One of those dense, complex literary adaptations that makes you want to read the novel on which it’s based. Unfortunately, I wanted to do that about halfway through the movie. As it follows 11-year-old Eliza Naumann (Flora Cross) through an astonishing succession of spelling bee triumphs, Bee Season tackles issues of both earthly and eternal

In the blistering desert of Brazil, two rural families engage in a generations-old land dispute that breeds murder and – in the hands of director Walter Salles – overwrought symbolism. There’s some striking imagery here, from a blood-stained shirt flapping on a clothesline to the endless dried brambles that dominate the landscape. But as the

This ambitious biographical drama is so intent on defining persecuted Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas by his homosexuality that we never quite grasp a sense of his artistic accomplishments. Javier Bardem, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Arenas, strains valiantly to fill in the gaps, but it still feels like an incomplete

Big Momma’s House meets Misery meets Enough. Who would want to combine a Martin Lawrence cross-dressing comedy, a Stephen King story about a tortured crippled man and a Jennifer Lopez melodrama about domestic abuse? Tyler Perry, who adapted the movie from his own stage play and stars as a sassy grandmother. His slapstick painfully grates

As another writing-directing effort from Hollywood sensitive male Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire), this carried the burden of high expectations. I watched it holding my breath, waiting for the arrival of that singular punch to the gut that all of Crowe’s movies deliver. It never comes. Elizabethtown flounders, flopping about in search of a consistent theme,

Normalcy is an undervalued commodity in Hollywood, which leaves true drama – the sort we experience every day – to independent filmmakers such as Nicole Holofcener (Lovely & Amazing). Holofcener once again explores the minor triumphs and tragedies of average women’s lives, and she’s only further honed her talent for seeing the personal truths that

As unintentionally silly and heavy-handed as it often is, this feminist landmark ó based on Ira Levin’s novel ó still works because of the brilliance of its central, satirical metaphor: the housewife as automaton. Katharine Ross plays young mother and aspiring photographer Joanna Eberhart, who reluctantly moves to the suburban enclave of Stepford, where the