Biker Boyz (2003)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

Like exotic birds conducting an elaborate mating ritual, the motorcycle racers in Biker Boyz huff and preen in their Day-Glo leather outfits, trading tough-guy stares with each other and sultry ones with the cleavage-baring babes in the crowd. It all amounts to one of the silliest movies around, a laughable piece of posturing that makes

Broken Flowers (2005)

Comedy Rated R

Bill Murray continued his study of disillusioned men in dire need of jump-starts with this story of an aging ladies man on a road trip to visit four former flames. He would seem to have found the perfect pairing in director Jim Jarmusch, whose stone-faced comedies share with Murray what can only be called an

City by the Sea (2002)

Drama Rated R

City by the Sea does with artful subtlety what the similarly themed Road to Perdition did with artsy pretension: Both movies explore the way legacies of violence are passed down from fathers to sons. Robert DeNiro plays a New York City detective who discovers the prime suspect in his latest murder investigation is his estranged,

Distant (2002)

Drama Rated R

A movie that’s less about drama than the possibility of drama, Distant is one of those imports built on silent passages and prevailing ambiguity. Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan matches such art-film cliches with his theme: the emotional distance between people that can be so difficult to bridge. Set in Istanbul, the movie follows a

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)

Comedy Rated PG-13

How appropriate that a comedy about the alleged sport of dodge ball is as mean-spirited as this hilarious farce. As one character says, dodge ball is a game of “violence, exclusion and degradation.” Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller face off as opposing team leaders – Vaughn’s is made up of fitness misfits, Stiller’s of fitness

Hannibal (2001)

Horror Rated R

This sequel to The Silence of the Lambs is a disappointing comic spectacle, in which gruesome details (disembowelments, sauteed brains) are offset by lighthearted dialogue that turns one of the movies’ greatest villains into a ghastly gag. Anthony Hopkins returns as Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, but he’s more interested in delivering one-liners than scares. From

Factory Girl (2006)

Drama Rated R

“Sienna Miller shows impressive range in Factory Girl, but range isn’t necessarily what the part requires.

Norbit (2007)

Comedy Rated PG-13

As a black comic, Eddie Murphy has the cultural green light to traffic in black stereotypes, but Norbit is rife with so many that it makes you wish his creative license could be revoked. Norbit (Murphy) is a nerd who is married to a boorish Big Momma type (Murphy again). They live in a small

Missing, The (2003)

Drama Rated R

Director Ron Howard adds to his eclectic filmography with this mystical Western, in which a 19th-century single mother (Cate Blanchett) reluctantly teams up with a man from her past (Tommy Lee Jones) to retrieve her kidnapped daughter. Blanchett goes beyond the cliche of the hardy pioneer woman to create a fierce, survivalist heroine. Jones may

Hannibal Rising (2007)

Thriller Rated R

More than any of the previous installments in the Hannibal Lecter series, this prequel turns our ghoulish fascination with the character into a moral quandary. In explaining how Hannibal turned into a monster – it has something to do atrocities he witnesses as a boy during World War II – the movie gets us to