Money, money money. That’s what everyone wants in Boiler Room, an often riveting update of 1987’s Wall Street set in the same New York stockbroker scene. You’ve seen this before, but the macho posturing, seductive language and breakneck energy that all go into the art of the sale still fascinate. With Ben Affleck and Vin

If it weren’t for professional obligations, this would have been my chance for the greatest nap ever taken. A dramatization of Frances Ouimet’s (Shia LaBeouf) unlikely performance at the 1913 U.S. Open, it features soft sunsets on verdant golf courses and a caressing, inspirational score, both telling symptoms of the picture’s basic problem. This is

More admirable than exciting, The Green Mile is another prison-set period drama adapted by director Frank Darabont from the writings of Stephen King. Darabont is an old-fashioned storyteller, and this tale of a head guard (Tom Hanks) on a Depression-era death row who meets a condemned man with miraculous powers (Michael Clarke Duncan) proceeds with

An intriguing query that’s often posed in Christian circles – What if Jesus came back today? – gets a toothless dramatization in this independent feature. Tony Goldwyn stars as a drifter (and carpenter, natch) who rejuvenates the spiritual life of a small town in a variety of hokey ways. The production values and performances are

“…takes a tragic real-life story and forces it into the shape of a thesis statement.”

The acting is as good as you’ve heard – Oscar winner Halle Berry pulls off way more than a makeup-free publicity stunt – but this somber drama detailing the cautious romance between a white prison guard (Billy Bob Thornton) and a black waitress throws too many tragedies at its characters’ feet. For every real emotion

This earnest but silly saga about a Mormon missionary sent to the remote island kingdom of Tonga in the 1950s consists of a series of crises (a child missing during a hurricane, alcoholism) that the evangelist manages to neatly solve within 10 minutes each. We learn little about either the island culture or the Mormon

The ruthless, aspiring class president Reese Witherspoon played in 1999’s Election could be a descendant of Becky Sharp, the conniving centerpiece of Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1848 expose of Victorian high society. Which gives Witherspoon another chance to exhibit the mischievous edge that juts out now and then like her javelin of a chin.

This teen flick turns an Outside magazine article about female surfers into something like MTV’s The Real World in Hawaii. False, forced drama – primarily the heroine’s (Kate Bosworth) unlikely jitters about an approaching surfing competition – take precedence over any real sense of this sports subculture. Even the action shots, edited with the rabid