Phone Booth (2002)

Action/Adventure Rated R

Watching Phone Booth – in which a New York City publicist (Colin Farrell) is pinned down by an unseen sniper while making a call – is like examining a newly knit sweater for holes. You spend so much time making sure everything’s seamless that you miss out on the larger work. Director Joel Schumacher and

Rebound (2005)

Family Rated PG

Rebound, in which mugging Martin Lawrence plays a disgraced college basketball coach who offers to lead his former junior high’s miserable team as a form of penance, intermittently captures the pitiable nature of awkward kids learning a new sport, including a sad shot of a free-throw attempt lamely returning to earth halfway down the lane.

Spartan (2004)

Thriller Rated R

Val Kilmer gives what should have been a career-revitalizing performance in writer-director David Mamet’s Spartan, a government-conspiracy drama that casts an oblique eye on modern military politics. As Robert Scott, a government operative called in when the president’s daughter is kidnapped, Kilmer has just the right deadpan style for Mamet’s trademark dialogue. Deception proves to

Tsotsi (2005)

Drama Rated R

Winner of 2006’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, this thug-rehabilitation movie goes to exaggerated lengths to redeem its criminal antihero. Presley Chweneyagae gives a riveting performance as a thieving teen who steals a woman’s car without realizing her baby is in the back seat. A crisis of conscience ensues, as well as a crash course in

Number 23, The (2007)

Thriller Rated R

“Don’t freak out, but as I write this review there are exactly 23 paper clips in the drawer of my desk.

Welcome to Mooseport (2004)

Comedy Rated PG-13

Ray Romano plays another everyday schmo who’s nice enough but something of a wallflower – at least until a former U.S. president (Gene Hackman) runs against him for mayor. Comedy comfort food, this is never quite as funny as it should have been – its insistence on geniality holds it back – but the movie

Breach (2007)

Drama Rated PG-13

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Ghost Rider (2007)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

Among the hokiest of comic-book movies, Ghost Rider goes down in flames, but not in the way it means to. Nicolas Cage stars as motorcycle stunt rider Johnny Blaze, a bounty hunter for the devil. This basically means that at night, when in the presence of evil, he takes the form of a flaming skeleton

Black Sheep (2007)

Comedy Rated PG-13

“If you have the bad taste for this sort of thing, it’s rarely done better, even by Peter Jackson.

Blow (2001)

Drama Rated R

An epic sob story about a real-life drug dealer (Johnny Depp) who flooded the United States with cocaine in the ’70s and is now sitting in jail. Blow isn’t content to paint a conflicted portrait of an anti-hero, but instead verges on hero worship. It’s a misguided movie at best, a distasteful one at heart.