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

Ride With the Devil (1999)

Drama Rated R

Ang Lee’s unfairly maligned Civil War drama, with Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich as Southern bushwhackers defending their homeland from Northern attackers. Sure, it’s slow, but the landscapes often are as beautiful as those of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the conflicting allegiances – ironically, one of the heroes’ riding partners is a former slave,

Road to Perdition (2002)

Drama Rated R

An accomplished, if distant, period drama, as well as director Sam Mendes’ follow-up to American Beauty. With its hushed performances, stately visuals and lush production design, this tale of a Prohibition-era hit man (Tom Hanks) struggling to connect with his 12-year-old son (Tyler Hoechlin) puts its hands on its hips and dares you to call

The Prestige (2006)

Drama Rated PG-13

“…that rare magic trick that still holds its power even after you’ve learned all of its secrets.”

Little Children (2006)

Drama Rated R

Little Children never reconciles its two main plot strands, no matter how much you’re rooting for it to do just that. The movie takes place in leafy, tot-strewn suburbia, where an affair between a frustrated young mother (Kate Winslet) and an aimless stay-at-home dad (Patrick Wilson) is set against the return of a convicted sex

Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

Drama Rated R

Most movies, especially war movies, mythologize their subjects. Flags of Our Fathers does the opposite. In telling the story behind the famous World War II photo of Americans planting a flag on the island of Iwo Jima, director Clint Eastwood means to deconstruct the symbolic power of the image itself. At times, it’s a challenge

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Drama Rated PG-13

I wouldn’t say all the fuss over Sofia Coppola’s anachronistic history project was much ado about nothing, but it was certainly much ado about nothingness. Coppola depicts Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) as less monarch than entitled celebrity, reveling in a life of endless shoes, luscious desserts and blasts of 1980s modern rock. Beyond this, Marie doesn’t

Swept Away (2002)

Drama Rated R

Awful, yet awfully fascinating. Writer-director Guy Ritchie (Snatch) leads his wife Madonna through a remake of the 1975 Italian comedy, which followed a society woman stranded on an island with a working-class sailor who slaps her into submission. In place of the original’s cruelty, Ritchie adds a sweeping sense of romanticism and bizarre moments in