24 Hour Party People works best as a snapshot – a brief, busy glimpse at the new wave music that was born during the late ’70s and early ’80s in Manchester, England. Our eager host is Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan), the television reporter turned music promoter who nurtured the Happy Mondays, Joy Division and others.

Woody Harrelson makes a welcome return here as a FBI agent who has been bumbling for years after notorious thieves Max and Lola (Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek). The three meet up in the Bahamas, where Max and Lola are supposed to be enjoying retirement but are enticed by a diamond on a nearby ocean

As Jackie Kallen, a real-life professional boxing manager, Meg Ryan sashays through Against the Ropes in outfits that appear to have been lifted from Erin Brockovich. Even her high heels are tight. If Brockovich is the role model, Against the Ropes falls far short. Both are about sexy, sassy women who make waves in a

William H. Macy’s true gift hasn’t been the way he perfectly embodies life’s losers but the way he has made such sorry schlubs interesting. That quality isn’t on display in The Cooler, in which Macy plays a luckless gambler employed by a second-rate casino owner (Alec Baldwin) to cool off tables with hot streaks. This

A condemnation of the African practice of female circumcision, Moolaade is rudimentary in terms of narrative and structure, yet it has a folkloric power. Ousmane Sembene – who made this film in his native Senegal at the age of 81 – gives the heavy topic a disarmingly light tone as he follows four girls who

James Caviezel went from one saintly figure to the next with Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, a golfing biopic so reverent of its subject that it might as well be titled The Passion of the Bobby. An amateur golfer who lived from 1902 to 1971, Jones is the only player to ever win all four

A boon for history buffs but a bore for me, this 220-minute prequel to the equally gargantuan Gettysburg is like a grade-school book report on the Civil War blown up for the big screen. Peppered with random facts and countless characters, the movie follows a rote pattern – speech, speech, speech, speech, battle, speech, speech,

Smaller films have a better chance of capturing life’s smaller moments, and so the independent Raising Victor Vargas is a more touching evocation of puppy love than most Hollywood teen romances. Set in a low-income Latino community, Raising Victor Vargas gets amazingly naturalistic performances from its two leads: Victor Rasuk, as the would-be Casanova of

Based on the highly suspect autobiography of Gong Show host Chuck Barris, George Clooney’s assured directorial debut explores the dark side of the American dream. Barris (a squirrelly Sam Rockwell) pioneered reality television, was consequently skewered by cultural critics and despised himself for all of it. Clooney’s lively, inventive style makes this feel more fun