Mercy certainly surrounds the title heroine of this eye-opening independent drama, which charts a Colombian girl’s odyssey from factory labor to drug smuggling to the streets of New York City. To survive what she does takes something from above. Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno plays Maria as a stubborn and willful firebrand, ultimately making the

Charming scene-stealer Paul Bettany (A Beautiful Mind) stars with Kirsten Dunst in this romance set during the title tennis tournament, and something is severely amiss in the pairing. It’s probably rooted in their age difference – though Dunst manages a semblance of adulthood in the Spider-Man films, most often she comes across as a giggling,

Set amid the Scottish shipping canals of the 1950s, Young Adam stars Ewan McGregor as a drifter floating from one heartless affair to the next. All actors who thrive on their likability seem destined to try at least one thoroughly unlikable role, and McGregor has found a fascinating one here.

Director Ron Howard’s exploration of genius – in this case that of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash – is more bracing than you would expect, thanks to a nifty twist midway through the film that recalls themind-bending trickery of Fight Club. Russell Crowe turns in a solid performance as Nash – the girth of Gladiator

Million Dollar Baby screenwriter Paul Haggis made a supremely confident directorial debut with this intricately plotted ensemble drama – and Best Picture winner at the 2006 Oscars – tackling no less a topic than race relations in contemporary Los Angeles. The lives of a jumpy Middle Eastern shop owner, two carjacking young black men, a

Hysterical and melodramatic, the crooked-cop drama Dark Blue nevertheless strikes a nerve due to its incendiary backdrop: the 1992 trial of the police officers who were caught on tape beating Rodney King. A perfectly rumpled Kurt Russell stars as a corrupt Los Angeles detective who slowly uncovers his conscience. Like Sept. 11, 2001, did in

Hormonally imbalanced, Splendor in the Grass swoons from dreamy highs to tragic lows over the course of its 124 minutes. Watching the film is like spending a weekend with a lovesick teenager – it’s essentially a movie mood swing. Such was the acting style encouraged by director Elia Kazan, whose movies left the strict formality

Director Steven Soderbergh fillets time and space even more daringly here than he did in Out of Sight, turning the tale of a British thug (Terence Stamp) out for the blood of a Hollywood record producer (Peter Fonda) into a mesmerizing melange of flashbacks, visions and off-screen dialogue. A delightful puzzle for lovers of film

Modern movies rarely believe in anything beyond the bottom line. The overriding virtue of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is the film’s conviction in its own material. Judging from Gibson’s gory, blood-drenched depiction of the final hours of Jesus Christ (James Caviezel), it’s safe to say his faith is founded on the notion