X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Action/Adventure Rated PG-13

This third installment in the Marvel mutant superhero series needs its new characters more than the previous films did because it fails to develop the ones it has inherited. New director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) hamhandedly trots the fresh faces out as if they were performing tricks at a dog show, but the better actors,

Beyond Borders (2003)

Drama Rated R

Beyond Borders runs on guilt. Occasionally about a tortured romance between a do-good socialite (Angelina Jolie) and a globetrotting human-rights activist (Clive Owen), the movie uses dishonesty, hypocrisy and Hollywood hokum to rub our faces in Third World suffering. Like a famine-relief infomercial with Jolie in the Sally Struthers role, the picture preaches when it

Click (2006)

Comedy Rated PG-13

Adam Sandler will never be confused with Jimmy Stewart, but he wouldn’t mind at all if you confused Click with It’s a Wonderful Life. That’s the model for this high-concept comedy, in which an overworked father of two receives an all-powerful remote control that allows him to pause and rewind his life. When he hits

Black Hawk Down (2001)

Drama Rated R

Eschewing the politics behind a 1993 clash between Somali militiamen and U.S. special forces, this battle epic from director Ridley Scott (Hannibal, Gladiator) concentrates on the logistical details of modern warfare. For nearly three hours, the immediate concerns of these grunts – such as how to keep driving an armored car after bits of windshield

Nacho Libre (2006)

Comedy Rated PG

With this comedy about a friar at a Mexican orphanage who dreams of success in that country’s wild world of lucha Libre wrestling, writer-director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and star Jack Black (School of Rock) create another enviable loser – you know, the kind of social reject so comfortable in his eccentricities that he’s not

Dukes of Hazzard, The (2005)

Comedy Rated PG-13

At what point does a piece of pop culture become worthless? After the initial television series, followed by TV movies, video games, a Jessica Simpson music video and now this timid feature, The Dukes of Hazzard has run its course. Trying to have fun watching this incarnation is like trying to resuscitate a corpse that

Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

Drama Rated R

Playing fast and loose with the facts behind the making of 1922’s Nosferatu – German director F.W. Murnau’s silent adaptation of Dracula – Shadow of the Vampire posits that the movie’s otherworldly star, Max Schreck, was a bloodsucker in real life. Aided by a bravura title performance from Willem Dafoe – his Schreck is a

Far From Heaven (2002)

Drama Rated PG-13

A limited if striking exercise from writer-director Todd Haynes, who employs the heightened style of the 1950s suburban melodramas of director Douglas Sirk. Julianne Moore plays a 1957 housewife who enters into a taboo friendship with her black gardener (Dennis Haysbert) just as her marriage is falling apart. The plot – along with the swooning

Simone (2002)

Drama Rated PG-13

Another provocative picture from filmmaker Andrew Niccol (writer-director of Gattaca and writer of The Truman Show), Simone claims it doesn’t take much to be a star. Sometimes, as happens here when a washed-up movie director (Al Pacino) creates a computer-generated actress, you don’t even have to exist. Simone exposes the hollowness of celebrity culture with

Fog, The (1980)

Horror Rated R

John Carpenter has described this ghost story as a “little exploitation horror movie,” but even by those standards it’s pretty much a bust. As shipwreck victims from 100 years ago haunt a historic town on the Pacific Ocean, Carpenter’s ensemble cast of random characters – including Jamie Lee Curtis as a drifter, her real-life mother