Sin City (2005)

Action/Adventure Rated R

Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City turns Frank Miller’s extremely graphic graphic novels into a grisly, galvanizing update of film noir fatalism. What happens in Sin City – encompassed in three intertwining stories populated by shady cops, cruel murderers and vengeful hookers – feels like what might have been going on in those 1940s and ’50s crime

Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)

Drama Rated PG

This striking, black-and-white drama believes in something perhaps only the child of a former television news anchor – which co-writer/director George Clooney is – could believe in: that TV news can save the nation. A brisk dramatization of broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s on-air challenges to the anti-communist campaign of Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, Clooney’s movie

Sixth Sense, The (1999)

Horror Rated PG-13

With the pace and feel of an early-evening shadow creeping across the floor, this 1999 feature from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan announced the emergence of a bracing and assured talent. Haley Joel Osment – whose face has the decaying cuteness of a jack-o’-lantern the day after Halloween – proves riveting as a boy who sees

Home on the Range (2004)

Family Rated PG

A minor Disney effort, Home on the Range relies heavily on the eternal charm of farm animals. You loved them as a 2-year-old, you’ll like them well enough here. A touch of absurdity also helps, starting with the goofy plot: Three cows – voiced by Judi Dench, Roseanne Barr and Jennifer Tilly – set out

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Action/Adventure Rated PG

The first true comic-book movie, even though it is based on an original story, this wildly inventive adventure from novice writer-director Kerry Conran captures the way that adolescent art form looks and, especially, feels. The actors – including Jude Law as a pilot battling giant robots circa 1939 and Gwyneth Paltrow as a plucky reporter

Iris (2001)

Drama Rated R

Unlike A Beautiful Mind, this biographical account of a great thinker’s battle with their own deteriorating intellect is aloof and uninvolving; disease remains at a distance. As lauded British novelist Iris Murdoch (Judi Dench) succumbs to Alzheimer’s, we’re mostly left with images of a doddering, depressed woman – pitiful scenes with no real purpose other

Stuart Little 2 (2002)

Family Rated PG

Stuart Little 2 sometimes feels as unnecessary as many of this summer’s sequels – after all, if E.B. White didn’t write another adventure for his tiny mouse, why do we need another movie? – but this follow-up’s innocence and charm likely will win you over nonetheless. A bonus is computer animation that’s both witty (Stuart’s

American Splendor (2003)

Drama Rated R

Part documentary, part autobiography and part dramatization, all based on Harvey Pekar’s cult comic-book series, American Splendor cleverly manages to keep the Cleveland crank’s vision intact. For both Pekar and the movie, everyday life is a form of routine performance art, to be endured as much as enjoyed.

Johnson Family Vacation (2004)

Comedy Rated PG-13

Light on laughs, driven by a creaky plot and peppered with a plinky score, this leaves you little to do but ponder which of the annoying family members should be booted out of the car first. They’re sent barreling through contrived sitcom situations, most of which make National Lampoon’s Vacation look like an observant comedy

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The (2005)

Drama Rated R

The feature directorial debut of Tommy Lee Jones actually stands out more as another fractured tale from screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (21 Grams). Arriaga’s multilayered stories weave about in unexpected directions, and the question here is whether or not Jones can lasso them in. Jones also stars as an aging cowboy whose friend – the illegal