How to Deal (2003)

Drama Rated PG-13

Mandy Moore’s teen melodrama features a birth, a death, a funeral and a wedding, yet it handles such swooning material with something that can almost be called tact. Add the star’s willingness to play a teen with a brain and you get enough genuine moments to make the soap-opera tendencies forgivable.

New World, The (2005)

Drama Rated PG-13

Nothing new for writer-director Terrence Malick (Badlands, The Thin Red Line), whose pet subject – mankind’s despoiling of an Edenic setting – is here transferred to the legend of John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher). The tale may be perfectly suited to Malick’s languorous cinematography and portentous voice-over narration, but by now these

Nicotina (2003)

Action/Adventure Rated R

With its bursts of violence, recurring characters and interweaving plots, Nicotina seems determined to ape every move ever made by Quentin Tarantino. What’s missing is the clever dialogue, riveting characters and sheer pop style of Tarantino at his best. Instead we get Diego Luna (Y Tu Mama Tambien) as a genial computer hacker who gets

Night Watch (2004)

Action/Adventure Rated R

If you could meld the Lord of the Rings pictures with The Matrix, Blade and the Harry Potter films – and watch the result with your finger on the fast-forward button – you might get something close to this Russian import. Writer-director Timur Bekmambetov, adapting a novel by Sergei Lukyanenko, throws enough stylishness against the

Phantom of the Opera, The (2004)

Musical Rated PG-13

I’ve always suspected Andrew Lloyd Webber’s opus to be one of the cheesier musical concepts, and this big-screen version – complete with squealing guitars, swirling capes and approximately 3.2 billion candles – did nothing to convince me otherwise. This is supposed to be a swooning Gothic romance, but it struck me as a particularly unconvincing

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.