Monster’s Ball (2001)

Drama Rated R

The acting is as good as you’ve heard – Oscar winner Halle Berry pulls off way more than a makeup-free publicity stunt – but this somber drama detailing the cautious romance between a white prison guard (Billy Bob Thornton) and a black waitress throws too many tragedies at its characters’ feet. For every real emotion

Osmosis Jones (2001)

Comedy Rated PG

Vulgar but inventive, Osmosis Jones alternates between live-action scenes detailing the poor health habits of a zoo employee (Bill Murray) and animated segments depicting the resulting trauma inside his body. Drawn with vivid imagination and fueled by a rapid-fire wit, Osmosis Jones becomes the funkiest, funniest instructional health video you have ever seen. Featuring the

Other Side of Heaven, The (2001)

Drama Rated PG-13

This earnest but silly saga about a Mormon missionary sent to the remote island kingdom of Tonga in the 1950s consists of a series of crises (a child missing during a hurricane, alcoholism) that the evangelist manages to neatly solve within 10 minutes each. We learn little about either the island culture or the Mormon

Zodiac (2007)

Thriller Rated R

“The fixated cop is a thriller cliche, but Fincher helps us understand how you could become addicted to the prospect of finding just one more clue around the next corner.

Robots (2005)

Family Rated PG

Blue Sky Studios made a delightful foray into feature animation with 2002’s Ice Age, but this follow-up – set in a completely mechanical world – is overprogrammed. Competing themes and a convoluted narrative combine with increasingly frantic set pieces. Robots ultimately looks like an assembly line – and feels like something made on one. With

Comedy of Power (2007)

Drama Rated NR

French director Claude Chabrol died Sunday at 80. A review of one of his more recent films…

Stepford Wives, The (2004)

Comedy Rated PG-13

A messy, confused remake of the 1975 feminist horror comedy, in which the housewife-as-automaton metaphor is stretched almost unbearably thin. Nicole Kidman is the headstrong heroine this time around, while director Frank Oz and screenwriter Paul Rudnick stumble updating the material. Kidman plays a ruthless career woman who gets sent to Stepford as her comeuppance,

Easy A (2010)

Comedy Rated PG-13

"A tone-deaf attempt to transplant The Scarlet Letter – or at least its consideration of puritanical judgment – to a contemporary high-school setting."

Vanity Fair (2004)

Drama Rated PG-13

The ruthless, aspiring class president Reese Witherspoon played in 1999’s Election could be a descendant of Becky Sharp, the conniving centerpiece of Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1848 expose of Victorian high society. Which gives Witherspoon another chance to exhibit the mischievous edge that juts out now and then like her javelin of a chin.

Boiler Room (2000)

Drama Rated R

Money, money money. That’s what everyone wants in Boiler Room, an often riveting update of 1987’s Wall Street set in the same New York stockbroker scene. You’ve seen this before, but the macho posturing, seductive language and breakneck energy that all go into the art of the sale still fascinate. With Ben Affleck and Vin