An ambitious directorial debut from John Malkovich, this is an unassuming adaptation of Nicholas Shakespeare’s novel about a violent guerrilla revolution in an unspecified South American country and the corrupt government’s attempts to quell it. Javier Bardem projects a quiet dignity as the policeman in charge of the investigation. His strong performance helps Malkovich wrestle

An overwrought adaptation of a Sam Shepard play in which a horse-racing scam from the past comes back to haunt three friends (Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte and Sharon Stone, each giving showy auditions for an Academy Award).

Empire pits a Bronx drug dealer (John Leguizamo) against a yuppie broker (Peter Sarsgaard) after the broker coaxes the dealer to try his hand at high finance, only to disappear with the earnest money. What could have been a gritty exploration of cultural conflict instead spends too much time on the generic thug life of

Silly, superficial and even infantile, this misguided drama about a single woman (Madonna) who has a baby after a one-night stand with her gay best friend (Rupert Everett) thinks it’s making a brave social statement about the makeup of the new American family. But it’s too poorly crafted – check out the inept lighting –

Most romantic comedies bury the loneliness and disappointment that is inevitably a part of any romance in one tidy sequence, usually involving the hero or heroine walking despondently in the rain. Shopgirl – adapted from Steve Martin’s novella about a love triangle involving a drifting Los Angeles sales clerk (Claire Danes, sad and sweet), a

Hilary Duff once again showcases her considerable screen charm – her specialty is scrunching her eyebrows so that she looks cute even while in distress – but this modern take on the fairy tale consist mostly of high-school movie cliches. It’s hardly the prince of a vehicle she deserves.

Robin Williams is in serious, simpering mode for this science-fiction drama about a “cutter” who edits footage that a person with a video-recording implant records from the day of his or her birth. The assembled movie, or “rememory,” is then shown at the person’s funeral. Intriguing ethical, technical and even theological questions arise, but writer-director

Occasionally interesting, but mostly a paint-by-numbers biography of American artist Jackson Pollock. Star Ed Harris, who also directed and produced, has moments of emotional power, but he never sews them together into a complete and revealing portrait of the man.

The engaging stars of this cross-cultural love story must bushwack through a thick tangle of romantic-comedy cliches before arriving at anything remotely genuine and true, but they do manage to get there. For Sanaa Lathan and Simon Baker, as an uptight black career woman and her laid-back white landscaper, respectively, it’s victory by perseverance more

Watching It Runs in the Family, starring Kirk, Michael and Cameron Douglas, feels a little bit like getting stuck at someone else’s family reunion. The forced arguments and conveniently tragic plot developments in the contrived script are bad enough, but when the Douglases start hauling out pictures of their shared past, we just feel like