Thriller Rated R
“…a masterful mindblower.”
Family Rated PG
Vastly underrated by critics who took Disney’s technical mastery for granted, Dinosaur is a visually astonishing computer-animated epic that also works as a beautiful parable. After a cataclysmic asteroid shower, an iguanodon sticks up for the stragglers in his wandering herd when the leader wants to leave them behind to die. Behind the visual flash,
Family Rated G
“…a giddy, kiddie inversion of time and space.”
A shameless mishmash of classic, film noir archetypes and contemporary crassness, Femme Fatale follows a mysterious blonde (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) as she steals and sleeps her way through a series of sad-sack men, most of whom get at least one chance to beat her up. None of this is much fun, primarily because the movie’s prehistoric
Action/Adventure Rated PG-13
Emotional therapy hasn’t been this action-packed since The Sopranos. If this crackling action comedy, about a pair of married assassins (Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt) who are both unaware of the other’s lethal profession, falters at all, it is by overworking its underlying theme of marital strife. The similar The Incredibles was far more effortless,
Drama Rated R
In case anyone in the conscious universe wasn’t aware of it yet, this universal punching bag pointed out that Jennifer Lopez is attractive. Oh sure, there’s a plot – something about two mob gofers (Lopez and Ben Affleck) who butt heads while pairing up on a kidnapping – but director Martin Brest stages most scenes
Action/Adventure Rated R
Producer-star DMX clearly means to be playing an antihero here, but even he seems unaware of just how poisonously misogynistic his movie is. He plays a drug dealer whose most heinous habit is to woo women, get them hooked and then murder them when they threaten to call the police. The seething hatred just sits
Drama Rated PG-13
Like a stiff dance routine, Honey follows the carefully plotted steps of a showbiz melodrama, albeit updated for the hip-hop age. That the movie follows the rise of a dancer and choreographer in the music-video business (Jessica Alba, struggling with rap slang) and features some high-energy hoofing only makes the well-worn story look more wooden.
Modern movies rarely believe in anything beyond the bottom line. The overriding virtue of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is the film’s conviction in its own material. Judging from Gibson’s gory, blood-drenched depiction of the final hours of Jesus Christ (James Caviezel), it’s safe to say his faith is founded on the notion
Like a funeral, this understated tragedy is somehow full of both grief and consolation. A mother (Sissy Spacek) and father (Tom Wilkinson) in a small Maine town succumb to despair when the romance between their son and a single mother comes to a horrible end. Under the steady hand of first-time director Todd Field, every
