This is so cliched, cloying and forcibly sentimental, it crushes the very spirit it means to uplift. The title character (Pierrino Mascarino), described as an “elderly Italian peasant” in the press notes, visits his squabbling family in suburban Chicago and teaches them the meaning of life. Mainly he does this by saying things such as

I expected a movie centered around Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer to echo the visual style of his work, but it was still shocking to see how perfectly Scarlett Johansson’s face mimics that of his most famous subject. The story, adapted from Tracy Chevalier’s novel, is a fairly standard depiction of the anguished artist. As Vermeer

If every family has its own essence, then In America – about a recently immigrated Irish couple and their two girls – captures the essence of its family with the candor of one of its own members. Partly this is because director Jim Sheridan based it on his own experiences, yet it’s also a result

This wants to be a grown-up romance – there is much angst about sex and bad breakups and the like – but Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet keep the movie on the level of puppy love. Both can be found at the buy-a-star store in the aisle labeled “cute,” which makes sitting through their movie

This 2003 drama follows a widowed mother and her daughter in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. As they struggle to make ends meet in that closed society, their only hope is to have the girl pose as a boy so she can work. The movie’s roots go back to the neorealist tradition of post-World War II Italy. Using