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Mega Movie Guide 2005
(K through P)
Kicking & Screaming (PG)
Director: Jesse Dylan. With Will Ferrell, Robert Duvall, Mike Ditka. (90 min.)
Ferrell plays a soccer dad who coaches a preteen squad with his klutzy son as a member and his hotly competitive father (Duvall) determined to lead his own team to the championship. Some scenes are just silly, others are dead-on uproarious.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 2 scenes with innuendos.
Violence: 6 scenes, including fighting.
Profanity: 12 mild profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 4 scenes with drinking, 6 scenes with smoking, plus subplot about caffeine addiction.
Kingdom of Heaven (R)
Director: Ridley Scott. With Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons. (138 min.)
Scott turns to history again in this epic about Crusaders fighting Muslims in the Holy Land several centuries ago. The screenplay aims for relevance to current events, but the story's medieval setting and the camera's obsession with action dilutes its potential as sober commentary.
Grade:
C
- D.S.
King Kong (PG-13)
Director: Peter Jackson. With Naomi Watts, Adrien Brody. (187 min.)
Ann Darrow (Watts), a struggling actress in Depression-era Manhattan, is picked by Carl Denham to star in his jungle epic. Ultimately she finds herself, literally, in the palm of the giant ape's hands, and director Jackson wants us to feel their love. When she pours it out for Kong as he battles the biplanes atop the Empire State Building, you can almost believe that some day these two will have a rosy future together in some vast Valhalla.
Grade:
B+
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 2 instances of innuendo.
Violence: 26 incidents. Profanity: 21, mostly mild. Drugs: 12 smoking, 3 drinking.
Kings and Queen (Not rated)
Director: Arnaud Desplechin. With Emmanuelle Devos, Catherine Deneuve. (150 min.)
A 30-something art dealer copes with challenges posed by the male friends, relatives, and lovers who inhabit her life and memory. Desplechin is in top form with this ingenious tale, enriched by shifting moods, stylistic imagination, and wry satire.
In French with subtitles. Grade:
A
- D.S.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (R)
Director: Shane Black. With Val Kilmer, Robert Downey Jr. (102 min.)
As a petty thief turned aspiring actor and detective in Shane Black's raucously entertaining "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," Downey is on screen almost all the time, which is good news, since few performers can hold the screen as well. Black, who wrote "Lethal Weapon," makes his directorial debut, and he puts a fresh spin not only on that film but also on a whole slew of films noirs.
Grade:
B+
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 13 scenes, including nudity.
Violence: 20 gory scenes.
Profanity: 130 harsh expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 9 scenes with drinking, 8 scenes with smoking.
Kontroll (R)
Director: Nimród Antal. With Sandór Csányi, Eszter Balla. (110 min.)
The setting is the grungy depths of the Budapest subway system, where the main characters work, travel, hang out, and get into far-too-frequent trouble. Part mystery, part melodrama, part comedy, this genre-bender is fascinating from start to finish.
In Hungarian with subtitles. Grade:
A
- D.S.
Ladies in Lavender (PG-13)
Director: Charles Dance. With Judi Dench, Maggie Smith. (103 min.)
Two elderly women find a young musician stranded on shore after a shipwreck during the World War II era and decide, for differing reasons, to nurse him back to health. Dance's directorial debut isn't exciting, but it's deeply felt and engagingly acted.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Land of the Dead (R)
Director: George A. Romero. With John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper (94 min.)
Humans fight zombies in a city where a capitalist is profiting from the supernatural chaos. There may never be another "Night of the Living Dead," the 1968 masterpiece to which this is yet another gore-filled sequel, but Romero remains the best maker of movies about, well, remains.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 6 scenes, including nudity.
Violence: 35 gory scenes.
Profanity: 61 harsh profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 7 scenes with drinking, 8 scenes with smoking, 1 with drugs.
Last Days (R)
Director: Gus Van Sant. With Michael Pitt, Asia Argento, Lukas Haas. (97 min.)
Van Sant continues his risk-taking string of melancholy tone poems with this loosely plotted look at the last days of a drug-dazed rock musician, suggested by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain's untimely death. A true American tragedy, directed with skill and conviction.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
A League of Ordinary Gentlemen (Not rated)
Director: Christopher Browne. With Pete Weber, Wayne Webb (98 min.)
Documentary about efforts to turn bowling into a big-time spectator sport. While the movie is strong on the history of its subject, it allows some yawns to enter its own account of a big tournament.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
The Legend of Zorro (PG)
Director: Martin Campbell. With Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones. (100 min.)
"The Legend of Zorro," starring Antonio Banderas as the masked one, made me long to re-watch "Zorro the Gay Blade," the great spoof starring George Hamilton. In that film, the Spanish accents were meant to sound deliberately fake. Here, even Banderas sounds like he's having a hard time sounding authentic. Zorro's nemesis plans to blow up America. He seems to be under the misapprehension that Zorro is James Bond.
Grade:
C-
- P.R.
The Libertine (Not rated)
Director: Laurence Dunmore. With Johnny Depp, John Malkovich. (130 min.)
As the depraved John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, Depp adds yet another sly sleazoid to his burgeoning portrait gallery. The 17th-century Wilmot was like a junior-league Casanova, and his descent here from raunchy fop to syphilitic wastrel is lovingly detailed by Dunmore. That detail, however, is obscured by some of the darkest tableaux this side of the Bat Cave.
Grade:
B-
- P.R.
The Longest Yard (PG-13)
Director: Peter Segal. With Adam Sandler, Chris Rock. (114 min.)
The wicked warden of a Texas prison engineers a rigged football game between guards and inmates, with the convicts led by a former pro who's been jailed for reckless behavior. Lively but also rude, crude, and mean-spirited.
Grade:
D
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 10 scenes of innuendo, 2 with minor nudity.
Violence: 18 scenes, including fights and torture.
Profanity: 130 harsh profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 4 scenes with drinking, 7 scenes with smoking.
Lords of Dogtown (PG-13)
Director: Catherine Hardwicke. With Heath Ledger, Emile Hirsh. (107 min.)
Three buddies in 1970s California revolutionize skateboarding when they put new polyurethane wheels on their boards and invade empty backyard swimming pools. Screenwriter Stacy Peralta, a member of this real-life trio, draws on material from his 2001 documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys." Hardwicke's furiously paced directing doesn't measure up to the real thing in the earlier film.
Grade:
C+
- M.K.T.
Lord of War (R)
Director: Andrew Niccol. With Nicolas Cage, Ethan Hawke. (122 min.)
"Lord of War" is a bitterly funny comedy about arms dealers. Russian refugee Yuri Orlov (Cage) makes his fortune helping Third World dictators attack their neighbors or oppress their own people. As you laugh you become aware that Yuri is less a criminal than a tool of foreign policy. In showing us a man who tries not to notice what happens after he closes the deal, Niccol gives us a fast and funny movie that should leave you feeling a bit queasy.
Grade:
A-
- Daniel M. Kimmel
Sex/Nudity: 12 scenes of innuendo and sex.
Violence: 16 instances.
Profanity: 60 strong profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 16 scenes of smoking, 12 scenes of drinking, and 6 scenes of drug taking.
A Love Song for Bobby Long (R)
Director: Shainee Gabel. With John Travolta, Scarlett Johansson. (119 min.)
Travolta plays a dissolute codger who lives with a former student from his English-professor days in a Louisiana house that takes on a new atmosphere when its new owner (Johansson) decides to reside there too. Rambling, meandering, likable.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Madagascar (PG)
Directors: Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath. With voices of Chris Rock, Ben Stiller. (80 min.)
Bored with his life, a zoo animal takes himself and some friends on a quest for more agreeable climes. The animation is deft but the screenplay is stilted, the voice-performances are unimaginative, and the whole project is surprisingly clumsy.
Grade:
D
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 2 scenes of mild innuendo.
Violence: 12 comic scenes.
Profanity: 2 mild expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: None.
Mad Hot Ballroom (PG)
Director: Marilyn Agrelo. With New York City public school pupils. (110 min.)
Documentary about New York preteens learning ballroom dancing in a public-school program. Many moviegoers will swoon over the young folks' earnest efforts to learn gracefulness and sociability. But at heart this is a cuteness-exploitation flick.
Grade:
C
- D.S.
The Man (PG-13)
Director: Les Mayfield. With Samuel L. Jackson, Eugene Levy. (83 min.)
Eugene Levy gets his first costarring role playing a dental salesman, which is ironic since the film has no teeth - also no brain or heart. Levy's opposite number here, a federal agent with whom he gets entangled in an arms heist plot, is played by Jackson in full scowl.
Grade:
C-
- P.R.
March of the Penguins (G)
Director: Luc Jacquet. With the voice of Morgan Freeman. (80 min.)
Documentary about the mating routines of emperor penguins, whose Antarctic habitat makes almost every activity hazardous to their health and even their lives. As a zoological spectacle, the movie is riveting. But the narration tries to make us think of these adorable animals as if they saw the world in human terms, which they obviously don't, and the images have been enhanced by digital effects.
Grade:
C
- D.S.
Me and You and Everyone We Know (R)
Director: Miranda July. With Miranda July, John Hawkes. (90 min.)
Performance artist July plays a performance artist with a sudden crush on a young shoe salesman. Many other characters also weave in and out of the story, which is sometimes sweet and ingenious, extremely explicit about adolescent sex and occasionally too clever for its own good. A mixed package, but often fun to watch.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
Melinda and Melinda (PG-13)
Director: Woody Allen. With Radha Mitchell, Will Ferrell. (100 min)
During a friendly debate about optimism vs. pessimism, two writers work out the adventures of the title character(s) by imagining how differently the same person might behave with different circumstances and companions. Allen's view of life is limited to the urban middle class, as usual, but it's good to see his thoughtfulness back in action as he ponders the divide - or is it? - between comic and tragic perspectives.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Memoirs of a Geisha (PG-13)
Director: Rob Marshall. With Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe. (137 min.)
A poor country girl, Sayuri (Zhang), becomes the geisha equivalent of a supermodel. But she pines for the baron who once did her a good turn when she was a 9-year-old and whom she still has a thing for as an adult. Beautiful geishas flit and whoosh through the equally beautiful scenery. So why is the film so boring? It could be because Marshall ("Chicago") is so transfixed by all the ritualistic hoo-ha that he never brings the story down to earth.
Grade:
C+
- P.R.
Millions (PG)
Director: Danny Boyle. With Alexander Nathan Etel, Lewis Owen McGibbon, Jane Hogarth. (97 min.)
Two young English boys stumble on a bag crammed with pounds just before Britain switches to the euro, and if they don't decide how to use the cash fast, it'll be worthless. Is it a gift from God, as one believes, or just a chance to win friends and influence people, as the other thinks? It's a movie about family that family viewers will find good fun.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Mirrormask (PG)
Director: Dave McKean. With Stephanie Leonidas, Rob Brydon. (101 min.)
Helena wishes she could run away from her family circus and "join real life." Like "Alice in Wonderland," her odyssey spirals her through a series of increasingly dark fantasias. Unlike Lewis Carroll's Alice, the wit and invention often flags.
Grade:
B
- P.R.
Monster-in-Law (PG-13)
Director: Robert Luketic. With Jane Fonda, Jennifer Lopez. (102 min.)
A bride-to-be dukes it out with her mother-in-law-to-be as the wedding day draws near. The comedy is shamelessly stupid and flagrantly vulgar by turns.
Grade:
D
- D.S.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (PG-13)
Director: Doug Liman. With Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie. (120 min.)
Pitt and Jolie play secret agents who don't know each other's line of work when they get married, then become rivals and eventually partners in the licensed-to-kill game. The movie is a mish-mash of action-adventure clichés, book-ended with lame attempts at psychological interest.
Grade:
C
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 5 scenes with innuendo, 2 sex scenes.
Violence: 16 scenes.
Profanity: 29 strong profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 12 scenes with drinking, 3 scenes with smoking.
Mrs. Henderson Presents (R)
Director: Stephen Frears. With Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins. (103 min.)
Laura Henderson (Dench) purchases a West End theater and comes up with a show in which girls appear naked. Vivian Van Damm is the impresario she hires and locks horns with. He wants artistic freedom, she wants to meddle. The key to Dench's performance is the depth of feeling beneath the imperiousness.
Grade:
A
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 12 scenes including nudity.
Violence: 4 scenes of wartime violence.
Profanity: 5 expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 18 scenes of smoking, 8 scenes of drinking.
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (Unrated)
Director: Dan Ireland. With Joan Plowright, Rupert Friend. (108 min.)
With the encouragement of her daughter, Mrs. Palfrey moves from rural Scotland into London's musty but comfortable Claremont Hotel. After stumbling in the street while out for a walk, Mrs. Palfrey is tended to by a would-be novelist, Ludo (Rupert Friend). He is a free spirit who learns many life lessons from his new best friend, while Mrs. Palfrey basks in the chaste companionship. Plowright's performance as a genteel widow is a small-scale gem.
Grade:
B+
- P.R.
Munich (R)
Director: Steven Spielberg. With Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush. (160 min.)
"Munich," which is about the aftermath to the 1972 Olympics massacre, is rarely less than gripping. Unofficially, Prime Minister Golda Meir dispatched a five-man commando unit to assassinate 11 Palestinian ringleaders of the massacre. The team is led by Avner, who, as the only native Israeli in the unit, is clearly intended to represent the conflicted Israeli soul. Spielberg focuses on Avner's crisis of conscience and wants to show us the way out of the cycle of violence in the Middle East. In essence his answer is "give peace a chance." The director has a reformer's instincts, which are admirable in a politician but can be detrimental to an artist, who almost by definition sees life in more complex colors.
Grade:
B
- P.R.
Murderball (R)
Directors: Henry Alex Rubin, Dana Adam Shapiro. With Keith Cavill,
Joe Soares, Andy Cohn. (86 min.)
The game of the title is a sort of rugby, and the players are quadriplegics tucked into wheelchairs customized for the sport. This is a lively, life-affirming documentary no viewer is likely to forget for a long time.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
My Summer of Love (R)
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski. With Natalie Press, Emily Blunt. (85 min.)
A relationship blossoms between two teenage girls alienated from their dysfunctional English families, one damaged by adultery, the other by religious zealotry. Superbly acted, movingly written, and directed with a tough-minded lyricism rarely found in today's films.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
Nina's Tragedies (Not rated)
Director: Savi Gabizon. With Aviv Elkabets, Ayelet July Zurer. (110 min.)
The place is Israel, and the hero is a 14-year-old boy who falls in love with his aunt, moving in with her as a sympathetic family member after her husband dies. This wry comedy drama has excellent acting and surprises galore.
In Hebrew with subtitles. Grade:
A
- D.S.
Nine Lives (R)
Director: Rodrigo García. With Glenn Close, Dakota Fanning. (115 min.)
Nine stories about nine women filmed in nine separate unbroken takes. The uneven "Nine Lives" has an impressive cast, but the best section features Mexican actress Elpidio Carrillo as a prison inmate kept from her child.
Grade:
B-
- P.R.
The Ninth Day (Not rated)
Director: Volker Schlöndorff. With Ulrich Matthes, August Diehl. (90 min.)
On temporary leave from the Dachau death camp, a Roman Catholic priest struggles with his conscience, his fears for his family, and with a Nazi officer who hopes he'll push his bishop toward more sympathy with the Nazi cause. This is moviemaking on the highest dramatic, psychological, and moral plane.
In German with subtitles. Grade:
A
- D.S.
North Country (R)
Director: Niki Caro. With Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson. (126 min.)
Theron plays a battered wife who fights sexual harassment at her job in the iron mines. She has her best role since "Monster," but overall "North Country" is too self-consciously scaled as an anthem for the human spirit.
Grade:
B-
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 16 scenes of innuendo and sexual harassment.
Violence: 8 scenes, including one of rape.
Profanity: 76 harsh expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 11 scenes with smoking, 10 scenes with drinking.
November (R)
Director: Greg Harrison. With Courteney Cox, James LeGros, Anne Archer. (78 min.)
Trying to track down the truth about her boyfriend's murder, a photographer finds a mass of contradictory clues, some of which point back to her. An ingeniously scripted psychological thriller.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
Off the Map (PG-13)
Director: Campbell Scott. With Joan Allen, Sam Elliott. (105 min.)
Domestic eccentricities - some amusing and some troubling - surface when the IRS arrives to audit a New Mexico family that lives in the middle of nowhere. Scott has the courage to let the imaginative story unfold at its own leisurely pace, and it's not surprising that the acting is excellent, considering that he's among the very best American screen actors.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
Oliver Twist (PG-13)
Director: Roman Polanski. With Ben Kingsley, Barney Clark. (130 min.)
"Oliver Twist" is a near-masterpiece. All of the familiar scenes are here: The starving, orphaned Oliver risking the wrath of his overseers at feeding time by asking for "more"; Oliver's introduction to the lair of street-gang leader Fagin; the murder of the prostitute Nancy - Oliver's one true friend. Polanski's film is the first to truly put forth the dark derangement of Oliver's world, and it is this passion for emotional honesty that binds the famous scenes into a flowing whole.
Grade:
A
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 2 scenes of innuendo.
Violence: 20 instances.
Profanity: 5 instances.
Drugs/Alcohol: 6 scenes of smoking, 9 drinking.
One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern (Not rated)
Director: Stephen Vittoria. With Gore Vidal, Gloria Steinem, Howard Zinn, Warren Beatty. (125 min.)
Lively documentary about McGovern's disastrous run for the US presidency. The interviews with him are worth the price of admission.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
The Other Side of the Street (Not rated)
Director: Marcos Bernstein. With Fernanda Montenegro, Raul Cortez, Laura Cardoso. (98 min.)
Participating in a neighborhood-watch program for senior citizens, a lonely Brazilian woman spies a murder in an apartment across the street and starts dating the retired judge who she thinks committed it. An absorbing new spin on the "Rear Window" concept, with poignant comments on aging in modern society.
In Portuguese with subtitles.Grade:
B
- D.S.
The Pacifier (PG)
Director: Adam Shankman. With Vin Diesel, Lauren Graham. (95 min.)
In this variation on "Kindergarten Cop," a Navy Seal is assigned to protect a family of kids from ruthless foreign agents. Cooped up in their home, the five children resent their babysitter/bodyguard and try to oust him, bringing a whole new meaning to the term "domestic terrorism." As predictable as you'd expect, but it exudes a low-wattage charm.
Grade:
C-
-Stephen Humphries
Palindromes (Not rated)
Director: Todd Solondz. With Ellen Barkin, Jennifer Jason Leigh. (100 min.)
The controversial Solondz strikes again with this indirect sequel to "Welcome to the Dollhouse," focusing on a 13-year-old girl whose desire to get pregnant sends her into a strange odyssey away from her family and friends. Having several actresses (and an actor) portray the heroine is just one of the drama's weirdly absorbing strategies. It's truly one of a kind.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
Paradise Now (PG-13)
Director: Hany Abu-Assad. With Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman. (90 min.)
Said (Nashef) and his friend Khaled (Suliman) are recruited as human bombs by an underground Palestinian terrorist organization in the West Bank in the intermittently powerful "Paradise Now." Director Abu-Assad attempts to get inside the psyches of men who would blow themselves up for the cause. The film is better than the recent "The War Within," which tried for the same things, but ultimately, and perhaps unavoidably, we are left face to face with the unknowable.
Grade:
B+
- P.R.
Pooh's Heffalump Movie (G)
Director: Frank Nissen. With voices of Jim Cummings, Brenda Blethyn. (68 min.)
Pooh and his pals - except Roo, who's too young for the trip - set out to capture a mysterious new creature who's shown up in their neck of the woods. The gentle story, told via old-fashioned "flat" animation, is perfect for young viewers.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Pride and Prejudice (PG)
Director: Joe Wright. With Keira Knightley, Judi Dench, Matthew Macfadyen. (135 min.)
One of the great romances in the canon, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" has been adapted for TV five times but only once before as a movie. Wright's version, set in the 18th century, brings out the vigor in Austen's romance in a way that the other adaptations never quite accomplished. Keira Knightley triumphantly comes into her own as Elizabeth, the heroine.
Grade:
A
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 3 scenes of mild innuendo.
Violence: None.
Profanity: None.
Drugs/Alcohol: 8 scenes with drinking. 1 scene with smoking.
Prime (PG-13)
Director: Ben Younger. With Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman. (105 min.)
Rafi, 37 and recently divorced, lusts after David, 23 and living with his grandparents. There's an even bigger twist: Rafi's therapist, Lisa (Streep) is, unknown to her patient, David's mother. Just in case we didn't think that the age differences here were enough of a roadblock, Rafi is Catholic and David is Jewish. It's just an excuse for a lot of Yiddish-mama shtick, although Streep, who seems to have found a new lease on life as a loosey-goosey comedienne, does more with it than might have seemed possible.
Grade:
B-
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 9 scenes of frank talk and innuendo.
Violence: 1 scene.
Profanity: 36 expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: Not counted.
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (PG-13)
Director: Jane Anderson. With Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern. (99 min.)
Evelyn Ryan rewrote the definition of resilience in the 1950s and '60s, supporting 10 children and an alcoholic husband by composing jingles and 25-word essays to win hundreds of contests. The film veers from tongue-in-cheek documentary to gritty drama to sitcom, but it's true to the spirit of daughter Terry's book and of Evelyn's life - lumpy but filled with expectancy of good, and utterly charming.
Grade:
B
-M.K.T.
Sex/Nudity: None.
Violence: 4 scenes.
Profanity: 25 expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 8 scenes with drinking.
The Producers (PG-13)
Director: Susan Stroman. With Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Will Ferrell. (134 min.)
Lane and Broderick reprise their Broadway roles as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, who figure out they can make more money with a theatrical flop than with a hit - hence the musical "Springtime for Hitler." It succeeds despite itself. It is possible, of course, to take great offense at the very notion of a musical comedy about Hitler. But for creator Mel Brooks, the Hitler humor is a sign of life. He's saying: We survived, you didn't.
Grade:
B+
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 19 instances of innuendo.
Violence: 5 comic scenes.
Profanity: 20 fairly mild expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 2 scenes of smoking, 2 scenes of drinking.
Proof (PG-13)
Director: John Madden. With Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal. (99 min.)
For a decade, Catherine (Paltrow) had been caring for her famous mathematician father (Hopkins), who spiraled into schizophrenia until his death. Now, as his funeral approaches, we realize that she, too, is afflicted, if not with madness then at least with the shadow of it. In the world of "Proof," madness and creativity are one. It's a very old romantic notion; maybe it's time to put it to rest.
Grade:
B
- P.R.
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