A fascinating morality play about honor and loyalty. Russell Crowe, as the real-life tobacco company scientist who risks his family and personal freedom to testify against the industry, provides a mesmerizing portrait of integrity’s cost; you can see the worry weighing down on his drooping eyelids and sagging mouth. A slow-burning, interior epic from muscular

Big Fish, about the reconciliation between a tall-tale-telling father (Albert Finney) and his skeptical son (Billy Crudup), is an odd Tim Burton film, but not in the way that a Tim Burton film usually is odd. This time he forgoes his artful despondency for an unadorned, unabashed emotional warmth. Still, Burton purists needn’t worry: There

The first movie to confess the American sins of the Vietnam War, Platoon carried extra weight because it came from someone who was there: writer-director Oliver Stone. Platoon had a purging power when it was released, but years later you can see some of the picture’s flaws more clearly. As it details a rift that

It feels a bit dated and preachy now, but Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner‘s racial politics were radical for its time. Paired for the final time with her on- and off-screen partner Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn plays the wealthy, liberal mother of a woman (Katharine Houghton) who surprises her parents by announcing her sudden plans

Guns dramatizes a British mission to infiltrate a German-occupied Greek island to take out two powerful guns that have been terrorizing Allied ships. The 1961 Best Picture nominee is a bit bloated in the manner of an Oscar-hungry prestige picture, yet it’s a good showcase for Gregory Peck’s charisma. He commands the screen even while

As Rocky on four legs, Seabiscuit works just fine – it’s a stately, based-on-fact drama about the unlikely champion racehorse of the 1930s and the jockey (Tobey Maguire), trainer (Chris Cooper) and owner (Jeff Bridges) who made him. Writer-director Gary Ross stretches his underdog theme a bit too far by envisioning the horse as an

A tragicomic dissection of male, middle-aged angst, this centers on a Chicago meteorologist (Nicolas Cage) who is a well-meaning but consistently disappointing divorced father of two. As it chronicles his foibles, you realize few movies plant us so squarely inside a character’s head. Partly this is due to Cage’s sad-clown performance and part of it

In this well-intentioned attempt to honor American soldiers who fought in Vietnam, writer-director Randall Wallace and star Mel Gibson have created a Saving Private Ryan wannabe, from the melodramatic air of reverence to the trendy dollops of gore. Do Vietnam veterans who fought bravely and honorably deserve our respect? Certainly. But lazily anointing them as