Beauty Shop (2005)

Comedy Rated PG-13

Diminishing returns continue for the Barbershop franchise with this third entry, in which Gina (Queen Latifah) heads from Chicago to Atlanta and opens her own salon. There is far more plot than necessary, but the shop itself features enough comic camaraderie among the stylists to forgive many of the movie’s weaknesses. When these ladies start

Birth (2004)

Thriller Rated R

If you ever wondered what was going through the head of Mary Kay Letourneau when the teacher started an affair with her seventh-grade student, Birth offers a possible answer. The movie stars Nicole Kidman as a grieving widow who meets a 10-year-old claiming to be her reincarnated husband. That’s good enough for her, and before

Cabin Fever (2002)

Horror Rated R

Flickers of macabre creativity can be found in Cabin Fever, but they face stiff competition from every horror-movie cliche known to man. The film follows five college friends holed up in a remote cabin, where a gruesome, highly contagious virus arrives in the form of an infected hunter. The debut of writer-director Eli Roth.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

You can forgive an adventure movie just about anything except dullness, which is all this video-game adaptation has to offer thanks to a labyrinthine plot. Angelina Jolie plays the title heroine, a comely British explorer who uses a push-up bra for a compass, and she certainly cuts a striking figure. But with unimaginative action scenes

Last Days (2005)

Drama Rated R

In this unobtrusive account of the final days of a strung-out rock star, based on the suicide of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, the camera passively watches as the central figure (Michael Pitt) trudges across the grounds of a rural mansion. Even the most mundane of scenes are given an ethereal sheen by director Gus Van Sant.

Manchurian Candidate, The (2004)

Drama Rated R

If Fahrenheit 9/11 made you feel queasy, take some Pepto-Bismol before seeing this remake of the 1962 thriller from director Jonathan Demme and star Denzel Washington. It may be a work of fiction, but its paranoid vision of events circa 2004 somehow felt even more real. Both the original and the remake revolve around a

Mystic River (2003)

Drama Rated R

Filmmaking workhorse Clint Eastwood takes a seemingly routine genre exercise – an adaptation of a mystery novel by Dennis Lehane – and makes it something all his own, in this case another of his meditations on the ripple effect of violence. Mystic River follows three childhood friends (Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, all excellent)

Open Range (2003)

Drama Rated R

A welcome return to form for director-star Kevin Costner, at least if you appreciate his stubborn brand of cinematic nostalgia (Field of Dreams, Dances With Wolves). A traditional, pastoral Western with wide vistas and consequential violence, Open Range stars Costner and a lively Robert Duvall as cattle-drivers up against a gluttonous rancher. This is a

Saraband (2003)

Drama Rated R

A sequel of sorts to the 1973 intimate epic Scenes From a Marriage. That Ingmar Bergman picture detailed the breakdown of the seemingly perfect union between Johan and Marianne (Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann), and Saraband reunites them 30 years later. New drama is mined by exploring the relationships among Johan, his son Henrik (by

Sideways (2004)

Comedy Rated R

The drudgery of everyday existence gets another gentle tweaking at the hands of writer-director Alexander Payne (About Schmidt). A priceless Paul Giamatti plays a neurotic English teacher and would-be novelist who takes his mismatched best friend (Thomas Haden Church) on a trip to California wine country to celebrate the friend’s impending marriage – a journey