Coach Carter (2005)

Drama Rated PG-13

NBA fans feeling gloomy about the me-first personalities plaguing the league can find some comfort in this fact-based sports drama about a high school basketball coach (Samuel L. Jackson) who made national headlines in 1999 for benching his winning team until they raised their grades. Worth seeing simply for the moment when Jackson launches into

Dreamcatcher (2003)

Thriller Rated R

Dreamcatcher begins as one thing, turns into something else and then becomes something completely different. None of them are any good. A clumsy adaptation of a Stephen King novel, the movie involves – among other things – alien worms, boyhood pals, telepathy, secret government forces, extreme intestinal irritation and the defiantly bushy eyebrows of Morgan

Rear Window (1954)

Thriller Rated NR

“We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms.” So says Thelma Ritter in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. If she’s right, the movies are partly to blame. This is a movie about watching others – it taps into the very voyeurism that drives the cinema. Ritter plays Stella, nurse to James Stewart’s L.B. Jefferies, a photographer who

Calendar Girls (2003)

Comedy Rated PG-13

Why should the guys in The Full Monty have all the fun? Calendar Girls, based on a true story, features middle-aged members of one of Britain’s staid Women’s Institute groups who decide to pose without clothes for their annual calendar, shocking their rural town and unexpectedly become the sensation of the nation. Sure, it’s charming,

Dirty Pretty Things (2002)

Thriller Rated R

A riveting combination of thriller and social drama, Dirty Pretty Things steeps us in London’s exploited immigrant subculture. The story follows a doctor-turned-hotel clerk from Nigeria (a mesmerizing Chiwetel Ejiofor) who stumbles across a heinous black-market operation at his hotel and is forced to either participate or be deported. From director Stephen Frears.

Get Rich or Die Tryin (2005)

Drama Rated R

If you’re building a rags-to-riches gangster-rap drama around a real rags-to-riches gangster rapper, it might be a good idea to showcase the music that is supposed to distinguish him from every other boy in the hood that the movies have given us since, well, 1991’s Boyz N the Hood. Get Rich, loosely based on the

House of Sand and Fog (2003)

Drama Rated R

This adaptation of the Andre Dubus III novel works itself up into a lather over a story – namely the conflict between a former addict (Jennifer Connelly) who loses her house for not paying taxes and an Iranian immigrant (Ben Kingsley) who buys it – that’s better suited to an episode of “The People’s Court.”

State and Main (2000)

Comedy Rated R

Writer-director David Mamet’s satire – in which a film crew converges on a small New England town – thinks it’s taking a big bite out of Hollywood, but even a talented cast (Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker) can’t disguise the fact that most of the jokes are obvious nibbles.

Ladies Man, The (2000)

Comedy Rated R

This is a big-screen version of the “Saturday Night Live” sketch starring Tim Meadows. Really, what else do you need to know?

Thrill Ride: The Science of Fun (1997)

Documentary Rated NR

Thrill Ride botches its one interesting subject – amusement park roller coasters – before moving on to an extremely tedious examination of “ride films,” which combine motion simulation and moviemaking. Despite some predictably stimulating first-person shots, most of the technology on display is sadly dated.