Never Die Alone (2004)

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

Honey (2003)

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.

Passion of the Christ, The (2004)

Drama Rated R

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

In the Bedroom (2001)

Drama Rated R

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

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

I’m not quite sure what Johnny Depp is doing in this pirate yarn, but it works. As Captain Jack Sparrow, a ramshackle scamp with dirty dreadlocks and enough eye makeup to incite jealousy in a sixth-grade girl, he speaks in an accent that’s slightly British but mostly slurred. Turns out his loose-cannon act is the

Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

Action/Adventure Rated R

Another manic, cartoonish martial-arts comedy from Hong Kong filmmaker Stephen Chow, this time about a showdown between a vicious street gang and the relatively peaceful denizens of a dilapidated tenement in 1940s Shanghai. I found it all overwhelming and decidedly more graphic than Chow’s equally zany but more enjoyable Shaolin Soccer. The mixture of geniality

Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

Comedy Rated R

No-name actors even for an indie picture, John Lurie, Eszter Balint and Richard Edson convened to play an oddball trio – two male friends and the female cousin of one of them – who drift along from New York to Cleveland to Florida before finally drifting apart. The entire picture drifts, establishing early on Jim

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Drama Rated PG-13

"…wants to be a cautionary tale about the tantalizing shallowness of the fashion industry, but its heart is more into tantalizing than giving caution."

Angel Eyes (2001)

Drama Rated R

This somber romance moves with the speed of a curing wound, but the pacing’s appropriate since the movie is about emotional healing. Jennifer Lopez plays a Chicago cop with a fractured past who engages in a tentative relationship with a stranger, played by Jim Caviezel, whose own past is so tragic he won’t even discuss

Borat (2006)

Comedy Rated R

“…a radical high-wire act.”