An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Documentary Rated PG

Can you dislike Al Gore’s green documentary and still like trees? The movie itself doesn’t seem to think so. Gore, on a world tour giving an exhaustively detailed multimedia presentation on global warming, means to clear the air, so to speak, but Truth director Davis Guggenheim is so intent on lionizing Gore for his efforts

The Prestige (2006)

Drama Rated PG-13

“…that rare magic trick that still holds its power even after you’ve learned all of its secrets.”

Little Children (2006)

Drama Rated R

Little Children never reconciles its two main plot strands, no matter how much you’re rooting for it to do just that. The movie takes place in leafy, tot-strewn suburbia, where an affair between a frustrated young mother (Kate Winslet) and an aimless stay-at-home dad (Patrick Wilson) is set against the return of a convicted sex

Swimming Pool (2003)

Thriller Rated R

A glistening, sex-soaked French thriller, Swimming Pool is partly about a novelist’s search for inspiration, but it’s mostly about the sort of inspiration that can come from watching actress Ludivine Sagnier stretched under the sun in a barely there bikini. The main character is an older mystery writer (Charlotte Rampling), but Sagnier – as the

Flicka (2006)

Family Rated PG

“…lessons are learned, love is spoken and nobody needs to be put down (including country-music star Tim McGraw).

Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

Drama Rated R

Most movies, especially war movies, mythologize their subjects. Flags of Our Fathers does the opposite. In telling the story behind the famous World War II photo of Americans planting a flag on the island of Iwo Jima, director Clint Eastwood means to deconstruct the symbolic power of the image itself. At times, it’s a challenge

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Drama Rated PG-13

I wouldn’t say all the fuss over Sofia Coppola’s anachronistic history project was much ado about nothing, but it was certainly much ado about nothingness. Coppola depicts Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) as less monarch than entitled celebrity, reveling in a life of endless shoes, luscious desserts and blasts of 1980s modern rock. Beyond this, Marie doesn’t

Swept Away (2002)

Drama Rated R

Awful, yet awfully fascinating. Writer-director Guy Ritchie (Snatch) leads his wife Madonna through a remake of the 1975 Italian comedy, which followed a society woman stranded on an island with a working-class sailor who slaps her into submission. In place of the original’s cruelty, Ritchie adds a sweeping sense of romanticism and bizarre moments in

Officer and a Gentleman, An (1982)

Drama Rated R

An Officer and a Gentleman didn’t invent the military-romance cliches that have haunted us ever since 1982 – 2006 alone gave us doppelgangers such as Annapolis and The Guardian, and of course there was Top Gun – but the movie was such an overwhelming, popular favorite that it essentially carved the cliches into stone. Richard

Man of the Year (2006)

Comedy Rated PG-13

What looks to be a farce about a Jon Stewart-type comedian who runs for President is mostly a political thriller about an election conspiracy. The entire project is at odds with itself, and the producers know it. They don’t, however, know what to do with it, which is why the commercials focused on Robin Williams’