I expected a movie centered around Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer to echo the visual style of his work, but it was still shocking to see how perfectly Scarlett Johansson’s face mimics that of his most famous subject. The story, adapted from Tracy Chevalier’s novel, is a fairly standard depiction of the anguished artist. As Vermeer

If every family has its own essence, then In America – about a recently immigrated Irish couple and their two girls – captures the essence of its family with the candor of one of its own members. Partly this is because director Jim Sheridan based it on his own experiences, yet it’s also a result

This wants to be a grown-up romance – there is much angst about sex and bad breakups and the like – but Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet keep the movie on the level of puppy love. Both can be found at the buy-a-star store in the aisle labeled “cute,” which makes sitting through their movie

This 2003 drama follows a widowed mother and her daughter in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. As they struggle to make ends meet in that closed society, their only hope is to have the girl pose as a boy so she can work. The movie’s roots go back to the neorealist tradition of post-World War II Italy. Using

How much you like Uptown Girls will depend on how much you like the main characters: A New York City heiress (Brittany Murphy) who becomes the nanny for a world-weary 8-year-old (Dakota Fanning) when her inheritance dries up. Considering I found the former to be a squeaky flake and the latter to be a predictably

Another pointless Hollywood remake of a foreign film that was just fine to begin with, this updates the 2000 Argentinian con-man drama Nine Queens with half the panache and none of the surprise of the original. John C. Reilly steps out of character-actor status as the lead, a middle-aged grifter who teams up with a

The Prince & Me may be about a Wisconsin farm girl (Julia Stiles) who unwittingly falls for the heir to the throne of Denmark (Luke Mably), but it isn’t a lightweight, frothy fantasy – well, it is, but in a different way than usual. Here the girl gets the guy, but struggles with giving up

Robert Redford plays a weathered Wyoming rancher bitterly nursing his life’s regrets until one of them shows up on his doorstep: his estranged daughter-in-law (Jennifer Lopez) and her young daughter. A lot of sentimental healing ensues (par for the course for this Oscar hopeful directed by Lasse Hallstrom), with only the gruffness of Redford –

If you’re building a rags-to-riches gangster-rap drama around a real rags-to-riches gangster rapper, it might be a good idea to showcase the music that is supposed to distinguish him from every other boy in the hood that the movies have given us since, well, 1991’s Boyz N the Hood. Get Rich, loosely based on the

This adaptation of the Andre Dubus III novel works itself up into a lather over a story – namely the conflict between a former addict (Jennifer Connelly) who loses her house for not paying taxes and an Iranian immigrant (Ben Kingsley) who buys it – that’s better suited to an episode of “The People’s Court.”