Movie Guide
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Sterritt ** The time is 1953, the place is a tradition-bound women's college in New England, and the heroine is an ornery Berkeley grad who takes a job teaching art history. Roberts contributes wit and energy but sentimentality trumps substance at every opportunity.
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Sex/Nudity: 9 instances of innuendo including implied sex. Violence: None. Profanity: 16 mild profanities. Drugs: 15 scenes of smoking, 10 instances of drinking.
Director: Cheryl Dunye. With Eddie Griffin, Anthony Anderson, Michael Imperioli, Method Man. (99 min.)
Staff ** Three buddies live for nothing but the next party. They get a rude awakening when their dates from the last birthday bash inform them that they're all pregnant. Nothing new here, but what helps this flick rise above the old jokes is that not only do the new fathers develop a sense of responsibility, but the kids become the focus of their lives. By M. K. Terrell
Sex/Nudity: 10 instances of innuendo and implied sex. Violence: 10 scenes. Profanity: 72 profanities, some harsh. Drugs: 4 scenes of smoking, 11 instances of drinking, 1 scene with marijuana.
Director: John Woo. With Ben Affleck, Uma Thurman, Paul Giamatti. (118 min.)
Sterritt ** Affleck plays an engineer who returns from his latest job with no memories of the three years he worked on the project and plenty of evidence that someone wants to kill him right now. Woo's action-film pyrotechnics gather more substance than usual from the inventive plot.
Sex/Nudity: 2 scenes of innuendo. Violence: 10 scenes of violence. Profanity: 9 profanities. Drugs: 2 scenes with alcohol, 4 scenes with smoking.
Director: Nancy Meyers. With Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Keanu Reeves, Amanda Peet. (121 min.)
Sterritt *** An aging businessman (Nicholson) realizes that the 20-something he's wooing is less interesting than her mother (Keaton). While it's a standard romantic comedy, Meyers's movie deserves extra credit for teaming up Nicholson and Keaton, whose chemistry bubbles off the screen.
Staff **1/2 Lovably cast, long-winded, Keaton is radiant.
Sex/Nudity: 4 scenes with nudity, 2 sex scenes, 3 innuendos. Violence: None. Profanity: 19 profanities. Drugs: 14 scenes with drinking. 4 scenes with smoking.
Director: Joseph Kahn. With Martin Henderson, Monet Mazur, Ice Cube, Jay Hernandez. (82 min.)
Sterritt *** A macho motorbiker returns to California for unfinished business with his worst enemy, then gets framed for murdering a member of a rival gang. The movie is as adolescent as it sounds, but Kahn keeps your eyes popping with truly nonstop action and some of the most outlandishly inventive effects you've ever seen. And of course Cube is so supercool it's worth the price of admission just to watch him.
Staff ** Mind-numbing, unrealistic, rowdy.
Sex/Nudity: 1 instance of innuendo. Violence: 21 scenes. Profanity: 44 instances. Drugs: 7 scenes of drinking.
Director: Jeff Blitz. With children in the National Spelling Bee. (97 min.)
Sterritt **** The characters are a socially and culturally diverse group of kids who share a knack for spelling, and the event is the National Spelling Bee. This documentary would be more valuable if it explored the dark side of its subject by asking if competition for its own sake is a proper educational tool. But you won't find many films with more suspense. DVD extras include a "where are they now" update on the kids.
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