Consider this to be 2004’s Heathers, the 1989 touchstone for all movies about high school cliques. It’s not a rip-off but a timely variation – so attuned to the nuances of the teenage world of its time, for girls in particular, that its emotional accuracy qualifies as brilliance. Lindsay Lohan stars as a homeschooled girl

More id insanity from director David O. Russell (Spanking the Monkey), who wrote and directed this wild farce about a neurotic new father (Ben Stiller, in one of his defining early roles) who drags his wife (Patricia Arquette) on a cross-country search for his birth parents. Along for the ride is the severely unstable adoption

All of writer-director Wes Anderson’s droll comedies revolve around a club of some sort – from the inept robbers of Bottle Rocket to the family of former geniuses in The Royal Tenenbaums – and this effort is no different, as Bill Murray plays a reckless oceanographer leading his crew on a disastrous expedition. For all

Nobody expresses flabbergasted fluster with as much deranged gusto as Ben Stiller, and he gets plenty of chances to do just that here as a boyfriend (and male nurse) looking to impress his girlfriend’s father (Robert De Niro). If the Academy Awards weren’t too snooty to recognize comedic talent, this breezy, riotous comedy would have

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) and unlikely star Adam Sandler team up for the best film in either of their careers. As Barry Egan, a shy small-business owner given to fits of rage, Sandler dials down his manic persona a notch or two, bringing it a bit closer to real life. Meanwhile, Anderson’s

City Lights, in which Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp pursues a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) who sells flowers on the sidewalk, doesn’t have the thematic coherence of Modern Times, but there are touches of Chaplin’s sensibility nonetheless. His disdain for labor is evident, especially when the Tramp takes a job cleaning up after horses in the

Another cinematic grenade from Spike Lee, this time aimed at those who perpetuate African-American stereotypes in the entertainment industry. Damon Wayans stars as a television producer who creates a modern-day minstrel show hoping to get fired. Instead, America goes into a craze for blackface. Outrageous? Yes, but it’s also a searing indictment of today’s misogynistic