Cell, The (2000)

Thriller Rated R

This ambitious, inventive and visually stunning science-fiction thriller – about a child therapist (Jennifer Lopez) who enters the mind of a serial killer – never manages to justify all of the horrific images of death and torture that it shows. The movie doesn’t quite revel in them in the way that the similarly themed Seven

Squid and the Whale, The (2005)

Drama Rated R

It took me awhile to get past writer-director Noah Baumbach’s Wes Anderson affectations (Baumbach worked with Anderson on the script for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), but beneath them is a layer of hurt that feels authentic. Like Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, this droll drama follows a peculiar, intellectual New York family (headed by

Daredevil (2003)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

This comic-book adaptation about a blind lawyer who spends his nights as a masked vigilante teeters on the brink of ridiculousness – just watch Ben Affleck, as the title character, amble about with sunglasses and a walking stick. But a lighthearted tone and spirited supporting turns by Colin Farrell and Jennifer Garner coax the movie

Village, The (2004)

Thriller Rated PG-13

The Sixth Sense-level whopper of M. Night Shyamalan’s period picture – about a 19th-century enclave haunted by creatures in the surrounding woods – is the best thing about the film, mainly because the rest of it is rather clunky (the assured filmmaking in Signs is only occasionally on display). Perhaps Shyamalan was looking for the

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