Search for 2005

I have never understood the appeal of Jennifer Garner as an action/adventure star. Based on my limited exposure to her work, she's better in comedic or lightly dramatic roles (such as her turn in 13 Going on 30). Nothing that happens in Elektra h...

Following scathing audience reaction to a "work copy" of Elizabethtown shown at several major late-summer film festivals, writer/director Cameron Crowe went back to the drawing board, paring down the 138-minute "director's cut" to a slightly more m...

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is truly a tale for our time. Today, Corporate America may pay lip-service to the term "ethics," but the men and women at the top don't understand or care about the definition. There's only one word that means...

I want to give actor-turned-director Liev Schreiber credit for making his behind-the-camera debut a film that means something to him. One can easily see how Everything Is Illuminated could be a deeply personal effort. Unfortunately, the meaning a...

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is being sold as the latest PG-13 horror movie, albeit one that deals with demonic possession instead of ghosts. In reality, however, it's a courtroom drama with a twinge of the supernatural (most of which occurs during fl...

Welcome to the world of Charles Bukowski - poet, author, skid row denizen, alcoholic, and hero to millions (most of them in Europe). Factotum is director Bent Hamer’s attempt to bring a version of Bukowski’s novel to the screen. This isn’t ...

It's a tough thing for a dysfunctional-family-at-Christmas movie to avoid doses of melodrama, and it's fair to say that The Family Stone contains its share. But the nice thing about the movie is that it avoids overt manipulation. There's some - i...

Fantastic Four is the comic book that gave birth to Marvel Comics, making it the older sibling to such better-known titles as Spider-Man, X-Men, and The Incredible Hulk. The reason Fantastic Four has been relegated to the role of "ugly stepsister"...

I will be surprised if this film does well in New York City. Yankees fans, accustomed to success, are still smarting from last year's humiliating debacle, and a romantic comedy that capitalizes on the Red Sox's triumph is unlikely to pack theaters ...

Fierce People starts out as a satire-tinged, jocular drama that undergoes a jarring shift in tone to the dark side. While the film successfully makes light of such subjects as drug addiction and coma victims during its first half, the event that o...