CAST: Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossamon, Mark Addy, Benno Furmann, Peter Weller
SYNOPSIS: Ledger plays a Catholic priest investigating a death that looks suspiciously supernatural. Sossamon co-stars as a psychiatric patient holding a clue to the truth.
WHAT WE SAID: The Times did not review this film. New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden said the film "isn't acted so much as intoned. If it has a theme, it's embodied in the declaration made by one of its many grim, unsmiling clerics: "Knowledge is the enemy of faith.' That's just the tip of the oratorical iceberg in a film in which even flowers take on sinister connotations."
MPAA RATING: R for violent images, sexuality and language
RUNNING TIME: 102 minutes
Northfork
DIRECTOR: Michael Polish
CAST: Josh Barker, Graham Beckel, Marshall Bell, R.J. Burns, Peter Coyote, Anthony Edwards, Duel Farnes, Claire Forlani, Ben Foster, Clark Gregg, Jon Gries, Daryl Hannah, Michele Hicks, Kyle MacLachlan, Nick Nolte, Mark Polish, Robin Sachs, James Woods
SYNOPSIS: A small Montana town in 1955 will be flooded with the opening on a new dam. Woods plays an agent assigned to remove the hangers-on, and Nolte is a grizzled minister taking care of a miracle child.
WHAT WE SAID: Times film critic Steve Persall gave the film a B-plus in his August review. "Northfork is an intriguing novelty, at times too ponderous or playful to establish any consistent tone," he said. "The pleasure is found in the details of this quaint, alternate universe where a child's imagination and the harsh realities of progress collide, where humans play god and angels fuss around like Harry Potter characters. Northfork is emotionally abstract to a fault, but it's full of fascinating whims."
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for brief sexuality
RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes
S.W.A.T.
DIRECTOR: Clark Johnson
CAST: Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell, LL Cool J, Michelle Rodriguez, Olivier Martinez, Jeremy Renner, Josh Charles
SYNOPSIS: Jackson leads a team of urban cop commandos through grueling training and (finally) a dangerous assignment, keeping tabs on a criminal offering $100-million to anyone who springs him free.
WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the film a C in August, calling it "as violently shallow as the 1970s television series it's based upon. Violently shallow entertainment was much more fun a generation ago. . . . None of these actors will brag about their performances. Jackson gets by on cool reputation alone, and Farrell is too fine an actor to be stuck gazing sternly down the sights of an automatic weapon for so much time. Rodriguez is suitably feisty but still required by Hollywood feminine law to be ridiculed or flirted with. J's frisky demeanor is more in line with what this movie needs, but the material simply isn't there. Martinez makes a lame villain because he threatens only one guy who apparently deserves it. The rest of the time he's in custody. So what?"
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for action violence, profanity, sexual references
SYNOPSIS: A spoiled socialite (Murphy) wants to prove that she can work for a living, playing nanny to a bratty child (Fanning).
WHAT WE SAID: Times reviewer Marty Clear, who gave it a C-, said the movie "regurgitated key elements from lots of other films: a neglected child, attractive but downtrodden people who triumph over adversity, villainous adults who eventually repent. The result is a story that feels as if it were written by computers and approved by focus groups."
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for sexual content and language
RUNNING TIME: 95 minutes
Coming Friday
American Wedding
DIRECTOR: Jesse Dylan
CAST: Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, Alyson Hannigan, Eugene Levy, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Fred Willard, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Eric Allen Kramer
SYNOPSIS: Jim and Michelle plant their nuptials in the third movie in the American Pie series.
WHAT WE SAID: Steve Persall gave the film a B. "Everything and nothing change in American Wedding. Jim still has an embarrassing genitalia moment ahead, this time with a beard trimmer rather than apple pie or a tube of glue. Stifler is coaching football at his old high school but still acts like a potty-mouthed nymphomaniac. Finch has a budding career but maintains that falsely sophisticated air about him. Myers still is the dullest of the bunch. Yet there's something admirable about the way director Jesse Dylan and screenwriter Adam Herz keep the grossness escalating throughout American Wedding. At the same time, they don't completely sacrifice the sentiment that the wedding backdrop requires. This movie has the same balance of smut and sweetness that American Pie did, and the first sequel didn't."
MPAA RATING: R for sexual situations, crude humor, harsh profanity, nudity
