[7] Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days, Near Dark) directs this Cold War-era true story starring Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson as Soviet officers aboard Russia’s first nuclear-powered submarine. Moscow orders the ship to launch a nuclear missile to let America know they are within striking distance. After the successful launch, however, the vessel suffers a nuclear meltdown that threatens to kill all those aboard and potentially …
[6] A mother and daughter hole up in an impenetrable ‘panic room’ after three strange men invade their Manhattan home looking for a hidden fortune. Jodie Foster stars in this claustrophobic thriller from director David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club), with a pre-Twilight Kristen Stewart playing the role of her teen daughter. The bad guys are played by Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker, and Dwight Yoakam — …
[6] Frequent X-Files director Rob Bowman helms this action-packed monster movie about the last remaining humans on Earth battling dragons in post-apocalyptic England. Christian Bale plays the cautious leader of a colony of survivors who have taken up residence beneath an old castle. Matthew McConaughey plays a confident American dragonslayer who throws in with them. The two men have differing philosophies about how best to …
[5] Josh Hartnett stars as a guy so obsessed with his ex-girlfriend, that it haunts any attempt to start a new relationship. So he gives up sex for Lent — right before accidentally meeting Mrs. Right (Shannyn Sossamon). While his friends and co-workers lay bets on how soon he’ll break his vow of celibacy, Hartnett struggles to find a way to win over Sossamon when …
[4] A group of Asian-American high schoolers get bored of being diligent students and begin dabbling in criminal activity. Before long, they’re in over their heads and regretting everything. You don’t get to know any of the characters very well, except that one is a loose cannon the others keep in check by occasionally beating him up a little. There’s a love interest for one …
[5] Forces conspire to keep Harry Potter from returning to his second year at the Hogwarts wizarding school. Apparently, the big bad Voldemoort (who we still don’t see but hear about all the time) put a monster in a mysterious ‘chamber of secrets’ at the school, and only his true heir can unlock the chamber and let the monster out. This would suck because the …
[4] About two minutes into Punch-Drunk Love, an absurdist romance from Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia), you learn the movie doesn’t really take place in the real world and none of the characters are real, either. It’s all… some other version of reality. A version where Adam Sandler sells toilet plungers out of a warehouse, collects pudding to cash in on sweepstakes, has seven …
[7] In this remake of a Swedish film, an L.A. detective and his partner get loaned out to a town in Alaska where night never falls for half the year. While they’re hunting a killer, the detective accidentally kills his partner and tries to cover the truth about the incident. But then the killer starts to blackmail the detective, all while a young local officer does …
[6] SPOILER REVIEW. The Next Generation crew go out on a relatively low note, but not a whimper. Aside from the wedding of Riker and Troi early in the film, Nemesis is an uncharacteristically dark entry in the franchise. The villain this time is Shinzon (Tom Hardy), a spiteful young clone of Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) who was conceived and abandoned by the Romulans. Shinzon …
[6] Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser vie for the affection of a beautiful Vietnamese woman against the backdrop of the French-Indochina War. Philip Noyce (Dead Calm, Patriot Games) is the second director to bring Graham Greene’s novel to the screen (after Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1958 version), and does a good job balancing the intimate character drama against the political intrigue. I like how the movie presents …
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