Contributor: Steven Isaac

Music of the Heart

It takes some persuasion, but Roberta lands a substitute position as a violin teacher at an inner-city grade school in East Harlem, New York. It’s rough going for awhile …

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Flags of Our Fathers

Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg write another chapter in cinema’s examination of the Second Great War. The result is emotional, visceral and devastating.

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Love Actually

Sentimental sludge with a saccharine coating of carnality, as if the filmmakers—afraid their mawkish melodrama might show too much—spliced nudity and sex throughout to trick critics into calling it edgy and artsy.

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“I Need a Doctor”

Dr. Dre has spent the last decade or so practicing his hip-hop medicine on others. His own work’s been mostly on hold. Why? The obscenity-riddled, angel-enhanced and Eminem-related story’s all on this track.

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The Dilemma

How do you go about telling your best friend about his wife and … a guy named Zip? This dreadful dilemma, though, isn’t even the biggest in the film.

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The Banger Sisters

Life-long rock ’n’ roll groupie Suzette wakes up one evening to find herself middle-aged, lonely, broke and fired from her cocktail waitressing job.

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The Princess Diaries

It’s largely clean, it’s funny, it’s endearing and it harks back to a time when movies were meant to be enjoyed, not torn apart by critics looking for hidden meanings.

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Something’s Gotta Give

This “sex romp for seniors” pairs Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. In it, the sixtysomething Harry has never dated anyone over the age of 30. So what’s he doing with Marin’s mom?

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Road to Perdition

“There’s only one guarantee,” Irish crime boss John Rooney tells his No. 1 enforcer, Michael Sullivan. “None of us will see heaven.”

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Boys and Girls

There’s no escaping the fact that “Boys and Girls” is a sloppy, teen-ized retread of the 1989 R-rated comedy “When Harry Met Sally.”

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Envy

Green. Not behind the ears. Green with envy. Tim Dingman might as well be a Martian he’s so green. Why? His best friend has just invented Vapoorize.

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Country Strong

There’s a profound question lurking in this twangy tearjerker: Why is the word strong in its title? Gwyneth Paltrow’s crooning character may claim she’s hearty, but she’s far from it. Is her story?

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Changing Lanes

We all know that our lives are deeply interwoven with those people who share our time and space. But every once in a while something happens that jolts us into a greater appreciation of how entwined we truly are.

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The Last Sin Eater

Christian director Michael Landon Jr. turns his attention away from Janette Oke and toward Francine Rivers, trading the open prairie for the coves and confines of Appalachia.

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Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

Lemony Snicket’s Roald Dahl-inspired writing takes on a decidedly Tim Burton-esque tone as it mopes its way onto celluloid.

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