(listed alphabetically)
A selfish cad’s (Hugh Grant) unlikely friendship with a troubled boy (Nicolas Goult) and his mother (Toni Collette) leads him out of his shallow lifestyle. One of the year’s funniest movies, “About a Boy” accomplishes the easy task of making Hugh Grant a schmuck, and the harder feat of turning him genuinely likeable by the movie’s end. The movie also features one of the year’s best soundtracks, by British one-man band Badly Drawn Boy. PG13
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Director Paul Schrader (“Affliction”) tells the rise-and-fall of sex-obsessed TV star Bob Crane as a stirring morality tale of little temptations turning into big sins. Greg Kinnear is perfectly cast as Crane, a man who is charismatic but morally empty, as is Willem Dafoe as his favorite sycophant Carpy, who is equally, if not more debauched, but somehow more pitiable. R
Changing Lanes
A fender-bender between an upstart lawyer and an alcoholic insurance agent leads to a day-long feud that causes them to re-examine their entire lives. As a man unable to keep all the plates spinning, Samuel L. Jackson is as reliable as ever, and Ben Affleck gives his best performance to date, while director Roger Michell strengthens his fable by avoiding a heavy hand. Not a perfect movie, but an admirably ambitious one. R
Chicago
Big-screen version of Bob Fosse’s Broadway musical about a singing murderess (Renee Zellweger) whose trial makes her the darling of the media. Richard Gere is her lawyer, John C. Reilly is her jilted husband, and Catherine Zeta-Jones is another murderess vying for the spotlight. Everyone in the movie is unapologetically self-centered, and hilariously so, and the entire contraption has more than a little to say about fame. A word of warning though: this movie has so many exposed dancers’ thighs that you may feel sick to your stomach when it’s over, like you’ve just eaten ten bags of M&Ms. PG13
Gangs of New York
Martin Scorsese’s operatic look at the clash between immigrants and natives in 1860s New York is no less than the puberty of America. This sweeping film looks at poverty, graft, religion, hypocrisy, and street warfare, all amidst deliciously hellish art direction. Daniel Day-Lewis is superb as the reprehensible Bill the Butcher, upstaging not just Leonardo DiCaprio but everyone else in the film. R
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oliver Parker’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play is all quips and flirtation. Two English gentlemen (Colin Firth and Rupert Everett) invent a sick relative and a wastrel brother in order to get out of boring social occasions, but trouble ensues when the women of their dreams (Frances O’Connor and Reese Witherspoon) catch onto their little ruse. The regal Judi Dench and the worn-but-reliable Tom Wilkinson also star. PG13
Two grown sisters, one a struggling artist (Catherine Keener) and the other a struggling actress (Emily Mortimer), wonder what neuroses their mother (Brenda Blethyn) has passed onto them as she undergoes liposuction. This is an insightful, mostly light-hearted independent film about the little things we do to make other people feel bad without even knowing it. R
The Pianist
Roman Polanski, himself a Holocaust survivor, tells the story of another real-life survivor, a piano player named Szpilman, who cheats death only by chance. The movie is a visceral epic of hiding, starvation, and heartbreakingly meaningless destruction, begging one question: why should I survive while others die? Adrien Brody gives one of the year’s best performances. R
Punch-Drunk Love
After a string of lame-brain comedies, Adam Sandler has finally made a grown-up movie about a quiet little man who is unable to express anger—except in violent, uncontrollable outbursts. The adorable Emily Watson chips in as the woman who sets Sandler straight, Philip Seymour Hoffmann is the phone-sex sleazebag from hell, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s (“Boogie Nights”) direction is elegant and perfectly restrained. R
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
Director and co-writer Jill Sprecher brings us five interlocking stories demonstrating that the key to happiness and contentment isn’t always what happens in life but what our perspective about life is. We meet many different characters, including a lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) with a convincing code about what brings forth order and goodness; an insurance man (Alan Arkin) who distrusts the happiness of a coworker; a housekeeper (Clea DuVall) whose conviction that everything has a purpose will be tested; and a physics professor (John Turturro) for whom an ordered, predictable cosmos is both what he treasures and what he fears. R
25th Hour
Edward Norton plays a drug-dealer on the day before going to prison for seven years. He sets things straight with his best friends (Barry Pepper and Philip Seymour Hoffman), suspects his girlfriend (Rosario Dawson), and talks with his dad (Brian Cox). The film, directed by Spike Lee, is not about drugs but about making the wrong choices when the right ones are staring us in the face; it features two terrific monologues, one in which Norton lambastes the entire population of New York through a mirror, and the other in which Cox delivers a heartbreaking plan of how his son can live free again. R
Favorite Films of 2002: No.1 & No.2
The Most Overrated Movies of 2002
Aging, Cockney drinking buddies re-examine their lives when one of them passes away. Stars a veritable roster of British favorites, including Michael Caine, Helen “Look How Well I Age” Mirren, David Hemmings, Bob Hoskins, and Ray Winstone.
The Man From Elysian Fields
A struggling writer (Andy Garcia) becomes the gigolo to a rich woman (Angelica Huston) in order to make ends meet. Turns out her novelist husband is the writer’s hero (James Coburn), and things are even further complicated when the gigolo’s pimp is played by Rolling Stone Mick Jagger.
Moonlight Mile
A young man (Jake Gyllenhaal) bonds with his fiance’s parents (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon) after she is murdered and begins a new romance with another woman.
Salma Hayek brings the political, socially, and sexually adventurous painter back to life in Julie Taymor’s follow-up to “Titus.”
The Grey Zone
A little-seen film about the only successful uprising within a concentration camp and the moral dilemmas surrounding it.
Hero
The great director Zhang Yimou (“Raise the Red Lantern,” “Shanghai Triad”) joins Jet Li in what promises to be an ass-whooping epic in feudal China.
Invincible
Still another film in Nazi Germany, this one from the great filmmaker Werner Herzog, concerning a simple Jewish strongman and how the Nazis hope to use him.