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

Miracle positions itself as one of those uplifting, patriotic movies you could get thrown into jail for disliking. The film, which follows the Cinderella U.S. hockey team at the 1980 Olympics, models itself after Remember the Titans and The Rookie, but those pictures earned their tones of triumph by grounding themselves in genuine emotion, something

This drama directed by Robert Redford stars Matt Damon as a disenchanted professional golfer in 1930s Georgia who’s rejuvenated by a mysterious caddy (Will Smith). Both stars are good, but the story is a limp and contrived bore that vaguely grasps at spiritual uplift. I realize a lot of people take golf seriously, but Bagger

An Oscar-angling vanity project for John Travolta, this is one of those glamorous portraits of would-be losers in which a run-down shack appears to have benefited from a chic interior decorator. Travolta plays a disgraced professor drinking his life away untilhis past comes back in the form of a mysterious young woman (Scarlett Johansson). The

Screenwriter Nicholas Meyer and director Robert Benton plow through this adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain – about a disgraced college professor (Anthony Hopkins) who has an affair with a troubled local woman (Nicole Kidman) – but the novel proves unmanageable. They give it staid respect when it needs cinematic invention.

Igby Goes Down is another independent feature chronicling the wayward ways of the young, restless and rich in the Big Apple. This doesn’t have much to say, as it follows 16-year-old Igby (Kieran Culkin) swearing and smoking in the usual, rebellious manner before rejecting his life of luxury in a last-minute stab at redemption.

Just what we need in today’s celebrity-crazed age: a movie that celebrate’s fame for fame’s sake. Bette Midler stars as Valley of the Dolls author Jacqueline Susann, one of the first people to help turn stardom into the new American dream. Unfortunately, Isn’t She Greatblows a congratulatory kiss to Susann for being an untalented hack

A dramatization of life inside the Catholic Church’s now-closed Magdalene Asylums, this import catalogs the abuses heaped upon young women whose only crimes were flirting, getting pregnant out of wedlock or being raped. Director Peter Mullan repeatedly rails against such injustices, and if his indignation eventually wears thin, the performances from his three lead actresses