Deuces Wild (2002)

Drama Rated R

Another MGM/United Artists mess from 2002, though not quite as inept as Rollerball. Two brothers (Stephen Dorff and Brad Renfro) try to protect their neighborhood from a violent gang in 1958 Brooklyn, and the result – tough guys marching down the street in matching white T-shirts, more fake lightning than a heavy metal music video

Sexy Beast (2000)

Drama Rated R

What at first seems to be a stylistic lark – another British crime caper involving fancy camerawork and foul-mouthed antiheroes – matures into a tragic rumination on the criminal lifestyle. Ben Kingsley has received rave reviews for his performance as a violent and verbose gangster, but it’s Ray Winstone, as the retired, likable lug whom

Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

Drama Rated R

From its subtitles on down, Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima inverts the war-movie experience – at least for those of us who expect such pictures to follow in the footsteps of Saving Private Ryan and Eastwood’s own companion piece, Flags of Our Fathers. With Japanese soldiers batting the same sacrificial puppy-dog eyes that blond-haired

Alpha Dog (2007)

Drama Rated R

There are plenty of contenders for the title of alpha male in Alpha Dog, a barking drama based on an actual account of a drug ring run by privileged California teens. Ben Foster (X-Men: The Last Stand) goes for broke as the requisite hothead, leaving little edible scenery for the likes of Shawn Hatosy, Anton

Babel (2006)

Drama Rated R

"Coincidence can be a heavy burden for a movie…"

End of the Affair (1999)

Drama Rated R

An atmospheric account of an affair between a married woman (Julianne Moore) and a novelist (Ralph Fiennes) in World War II London, this adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel has been described as a love triangle involving those two and God, so heavily do religious themes come into play. Indeed, the story seems like little more

Enemy at the Gates (2001)

Drama Rated R

Two snipers – a Russian (Jude Law) and a Nazi (Ed Harris) – square off during the World War II battle of Stalingrad, leading to expertly staged action sequences, as well as a mournful acknowledgment of what it means to lie in wait and take a life.

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