There’s more nuance, drama and genuine emotion in this animated tale than in half the live-action stories to come out of Hollywood. The multilayered movie follows a documentary filmmaker who tracks down an aging Japanese movie star and asks her to recount her past. What follows is a magical interweaving of flashback, re-enacted scenes from

Director Sidney Lumet (Serpico) wants to combine the gritty organized crime of “The Sopranos” with the wacky Mob yucks of Analyze This – and he has chosen none other than Vin Diesel to bridge that cavernous gap. The movie is based on the landmark trial of a New Jersey crime family, but it focuses mainly

Hardball, about a Chicago gambler (Keanu Reeves) who turns his life around by coaching an inner-city kids’ baseball team, has little more in mind than playing with your heartstrings, but it does so with gentle tugs. It’s a movie for softies that uses a surprisingly soft sell.

The memorial statue as movie. From Joaquin Phoenix, as a family man and firefighter, to John Travolta, as his barking crew chief, to every firefighter down the line, these are all buff, burly men of honor – real-life action heroes with all the humanity of a piece of plastic. Technically it has nothing to do