CAST: George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Cedric the Entertainer, Billy Bob Thornton, Geoffrey Rush
SYNOPSIS: Crafty divorce lawyer (Clooney) falls in love with a client's wife (Zeta-Jones).
WHAT WE SAID: Times reviewer Philip Booth gave the film a B-. "The Coens' familiar dark-comic humor surfaces here and there, including a violent sequence centered on a contract killer's confusion about which of his hands is holding an inhaler, and which one has the loaded pistol. But the Coens' good stuff is mostly repressed, toned down, broadened and reshaped nearly beyond recognition; call it Coen lite, less filling than the full-bodied real thing."
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for bawdy humor, sexual situations, brief comic violence
RUNNING TIME: 98 min.
Sylvia
DIRECTOR: Christine Jeffs
CAST: Gwyneth Paltrow, Daniel Craig, Michael Gambon, Jared Harris, Blythe Danner
SYNOPSIS: The morbid life and suicidal death of poet-author Sylvia Plath.
WHAT WE SAID: Times film critic Steve Persall gave the film a B-. "Gwyneth Paltrow's carefully measured performance is the saving grace of director Christine Jeffs' biography of poet-author Sylvia Plath, whose suicide in 1963 led to the kind of fame that might have made her wish to keep on living. Sylvia isn't as convoluted or existential as (2002's) The Hours, which dealt with another suicidal writer, Virginia Woolf, and that's a relief. But it also doesn't delve deeply into the soul of its subject."
MPAA RATING: R
RUNNING TIME: 100 min.
In the Cut
DIRECTOR: Jane Campion
CAST: Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kevin Bacon, Nick Damici, Sharrieff Pugh
SYNOPSIS: A grisly murder brings together a college professor (Ryan) and a detective (Ruffalo) who may be the killer.
WHAT WE SAID: This film contains Ryan's first graphic sex scenes. "Big deal," Persall wrote in his October review, giving the film a D. "In the Cut overdoes everything, taking the fun out of erotica, the suspense out of mystery and the sense out of spending money to see the movie."
MPAA RATING: R for strong sexuality, explicit dialogue, nudity, graphic violence, harsh profanity
RUNNING TIME: 119 min.
The Lion King 1 1/2
DIRECTOR: Bradley Raymond
CAST: Voices of Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Robert Guillaume, Matthew Broderick, Whoopi Goldberg, Moira Kelly.
SYNOPSIS: The story of the original Lion King is retold from the perspective of Timon and Pumbaa.
WHAT WE SAID: This is a straight-to-video release.
MPAA RATING: G
RUNNING TIME: About 70 min.
Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
DIRECTOR: Shane Meadows
CAST: Robert Carlyle, Rhys Ifans, Kathy Burke, Shirley Henderson, Ricky Tomlinson, Vanessa Feltz, Vic Reeves, Bob Mortimer, Finn Atkins, Eliot Otis Brown Walters, Ryan Bruce, Andrew Shim, Kelly Thresher
SYNOPSIS: A British criminal (Carlyle) tries winning back his former lover in a mild comedy steeped in spaghetti Western techniques.
WHAT WE SAID: Persall gave the film a C+. "The title and musical choices are intended to evoke memories of a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western or crime drama, but the mood of Shane Meadows' movie is decidedly lighter in tone. This sporadically amusing film is more like The Full Monty, especially with that film's star, Robert Carlyle, front and center."
MPAA RATING: R for language
RUNNING TIME: 104 min.
Wonderland
DIRECTOR: James Cox
CAST: Val Kilmer, Lisa Kudrow, Kate Bosworth, Josh Lucas, Christina Applegate, Dylan McDermott, Eric Bogosian, Tim Blake Nelson, Ted Levine, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Janeane Garofalo, Frankie G., M.C. Gainey
SYNOPSIS: Drug addiction leads former porn star John Holmes (Kilmer) into grisly multiple murders.
WHAT WE SAID: Persall called Wonderland "one of the most unpleasant movie experiences of 2003. . . . The story is nasty enough: Holmes became a raving drug addict, living with a teenage girl and clinging to his estranged wife, got involved with friends in very low places, then possibly contributed to the grisly deaths of four of them. Cox makes matters more unbearable with a frenetic cinematic style that never lets up, full of needless editing tricks."
MPAA RATING: R for strong violence, grisly images, pervasive drug use and language, some sexuality and nudity
