At once a beautiful painting and a dull lecture, director Scott Hicks’ adaptation of David Guterson’s prize-winning novel awkwardly combines a nonlinear visual style with a preachy script. The result is a message-laden mess that makes star Ethan Hawke look even more lost than usual.

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.

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

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 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

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