. For

Sahara (2005)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

Matthew McConaughey’s modern-day explorer Dirk Pitt – the priceless name and character come from Clive Cussler’s series of novels – is a riff on Indiana Jones, if Indiana Jones had spent three years in the weight room. McConaughey may be weighty, but Sahara – in which the star, Steve Zahn and Penelope Cruz chase a

Shipping News, The (2001)

Drama Rated R

The same problems I had with E. Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel – an inert main character, an overdone sense of misery – aren’t solved in this adaptation, which stars Kevin Spacey as a dull doormat who starts a new life in his ancestral home of Newfoundland after the death of his poisonously vindictive wife.

Stealth (2005)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

Just when you’ve written this off as a tired retread of Top Gun – this time with the twist of an artificially intelligent fighter plane – director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) throws enough impressive action into the mix to offer some surprises. The rest mainly consists of Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel and

Tadpole (2002)

Comedy Rated PG-13

Forced quirkiness built around a flimsy gimmick, this independent feature follows an outrageously cultured 15-year-old (Aaron Stanford) who goes about wooing his stepmother (Sigourney Weaver) by quoting Voltaire. While the precocious high-schooler of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore – this movie’s obvious model – existed in a carefully cultivated fairy-tale world, the hero here is all too

Torque (2004)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

Another silly hot-rod movie, with fewer thrills than unintentional laughs. Martin Henderson plays a biker who is caught between drug dealers and the FBI. His red-leather racing suit has “Carpe Diem” emblazoned on the front, but Dead Poets Society this is not.

Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)

Family Rated PG

If you find most sitcom kids to be thoroughly annoying, by all means avoid this remake of the 1950 family film, starring Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt as the overwhelmed parents of 12. Littered with poisonously precocious brats, the picture mostly consists of forced comic set pieces involving swinging from chandeliers and pet frogs jumping