The last of the Romanovs are at the center of Nicholas and Alexandra, a lavish but appallingly conventional Oscar-nominated historical drama.
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Imelda Staunton delivers a superb performance as a mid-1950s abortionist in Mike Leigh’s socially conscious family drama Vera Drake.
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Starring Liam Neeson as the polemical sex researcher, Bill Condon’s otherwise well-made Kinsey movie biopic suffers from an excess of scruples.
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Robert Siodmak’s 1957 political drama The Devil Strikes at Night asks whether serial killers are any worse than socially sanctioned mass murderers.
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John Frankenheimer and Dalton Trumbo’s anti-Semitism drama The Fixer is ruined by a preachy and simple-minded script, and by badly miscast lead Alan Bates.
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Valerie Perrine overshadows a badly miscast and painfully unfunny Dustin Hoffman in Bob Fosse’s problematic 1974 Lenny Bruce biopic Lenny.
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Stagy screenplay and 3 of its 4 leads hinder Fred Zinnemann’s early drug addiction drama A Hatful of Rain. Eva Marie Saint is the sole standout.
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Best Actor Oscar nominee Johnny Depp is flawlessly weird in the surprisingly entertaining Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
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Paul Schrader’s well-made and great-looking Affliction movie adaptation is marred by absurd situations and Nick Nolte’s overwrought performance.
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In a difficult role, Oscar nominee Joan Allen delivers a masterful performance in Rod Lurie’s engrossing but unconvincing 2000 political drama The Contender.
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A less effusive Shakespeare in Love rehash, Stage Beauty fails to delve into the complexities of gender and sexual identity.
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The Oscar-nominated The Grandfather works both as a Fernando Fernán Gómez showcase and as an irresistible message movie.
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Oliver Stone opts to ignore the facts in his brazenly dishonest yet engrossing political thriller JFK, an account of the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination.
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Starring Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton, Marc Forster’s 2001 drama Monster’s Ball offers quality moments that fail to amount to a satisfying whole.
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The all-star ‘existential’ David O. Russell satire I Heart Huckabees is all but unwatchable; its notable moments actually took place behind the scenes.
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Gaping narrative issues hinder Sam Mendes’ gangster noir Road to Perdition, otherwise a great showcase for stars Tom Hanks and Paul Newman.
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Naomi Watts delivers an exceptional performance - or rather, two of them - in David Lynch’s unsettling Hollywood horror tale Mulholland Dr..
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John Cassavetes’ landmark and widely admired 1968 independent drama Faces is a narrative wreck and a long-winded cinematic chore.
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Meryl Streep is the 1 bright spot in Jonathan Demme’s mundane and mostly poorly cast 2004 remake of the political thriller The Manchurian Candidate.
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In a less showy role, Ethan Hawke effortlessly steals Antoine Fuqua’s mediocre 2001 cop thriller Training Day from Oscar winner Denzel Washington.
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The 1928 Pre-Code Western In Old Arizona is of historical interest as the first ‘outdoor’ talkie and for its risqué sensibility. Warner Baxter stars.
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Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004 adaptation proves that CGI and movie magic aren’t the same thing.
A first-rate Tom Hanks learns no one is indispensable in Cast Away, Robert Zemeckis’ adventure flick exalting the Triumph of the Human Spirit nonsense.
Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks can’t save Nora Ephron’s unromantic and unfunny (but commercially successful) 1993 romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle.
Miscast cast (Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire et al) + heavy directorial hand hinder Curtis Hanson and Steve Kloves’ Wonder Boys movie adaptation.
Best Actress Oscar nominee Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence is seriously marred by its own inauthentic ‘rawness.’
Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga’s overreaching psychological drama 21 Grams is immensely helped by 5 stellar performances.
Chris and Paul Weitz’s reactionary audience-pandering comedy About a Boy (2002) stars Hugh Grant as a man who tragically discovers his inner family man.
Michael Moore’s blockbuster documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 incinerates the warmongering George W. Bush White House and the eagerly complicit American media.