Browse Movies : 2003 : Drama

On the afternoon of July 1, 1981, Los Angeles police responded to a distress call at 8763 Wonderland Avenue and soon discovered a grisly quadruple homicide, later compared to the gruesome slaughter at the Tate household at the hands of the Charles Manson family 10 years earlier. Ron Launius (Josh Lucas), Billy Deverell (Tim Blake Nelson), Barbara Richardson (Natasha Gregson Wagner) and Joy Miller (Janeane Garofalo) were brutally murdered, and Ron's wife Susan (Christina Applegate) was left in critical condition. The police investigation that followed - led by detectives Sam Nico (Ted Levine), Louis Cruz (Frankie G.) and Mike Peters (M.C. Gainey) - would unearth a seedy world of drugs and violence, ultimately revealing a motley crew from LA's underbelly including ex-con David Lind (Dylan McDermott), nightclub impresario Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian), the most unlikely of American heroes - porn legend John Holmes (Val Kilmer) - Holmes' estranged wife Sharon (Lisa Kudrow) and his teenage lover Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth).

With their two young daughters in tow, Johnny and Sarah emigrate from Ireland to New York City in pursuit of a dream. The family uses ingenuity and sheer strength of will to make the most of their new life. Ultimately it is their kindness to a stranger and that stranger's response in return that builds their new home.

"Secondhand Lions" follows the comedic adventures of an introverted 14 year-old boy (Haley Joel Osment) who reluctantly finds himself spending the summer with a pair of cranky, eccentric great-uncles (Michael Caine and Robert Duvall). At first appalled by their gruff uncaring manner, over time he becomes enthralled with his uncles as the exotic tales and remembrances of their own youthful exploits introduce the boy to a world of imagination and wonder and re-ignites the old men's spirits.

A speculative account of the life of Griet, a 16-year-old girl who appears in Johannes Vermeer's painting of the same title. Set in 17th century Holland, Griet is employed by Vermeer as a housemaid to care for his six children, his jealous pregnant wife and his uncommunicative mother-in-law. Tensions arise when Vermeer's wife suspects intimacy between her husband and the girl--and then climax, when the wife discovers that Griet borrowed her precious pearl earrings to sit for the now famous portrait.

Based on Rosamond Lehman's book, "The Echoing Grove", "The Heart of Me" stars Olivia Williams and Helena Bonham Carter as sisters who become closer after the unexpected occurs in their lives. Paul Bettany plays a husband of one of the sisters who is having an affair with the other sister.

While doing a friend a favor and searching for a runaway teenager on Turk Street, Jack (Jackson) stumbles upon a bizarre band of criminals about to pull off a bank robbery. Jack finds himself being held hostage while the criminals decide what to do with him, and the leader's beautiful girlfriend, Erin (Jovovich), is left alone to watch Jack. Erin, who is a master manipulator of the men in the gang, reveals another side to Jack - a melancholy romantic who could have been a classical pianist. She finds Jack's captivity an irresistible turn-on and he can't figure out if she's for real, or manipulating him, too. Before the gang returns, Jack and Erin's connection intensifies...

Based on the best-selling novel by Susanna Moore, "In the Cut" is a psychological thriller starring Meg Ryan and directed by Jane Campion. Ryan plays a lonely New York woman who discovers the darker side of passion after becoming involved with a tough homicide detective, who is investigating a series of murders in her neighborhood.

Claire (Ayanna), a goal-oriented Columbia University graduate student, meets Jack (Brody). At once unimpressed and intrigued by his bad-boy persona, Claire eventually agrees to meet him. Attraction quickly turns into infatuation and love. Jack runs a regular scam conning foreign businessmen with his partner Charlie (Seda) and two struggling actresses. Though charmed by Claire's acute intellect, he pushes her away, just like he has with previous partners. Abandoned and traumatized, Claire begins to neglect her studies and throws herself into a self-destructive downward spiral. As Detective Linda Fox's (Grier) efforts to expose Jack and Charlie's scam intensifies, the once self-assured Jack finds his world crumbling.

Set in the late 1870s, this epic film depicts the beginnings of the modernization of Japan, as the island nation evolved past a feudal society, as symbolized by the eradication of the samurai way of life. We see all this happen from the point of view of an alcoholic Civil War veteran turned Winchester guns spokesman, Captain Woodrow Algren (Tom Cruise), who arrives in Japan to train the troops of the emperor, Meiji, as part of a break away from the long-held tradition of relying on employed samurai warriors to protect territories, as the emperor's new army prepares to wipe out the remaining samurai warriors. When Algren is injured in combat and captured by the samurai, he learns about their warrior honor code from their leader, Katsumoto, which forces him to decide which side of the conflict he actually wants to be on.

The third of the trilogy. As the shadow of Mordor grows across the land, Aragorn is revealed as the hidden heir to the ancient kings. Gandolf miraculously returns and defeats the evil wizard, Saruman. Sam leaves his master for the dead after a battle with the giant spider, Shelob; but Frodo is still alive--in the hands of the Orcs. And while the armies of the Dark Lord are massing--and the one ring comes ever closer to the Cracks of Doom.

At the edge of adolescence, Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) is a promising student and the loving apple of her mother's eye. But that was before she fell under the spell of Evie (Nikki Reed), the most popular and beautiful girl in school. Tracy aches to become Evie's friend but fails the secret code of acceptance. Wrong socks, wrong look. As Tracy transforms to reach for a new life, her world becomes a boiling, emotional cauldron fueled by new tensions between her and her mother, teachers, and old friends. Each decision is radical, each choice is major, each crisis is huge, and it all makes Tracy squeal with horror and excitement. But that's what it's like to be 13!

Ben is an overachieving high-school student in Orange County, Calif. He's at the top of his class and set to matriculate at an Ivy League school. But Ben has a darker side. While he maintains academic success, to alleviate the pressure put upon him by his parents, he indulges in acts of crime. His life slowly begins to spin out of control and he eventually joins a gang.

This is the decades-long story of the relationship between a prominent high school football coach (Ed Harris) in a small South Carolina town and the illiterate, mentally-challenged man nicknamed Radio (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) whom he mentors, who before that had always been the target of jokes and teasing by the community. Although their friendship raises some eyebrows at first, Radio's growth under the coach's guidance ultimately inspires the local townsfolk, from 1964 when he first starts helping the Hanna Yellow Jackets football team, through a 38+ career with the school that continues today.

Set in suburbia, the Greg Pritikin-directed film centers on socially challenged Steven (Adrien Brody), who quits his job to pursue a life-long dream of becoming a ventriloquist. Ignored at home by his father (Ron Leibman), mother (Jessica Walter) and embittered sister (Illeana Douglas), Steven begins to find his voice with the help of a wisecracking dummy.

At a deserted train station, a teacher and a gangster meet and realize that each might have been better suited to the other man's way of life. As a friendship of sorts develops between these opposite personalities, each starts to envy the other and by the week's end, everything will change for both of them.

Academy Award®-winner Julia Roberts heads an all-star cast featuring Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Marcia Gay Harden in "Mona Lisa Smile", an uplifting and poignant drama about one woman's desire to enrich the lives of her students. In 1953, a time when women's roles were rigidly defined, novice art history professor Katherine Watson (Roberts) begins teaching at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, which despite its academic reputation is an environment where success is measured by how well the students marry. Encouraging these women to strive for a more enlightened future, Watson challenges the administration and inspires her students to look beyond the image of what is, and consider the possibilities of what could be.

Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall), Charley Waite (Kevin Costner), Mose Harrison (Abraham Benrubi) and "Button" (Diego Luna) freegraze their cattle across the vast prairies of the West, sharing their friendship forged by a steadfast code of honor and living a life unencumbered by civilization. When their wayward her forces them near the small town of Harmonville, the cowboys encounter a corrupt Sheriff (James Russo) and kingpin rancher (Michael Gambon) who govern the territory through fear, tyranny and violence. Boss Charley find themselves inextricably drawn towards the inevitable showdown as they are forced to defend the freedom and values of a lifestyle that is all to quickly vanishing. Amidst this turmoil, life suddenly takes an unexpected turn for loner Charley when he meets the beautiful and warm-spirited Sue Barlow (Annette Bening), a woman who embraces both his heart and his soul. As these courageous men prepare for the decisive battle that looms, they are also forced to confront and conquer their own internal demons.

"11:14" tells the seemingly random yet vitally connected story of a set of incidents that all converge one evening at 11:14pm. It's a sort of musical chairs with a corpse, with the structurally intriguing storytelling style of Memento and Run Lola Run. The story starts at - 11:14pm - one evening with a young man named Jack who is driving down the freeway, on his way to a rendezvous with his girlfriend. His car hits a body at that moment. Thinking he killed him, Jack tries to hide the body. From there, we backtrack to follow the chain of events of five different characters and five different storylines that all converge and become party to Jack's hitting the body at 11:14pm.

Alex (Luke Wilson) is an author whose writer's block and gambling debts have landed him in a jam. In order get loan sharks off his back, he must finish his novel in 30 days or wind up dead. To help him complete his manuscript he hires stenographer Emma (Kate Hudson). As Alex begins to dictate his tale of a romantic love triangle to the charming yet somewhat opinionated stenographer, Emma challenges his ideas at every turn. Her unsolicited yet intriguing input begins to inadvertently influence Alex and his story and soon real life begins to imitate art.

Newly commissioned SS Lieutenant and respected civilian chemist, Kurt Gerstein, discovers that the Zyklon B pellets he has developed to disinfect soldiers' drinking water are being used to gas interred Jews by the thousands. Recruited to help streamline the death camp process by a team of SS officers, Gerstein secretly approaches the Swedish Consulate, the German Protestant community and finally Vatican representatives in the hopes of exposing this unspeakable crime. The only one who listens is Father Ricardo, a young Jesuit priest with deep family connections at the Vatican. Ricardo promises Gerstein he will alert the Pope to the Jewish genocide in hopes that the pontiff will reveal and denounce the Final Solution to the Christian world...