Crush (2001)

Drama Rated R

Starring Andie MacDowell, Crush follows the contrived, melodramatic lives of three middle-aged friends, whose weekly Sex and the City-style drinking sessions devolve into stereotypical obsessing over men. This is supposed to be a glimpse at the secret lives of real women, but it looks suspiciously like a daytime soap opera.

Frida (2002)

Drama Rated R

“The only freshness comes from the striking visual strokes of director Julie Taymor…”

Friday Night Lights (2004)

Drama Rated PG-13

Adapted from H.G. Bissinger’s nonfiction book about a Texas high school team making a state championship run in the late 1980s, this drama admirably owns up to the way youth sports can trample a kid’s love for the game. Director Peter Berg captures both the highs and lows of playing football in a refreshing documentary

Life or Something Like it (2002)

Drama Rated PG-13

What would you do if you only had a week to live? What would you do if you had to watch yet another movie based on that premise? The latter question is the more pertinent one when it comes to this half-baked drama. The movie is supposed to follow Seattle television reporter Lanie Kerrigan (Angelina

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

Drama Rated PG-13

Memoirs of a Geisha wants to be too pretty – with each frame designed for maximum visual appeal, the picture mistakes opulence for importance. It’s like a geisha who is all dressed up with no place to go. Arthur Golden’s 1997 book fleshed out exhaustive research with a Pretty Woman story arc, in which a

Moonlight Mile (2002)

Drama Rated PG-13

This has the ache of real pain, considering writer-director Brad Silberling based the story on the 1989 murder of his girlfriend. The movie follows Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose fiancee is killed on the eve of their wedding. As Joe and the murdered woman’s parents (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon) try to carry on with

The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)

Drama Rated R

  A disarmingly gentle account of a trip taken by revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal) across South America when he was 22. Directed by Walter Salles, the movie’s politics are subtle – you’d be hard-pressed to draw a line from here to the Cuban Revolution, of which Guevara was an instrumental part –

Lake House, The (2006)

Drama Rated PG

An adaptation of a South Korean existential romance, this certainly moves and feels like few love stories from this country. You could call it slow, but a kinder word would be contemplative. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock star as tenants of the same lakeside home who communicate, via letters left in the mailbox, even though

Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

Drama Rated PG-13

First-time screenwriter Zach Helm has crafted a clever ode to creative constipation on par with Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation (to which Helm owes a great debt). Both movies play games with the ways writers back themselves into a corner and the ways they try to get out of it. The pawn here is Harold Crick (Will

Yards, The (2000)

Drama Rated R

A somber, dark and artful crime drama set among the New York City subway yards, where the wheels of business turn on corruption and graft. Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron and James Caan each give touching, tragic performances – their characters sigh with regret more than they talk – but it’s Joaquin Phoenix as a bribery