The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King / **** (2003)

Of the novels that make up J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Return of the King" is the most dynamic and emotionally-driven of the three, boasting both spirit and strain as it plows its way through a series of tense climaxes on its way to a resolution. What gives it such an edge over its predecessors has less to do with specific events, however, and more to do with the fact that readers have become far more invested in the story with time; they care about what happens to their favorite characters and can practically touch the settings with their own fingertips, as if every twist and turn is happening to them as equally as it is happening to the actual participants. That's because the great fantasy literature has never worked simply based on the notion of having characters rush off on quests or getting mixed up in trouble; it has depended on leveling the playing field to a point where the outside spectators can see themselves contributing to actual decisions and outcomes. Anyone, therefore, who has been installed in Tolkien's trilogy knows well the rush of drama that comes from being brought to the end of the journey. It may take much for one to take root in this elaborate material, but it takes a lot more energy to accept the fact that all good things, no matter how inviting or substantial they may be, must come to an end.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action / *1/2 (2003)

If there's one thing that Warner Bros. can depend on, it's that there will always be an audience for Bugs Bunny and his cartoon costars. The "Looney Tunes," as they have been popularized as since their inception in the early 1930s, are among the pinnacle cartoon figures of modern pop culture, characters who can be identified simply by walking onto the screen for a split second before saying or doing anything. That's because like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, they house the earliest and purest values of Hollywood animators, who in the early days created their creatures out of substance instead of just for the sake of filling an empty story role. To this day, they remain as well-drawn as they have always been, and seeing them show up in the new "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" not only does wonders for nostalgia, but allows us to recall the elements that made them so distinctive in the first place.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World / * (2003)

The Patrick O'Brian novels about seafaring adventurer Jack Aubrey have amassed so many admirers and enthusiasts in the last 40 years, its fan base could almost easily match J.R.R. Tolkien's in both size and dedication. Small wonder, then, that the stories, rather conveniently, are finding their way onto the big screen just as the saga of Middle Earth's treacherous One Ring is drawing to a close. Could it be that movie audiences have a renewed fascination with ambitious and stylized Hollywood epics, a trend that lost significant steam in the mid-1960s? Whatever the answer, there are still reasons why such productions don't flood the market as significantly as they used to—there simply isn't room or need for all of them. "Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World," the first of an inevitable series of screen adaptations of O'Brian's famous stories, is a rather potent reminder that the most ambitious undertakings won't necessarily add much to the crop. It's an irrelevant, lackluster, dry result that does little but reaffirm the notion that the "Rings" trilogy is all the audience needs right now to satisfy those cravings for bid-budgeted Hollywood epics.

Shattered Glass / *** (2003)

Con artists can get just about anywhere if they have the right knack for putting up elaborate facades. Just ask Stephen Glass, who, in the late 1990s, fabricated over two dozen articles in the east coast-based The New Republic, which prided itself (at least at the time) as the news publication of choice aboard Air Force One. Slick as a dog and every bit as calculating, he manipulated his peers and superiors with a fiery demeanor. But such a task only clouded the initial issue, which was that his stories were too flamboyant and ingenious to be legitimate in the first place. From an outside perspective, simply reading one of his famous pieces has the immediate mark of fiction; sensationalism has always been an escape route for writers without substantial inspiration, yes, but there's a fine line separating the sensational from the absurd, too. Just like the old saying goes: if it's too good to be true, then it probably is.

Intolerable Cruelty / ** (2003)

Give a wise man a few dollars and he'll probably invest them into something worthwhile; give the money to the Coen brothers, and chances are you'll watch it whirl down the drain. Those peculiar, ironic directors of films like "Fargo" and "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" are heavily influenced by quirks and oddities when it comes to moviemaking — some of it too brilliant for words — but when their style is tuned under the influence of a Hollywood-sized budget, the results can be less than satisfying. Consider their last endeavor "The Man Who Wasn't There," a film noir vehicle saturated by the prospect of being shot in gorgeous black and white—once you strip away the uncanny sense of style, the movie itself lacks personality and rhythm. On the other hand, a film with such subtle traces of financial backing as "Fargo" is quite inverted; though technique isn't exactly cutting edge, the amount of thought applied to the screenplay is so grand that nothing else matters. There is no denying that the Coen brothers are satisfactory directors at the core, but do they truly know what it takes to establish consistency?

Johnstown Flood / **1/2 (2003)

Until a DVD copy of the recently-released "Johnstown Flood" found its way onto my doorstep in early August, I never even knew of such a Pennsylvania-based disaster, much less expected to see a documentary based on one. And yet there it was, an hour-long historical look at an event that might have seemed fabricated had no one been specifically told otherwise. If there is indeed a much greater purpose to the documentary world than just elaborating on major issues for those seeking thorough perspective, then here is a product that tests out some of that wisdom—in the end, no matter how much you think you know about your own culture, chances are there's always something that has been overlooked.

The Matrix Revolutions / *** (2003)

To see the latest (and probably last) "Matrix" installment right on the heels of its sensational predecessor, "The Matrix Reloaded," is to see a solid and exciting finale to the sci-fi series that jump-started a new era of technological and psychological ingenuity. Viewing the movie itself as a completely separate entity, however, the result represents efforts that are far inferior to those that came before. That's because "The Matrix Revolutions" plays less like an actual movie and more like a detached climax; it lacks the ideas that were instituted earlier in the series because it's too busy wrapping up loose ends left over from the second chapter in the trilogy, which made its way onto theater screens earlier this year. No, this is not the brilliant marriage of action and concept we saw with the first two installments in this franchise. But it is, at its core, an entertaining and engrossing action vehicle, and though it tries little in the way of new plot devices, it does manage to keep the eyes intrigued for two hours of solid and well-photographed action sequences.

Mystic River / ***1/2 (2003)

Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River" opens with an event that will inevitably challenge every moral character throughout the movie, a scene in which one of three childhood friends is dragged off against his will in the back seat of a car as his buddies watch on in paralyzed gazes. Two days later, the lad emerges from a nearby wooded area shaken and scarred by the abduction, enough so that it actually prevents him from openly discussing specific events of it with anyone. For some, that kind of detached response is just step one in dealing with the trauma and moving on, but for innocent little Dave, it is like an infected wound that is simply too painful to medicate. The passage of time doesn't do much to help soothe the soars, either, and eventually they evolve into something far more devastating and tragic than even the victim himself could have imagined. He may have escaped his captors, but his spirit never came home with him.

Pieces of April / *** (2003)

Peter Hedges's "Pieces of April" is the kind of movie you have to watch without the slightest cynicism, otherwise you find yourself dismissing a perfectly acceptable story because of a technical shortcoming that nearly buries its virtues. When I refer to this problem, I don't actually mean to dismiss it completely as a flaw, either; for what it's worth, this is the kind of movie that knows what it is doing and genuinely believes the technique is appropriate for the material. But alas it is not; shot on a minuscule budget completely with handheld digital cameras, the film is ugly and shoddy, almost as if the celluloid had passed through a coat of bleach before winding up on the projection reel. Scenes of high emotion are undermined by a washed out exterior, while less important moments seem lifted to much greater importance because they have strangely different contrasts and hues from other surrounding scenes. This is not just a miscalculation for the source material, but a significant distraction as well.

Runaway Jury / ***1/2 (2003)

The typical John Grisham crime thriller has this irritating tendency of assuming that excitement can be spurred by the heated exchange of a lot of legal psycho-babble. As a device for generating thrills, this is as halfhearted an approach as they come. Even the average Joe at a movie theater will tell you that establishing tension depends on more than just characters saying things or making threats; it depends on a combination of elements falling into place, each of them stressing one another in order to generate interest and create buildup without letting ambiguity become implausible blather. With a casual look back at the films utilizing Grisham's novels as source material, one or more of the aforementioned necessities is either misplaced or detached from the setup. In "The Firm," for example, a strong sense of tension is undermined by countless scenes of foolish storytelling, while in "The Client," we get the interesting buildup without the actual final payoff.

Veronica Guerin / *** (2003)

Defining the spirit of a hero conjures up more than just images of stealth and perseverance, but also those of sacrifice and tragedy. That's because most true heroes, particularly in the movies, are martyrs; their attempts to spur change for the better often come at the cost of their own happiness, even when the price is high enough for them to clearly realize the deadly risks involved. Yet somehow, someway, they shrug off the danger and face the odds head-on, seemingly invulnerable to the threats and almost surprised when their own lives are put in potentially mortal danger. Is it foolishness that guides them? Perhaps. But at the core all they want to do is make a difference, a factor that buries every trace of naivety until it's too late.

Jeepers Creepers 2 / *1/2 (2003)

When it comes to sequels, movie reviewers are ordinarily encouraged to revisit an impending film's universe before even thinking about seeing the follow-up, but that alas is a practice I overlooked when it came to observing "Jeepers Creepers 2." According to a stack of promotional materials, my only source of foreknowledge in the inevitable journey to seeing this product, the film's predecessor sets a scenario that is more or less a platform for countless franchise installments; in other words, it suggests that any and all future additions to a series will either a) depend on prior events for any plot development, or b) simply repeat the same exact setup over and over again without adding anything other than higher body counts. We can usually get away with bypassing older series installments if the latter selection is implored (after all, what's the significance in revisiting a series if it is merely repeating itself?), but on the rare occasions that sequels are advancements of older stories, acquaintance with the original premise is sometimes essential.

Matchstick Men / ***1/2 (2003)

Poor ol' Roy just hasn't got a clue. A man married to his work is bound not to have much of a personal life, but when the person in question is actually a very successful manipulator and con artist, you'd expect him or her to have some kind of free time to spend on developing social skills. So is not the case with this reclusive dude, however; aside from being an incessant neat freak who obsesses over the slightest possibility of germs contaminating his environment, he's short-fused, pigheaded and outwardly pitiful to himself and to all those who cross his path. And yet we admire him anyway, because once you peel away the hypertensive demeanor and most of those erratic impulses of his, you have a sweet, charming and lovable guy living underneath. It's not everyday you find yourself rooting for the con man.

Underworld / ***1/2 (2003)

Len Wiseman's "Underworld" launches with a premise that is easily one of the most inspired concerning vampires and werewolves since the creatures themselves first appeared on the big screen. In the murkiest corners of a shadowed gothic metropolis, the familiar horror film adversaries are driven not by bloodlust, but by their own personal struggle to endure. For a thousand years, the movie's heroine tells us in the opening shot, both the vampires and the werewolves (referred to as "Lycans" through most of the picture) have been in a heated war with each other, one that reached catastrophic proportions for the werewolves at one point when one of their most important leaders was killed by the opposition. Thus, in a state of fragmentation, the Lycans scattered into the city as the vampires assumed control of the highest point in the food chain, and though their control has gone fairly unchallenged since the days when the werewolf society was crippled, fear of a resistance persists and the vampires are encouraged to destroy every last breathing creature they can find.

Gigli / 1/2* (2003)

If life has been difficult for director/writer Martin Brest in the recent years, then there are plenty of reasons to see why. Once considered one of Hollywood's most promising filmmakers, he quickly developed a notoriety for making the most ambitious bad movies of his day, big-budgeted stinkers that featured big-name actors reciting amateurish dialogue from screenplays that rambled on and on without any sense of direction or purpose. His last and most damning endeavor of all, the overlong and pretentious dud "Meet Joe Black," not only exercised that declining general perception of his talent as a moviemaker, but reinvigorated the tradition of the bad movie itself, too, setting a benchmark for all those beyond who could waste millions of dollars and countless frames of celluloid as they were tossing turds onto unsuspecting moviegoers. Many have lived up to that precedent, others have surpassed it—but being the first prominent figure to do such a thing is a feat that shouldn't go ignored, and Brest maintains that reputation even when his peers aim higher and land much lower than he has. He is a modern Ed Wood with a much larger bank account.