Running with Scissors (2006)

Drama Rated R

I’m not sure how anyone could dramatize Augusten Burroughs’ experience – his memoir tells how he was abandoned by his unstable mother in the barely functional home of her shrink – and manage to keep the farcical from outweighing the tragic (after all, his new family thought God spoke to them through bowel movements). As

Catch a Fire (2006)

Drama Rated PG-13

What if the most dangerous terrorist training ground circa 2005 was at Guantanomo Bay? That’s the provocative question posed by this based-on-fact political drama, which tells the true story of a harmless, law-abiding South African man who was wrongly accused of terror, imprisoned and tortured by the country’s apartheid government. Upon his release, he channeled

Heaven (2002)

Drama Rated R

An elliptical meeting of two often-elliptical minds. German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) directs a script cowritten by the late, great Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski (Blue) about an English teacher in Italy (Cate Blanchett) who becomes a fugitive after bombing an office building which serves as a front for a drug dealer. The result

Remember the Titans (2000)

Drama Rated PG

As a “respectable” picture from bullets-and-babes producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Con Air, Coyote Ugly), this fact-based story about the 1971 integration of a high school football team calculatedly hits all the right notes for a socially conscious drama, but it also contains a strong performance by Denzel Washington and a few moments of feel-good truth. All

Chocolat (2000)

Drama Rated PG-13

A simple fairy tale about tolerance unfolds when the newcomer to a 1959 French village (Juliette Binoche) scandalizes the locals by selling chocolates during Lent. This is the kind of nice, cuddly movie you feel like petting – and Academy members felt like nominating for multiple awards – but it’s not much more than that.

Banger Sisters, The (2002)

Drama Rated R

Overcoming an icky concept and title – Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon star as former rock groupies who reunite decades later – The Banger Sisters uses genuine humor to explore the ways we deal with our former selves. Both Hawn, as the barmaid still living in the past, and Sarandon, as the uptight suburban mom

Man on the Moon (1999)

Drama Rated R

Don’t expect to find out what drove the late anarchic comic Andy Kaufman in this biography piece, but thanks to Jim Carrey’s outrageous performance, you can relive the hilarious and baffling experience of watching Kaufman do his stuff. If only more of today’s entertainers were as risky as Kaufman – and Carrey.

Northfork (2003)

Drama Rated PG-13

From idiosyncratic filmmaking brothers Michael and Mark Polish, Northfork takes place in a small town in 1955 Middle America that is being evacuated to make way for a new dam. From there, the movie darts off in directions that are at turns mythical, Biblical and downright bizarre, all captured in striking black-and-white imagery. This is

Raising Helen (2004)

Drama Rated PG-13

No one quite does manipulative pap like director Garry Marshall (The Princess Diaries), and he pours it on again with Raising Helen. The movie concerns a modeling-agency assistant (Kate Hudson) who inherits three young kids when her sister and brother-in-law are killed in a car accident. Marshall saws at your heartstrings early on, then immediately

Ray (2004)

Drama Rated PG-13

This movie biography of American music icon Ray Charles is reverential – with a spitting-image performance by Jamie Foxx – yet you’ll find more heartache, passion and pure emotion in the two-and-a-half minutes of What Would I Do Without You than in this picture’s more than two hours. Ray is a tribute movie, really, something