Haven (2006)

Drama Rated R

Haven wants to be one of those interwoven, multiple-plot dramas, but the problem is the movie seems to decide that about halfway through its running time. After spending quite a bit of time following a shady businessman (Bill Paxton) who flees with a bunch of dirty money and his daughter (Agnes Bruckner) to the Cayman

Finding Forrester (2000)

Drama Rated PG-13

There’s a healthy respect for the craft of writing in this story of a reclusive author (Sean Connery) who mentors an underprivileged but talented teen-ager (Rob Brown) in the Bronx, but things turn arch and silly fast. Director Gus Van Sant gives in to all of the treacly contrivances he avoided in the similarly themed

All the King’s Men (1949)

Drama Rated NR

A piercing, if not very subtle, adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning political novel about the rise and eventual corruption of a man of the people. Broderick Crawford is a blowzy, booming force as Willie Stark, a man who means well at the start of his political career and still believes he means well

Rocky (1976)

Drama Rated PG

“Stallone struck a deep, lasting chord with this fountainhead of clichés…”

All the King’s Men (2006)

Drama Rated PG-13

“Penn is … playing the part of Great Actor more than the part of Willie Stark.

Last King of Scotland, The (2006)

Drama Rated R

Forest Whitaker plays Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator whose reign of paranoia and murder haunted the country for most of the 1970s, yet The Last King of Scotland isn’t exactly a biopic. Based on Giles Foden’s novel, the movie depicts Amin through the fictional eyes of a Scottish doctor (James McAvoy) who travels to Africa

Catch and Release (2007)

Drama Rated PG-13

Written and directed by Susannah Grant (the screenwriter of Erin Brockovich), this is the rare chick flick that defines its heroine on her own terms, not in terms of the husband or boyfriend she wants or has. Appropriately, the movie opens with the loss of a man. After her fiance is killed in a skiing

Black Snake Moan (2007)

Drama Rated R

“…mostly lingers on the sort of behavior Ricci’s Rae needs to be redeemed from.”

Bicentennial Man (1999)

Drama Rated PG

Another piece of pandering pap from Robin Williams, who stars as a futuristic robot that longs to become human. Even the eerie plastic body cast Williams wears for much of the film can’t keep those desperately twinkling eyes – the same ones he had in Hook, Patch Adams and What Dreams May Come – from

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Drama Rated NR

  A showcase for one of Hollywood’s most iconic female stars: Joan Crawford. Crawford was the right personality at the right time. Back then, Hollywood wasn’t afraid to let a woman dominate a movie, and Crawford, with her piercing eyes and authoritative voice, was born to be in charge. (She even manages to corral the