Just My Luck (2006)

Romantic Comedy Rated PG-13

Today’s movie stars – especially those who are prone to appearing in the tabloids for their movie-star antics – often have to work against their off-screen image in their films. In Just My Luck, Lindsay Lohan plays a ridiculously fortunate New York City publicist who always has things go her way, and the movie never

Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)

Drama Rated R

This is consistently in over its head, and not just because it’s an often-amateurish independent drama. As long as this suburban-teens-run-amok story captures the familiar rhythms of high school, the movie is on firm ground. As a nihilistic morality play, however, it stumbles. Parry Shen is likable as an honor student gone bad, but director

Limey, The (1999)

Drama Rated R

Director Steven Soderbergh fillets time and space even more daringly here than he did in Out of Sight, turning the tale of a British thug (Terence Stamp) out for the blood of a Hollywood record producer (Peter Fonda) into a mesmerizing melange of flashbacks, visions and off-screen dialogue. A delightful puzzle for lovers of film

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The (2005)

Action/Adventure Rated PG

At just over 200 brisk pages, C.S. Lewis’ novel invites movie adaptation far more easily than, say, the Harry Potter books, so that a movie version needs only to let its source story breathe. Director Andrew Adamson (Shrek) does that right from the start, expanding on the book’s brief prologue to introduce the four sibling

Memento (2001)

Thriller Rated R

“…a masterful mindblower.”

Dinosaur (2000)

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,

Monsters, Inc. (2001)

Family Rated G

“…a giddy, kiddie inversion of time and space.”

Femme Fatale (2002)

Thriller Rated R

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

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)

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,

Gigli (2003)

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