Failure to Launch (2006)

Romantic Comedy Rated PG-13

The makers of this by-the-numbers romantic comedy are so bored with crunching these familiar numbers that they come up with all sorts of throwaway scenes just to divert themselves from the task at hand. But that task – getting Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker together – is still there. He plays a 35-year-old who

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Drama Rated R

“…captures the pained longings and awkward humor of adolescence in a way that only a few film masters have done.”

Green Street Hooligans (2005)

Drama Rated R

Elijah Wood stars as a wrongfully expelled Harvard student who seeks solace with his sister in England, only to fall under the influence of her soccer-hooligan brother-in-law Pete (Charlie Hunnam). The movie tragically traces, and inevitably glorifies, how beating someone’s face in at the behest of your buddies can give a lost soul both pride

Walk the Line (2005)

Drama Rated PG-13

Movie formulas are almost always regrettable, but they are especially so when the subject being formulized is reduced in the process. That’s what happens with Walk the Line, which squeezes the life of Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) into the convenient, Oscar-friendly Ray format. When it isn’t ignoring hugely relevant portions of Cash’s life – namely

Gunner Palace (2004)

Documentary Rated PG-13

Botching amazing access, director Michael Tucker spent months with American soldiers in Iraq only to come away with a limited depiction of the war. Nearly every interviewee is a foul-mouthed kid who doesn’t know why he is in Iraq and expresses his frustration in an impromptu rap. Even if this raunchy, locker-room mood is the

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

Family Rated G

Clay, Play-Doh and the like always seem to end up in some sort of ball before all is said and done, and so one of the many joys of the claymation feature Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is its absolute roundness. Wallace & Gromit, an extension of the British short films about

Hulk, The (2003)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

Sorry special effects – the title character looks mostly like a very angry avocado, a new Veggie Tales character, perhaps – are the main problem with this comic-book adaptation, but hardly the only one. Eclectic director Ang Lee wastes his mythic, dreamy style; this is less like watching an Ang Lee movie than like watching

Wolf Creek (2005)

Horror Rated NR

This low-budget horror flick claims to be based on a true story, but the movie never decides if it wants to go for the sort of documentary-like realism of The Blair Witch Project or the more mythic frights of one of the iconic Jason or Freddy slasher films. The movie follows three casual friends on

Human Nature (2001)

Comedy Rated R

Human Nature is only funny if you’re willing to see human nature as funny – in other words, if you’re willing to poke fun of yourself. A bizarre comedy that spoofs the clash between our animal instincts and our refined social order, the movie follows a love triangle involving a sweet young woman (Patricia Arquette)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)

Romantic Comedy Rated PG

Following the age-old rule that you’re allowed to deal in stereotypes as long as you’re stereotyping your own kind, this independent release follows a Greek-American woman (Nia Vardalos, also the screenwriter) who escapes from the clutches of her traditional, overbearing family into the arms of a handsome – and non-Greek – stranger (John Corbett). The