Secondhand Lions (2003)

Drama Rated PG

The distinguished cast of Secondhand Lions – Haley Joel Osment, Robert Duvall and Michael Caine – do their best with a script that strains toward quirkiness and sentimentality, and their best is just good enough. The story of a shy 14-year-old who spends the summer with his eccentric uncles, the film has a lot of

Good German, The (2006)

Drama Rated R

An impeccable evocation of an earlier era, but not a freestanding film. The Good German, Steven Soderbergh’s meticulous melding of Casablanca and postwar film noirs, is awash in delectable period detail, from the shadowy black-and-white cinematography (also handled by Soderbergh) to the swooshing font used for the title to Thomas Newman’s music, which recalls the

Matchstick Men (2003)

Drama Rated PG-13

A piffle graced by a cast it doesn’t really deserve. Starring Nicolas Cage as an obsessive-compulsive con man who tracks down his estranged teen daughter (Alison Lohman), the movie’s most endearing aspect is that it is one of those instances in which Cage leaves behind the action idiocy of Con Air and The Rock for

Children of Men (2006)

Drama Rated R

“Now this is a nativity story.”

Rocky Balboa (2006)

Drama Rated PG

Sylvester Stallone should have never made another movie after this. I don’t mean that as an indictment of the sixth installment in Stallone’s ongoing exercise in can-do Americana. Rather, I mean that Rocky Balboa encapsulates the entire Stallone phenomenon in one film. His dumbbell appeal, his considerable limitations – everything is here, as well as

Proposition, The (2006)

Drama Rated R

Full of Biblical bleakness, The Proposition depicts 1880s Australia as an infernal landscape. As the captain (Ray Winstone) charged with maintaining a semblance of law and order says, “What fresh hell is this?” Winstone tries to reign in a band of ravaging brothers by capturing one of them (Guy Pearce) and convincing him to bring

Lord of War (2005)

Drama Rated R

The arms-dealing drama Lord of War could have been fired from a shotgun – it sprays all over the place. Part action movie and part message piece, the picture is only one thing for sure: a major misstep for gifted writer/director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca). In following the unlikely career of Ukrainian-American antihero Yuri Orlov (a

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001)

Drama Rated R

This ensemble picture means to explore the nature of happiness, but only one plot strand, in which Alan Arkin plays a corporate drone at an insurance company, really comes close to saying something interesting about the subject. As other characters (played by the likes of Matthew McConaughey and John Turturro) float in and out of

Very Long Engagement, A (2004)

Drama Rated R

Whimsy and war wouldn’t seem to be likely companions, but don’t tell that to Audrey Tautou and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the star and director, respectively, of the French romantic comedy Amelie. The pair re-teamed for this World War I romantic drama about a young French woman in search of her missing fiance. This has an epic

Closer (2004)

Drama Rated R

Closer is for those who hate the falseness of Hollywood endings and maybe even hate life itself. The trailer is touting this as a sexy love square involving Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen as two couples who become unwisely intertwined, but the film is too pessimistic to ever raise much of