High Tension (2003)

Horror Rated R

One of those grisly shockers that protests far too much, this French import spends most of its running time trying to provoke even the most hard-core of horror fans. Don’t give it the chance. Cecile De France and Maiwenn Le Besco play a pair of college girlfriends who are stalked by a leering, heavy-breathing killer

Painted Veil, The (2006)

Drama Rated PG-13

This story of a married couple’s courting, betrayal and reunion – adapted from a novel by W. Somerset Maugham – is told in delicate, almost imperceptible notes. Edward Norton and Naomi Watts play the middle-class doctor and upper-class socialite who marry for conflicting reasons and set off to China. Both actors emphasize the loaded gestures

Star Wars (1977)

Action/Adventure Rated PG

“…our last collective fairy tale.”

Miss Potter (2007)

Family Rated PG

What does it take to imagine a world of well-dressed, talking rabbits? In its best moments, Miss Potter suggests it might take a touch of madness. In this painfully polite movie biography of British children’s author Beatrix Potter – who wrote and illustrated 1902’s “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” – our heroine (Renee Zellweger) refers

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The (2003)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

It took until July, but the summer of 2003’s first big-budget bomb finally arrived. This comic-book adaptation, about an assortment of legendary figures from adventure stories and Gothic novels who join forces to stop world war, is largely incoherent when it isn’t supremely silly. Presiding over all is Sean Connery as Allan Quatermain, looking slightly

Venus (2007)

Drama Rated R

A feature-length defense of dirty old man syndrome, Venus charts the occasionally sweet but often icky relationship between an aged British actor named Maurice (Peter O’Toole) and the rebellious teen niece (Jodie Whittaker) of his friend. It’s a relief that the movie isn’t mawkish, but it goes too far once sexual favors become involved. What

Condemned, The (2007)

Action/Adventure Rated R

“This is a B picture that wants to be smarter than its central concept … and there are moments when it’s even smarter than it intends.

We Are Marshall (2006)

Drama Rated PG

“…begins with a politely observed time of mourning and then gets on to the business of triumph, even if the movie has to invent it.

Dreamgirls (2006)

Musical Rated PG-13

Eddie Murphy is the best reason to see this otherwise overblown, narratively clunky adaptation of the Broadway musical. As a James Brown-type singer, Murphy is more alive than he’s been in years. That familiar gleam in his eye shines – for the first time in a long time –over something other than the easy money

Cold Creek Manor (2003)

Horror Rated R

A thriller that can’t decide who the bad guy should be: the upscale urbanites (Sharon Stone and Dennis Quaid) who buy a country estate for cheap or the working-class former owner (Stephen Dorff) who couldn’t make his mortgage payments. As their showdown grows increasingly ridiculous, eventually resembling the intelligence of a Friday the 13th flick,