Browse Movies : 2003 : Drama

When Jimmy Markum's daughter is found murdered, his childhood friend Sean Devine--now a detective--is assigned to the case. Sean's personal life starts unraveling, as his investigation takes him back into a world of violence and pain he thought he'd left behind. It also puts him on a collision course with Jimmy Markum, a man with his own mysterious dark past, who is now eager to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave Boyle, a man who hides monstrous secrets beneath a bland facade--secrets that his wife, Celeste, is only beginning to suspect. As the race for a killer heats up, all are pulled closer toward an abyss that will force them to face their true selves--and will mark them as irrevocably, as the past itself has tainted their lives.

From the Mexican writing-directing team behind the Oscar-nominated "Amores Perros" comes this explosive, emotionally charged English-language drama about a woman (Naomi Watts), her cheating lover (Sean Penn), and an ex-convict (Benicio Del Toro).

Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu?s view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the remotest regions on earth. Japanese Story is a journey of change and discovery for its two lead characters.

"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.

David Gale is a man who has tried hard to live by his principles but, in a bizarre twist of fate, this devoted father, popular professor and respected death penalty opponent finds himself on Death Row for the rape and murder of fellow activist Constance Harraway. With only three days before his scheduled execution, Gale agrees to give Pulitzer-hungry reporter Bitsey Bloom the exclusive interview she's been chasing. But Bitsey soon realizes that this assignment is more than she bargained for, and that a man's life is in her hands. Putting her own safety in jeopardy, she frantically races to piece together the shocking events surrounding Constance's death before it's too late.

A social misfit, Willard (Crispin Glover) is constantly humiliated in front of his co-workers and squeezed out of the family business by his boss (R. Lee Ermey). His only friends are Cathryn (Laura Elena Haring), a new temp in the office, and a couple of rats he raises at home, Ben and Socrates (and their increasing number of friends). But when one of the rats is killed at work, Willard unleashes his rage - and his army of rats - on his tormentors.

A DEA agent's (John Travolta) latest assignment is to investigate the bizarre disappearance of an Army drill instructor (Samuel L. Jackson) and several of his cadets during what was to be a routine training exercise.

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.

John Person (Jon Favreau), a struggling actor on the verge of eviction from his Hollywood studio apartment, goes against his better judgement -- and that of his pretty neighbor Grace (Joey Lauren Adams) -- and accepts an offer from his strange neighbor Neely (Bud Cort) to courier a blue suitcase up to the desert truck stop of Baker, California. His instructions are simple: deliver the suitcase to a trucker called Cowboy (Sean Bean) and collect $27 thousand. Oh yeah, and he has to defend the suitcase with his life. Naturally, nothing goes according to plan once John arrives. The Cowboy is nowhere to be found, John meets with some kooky alien-obsessed locals and Special Agent Banks (Kelsey Grammer) questions John about the mysterious decapitation of Neely and about other missing persons. When the final showdown approaches, John is faced with a choice that could change his life forever. Has the whole town gone mad? Or are the loony locals, who he dismissed as crazy, the only sane ones in this strange parallel universe called The Big Empty?

When his only friend and co-worker dies, a young man born with dwarfism moves to an abandoned train depot in rural New Jersey. Though he tried to maintain a life of solitude, he is soon entangled with an artist who is struggling with a personal tragedy and an overly-friendly Cuban hot dog vendor.

Based on Louis Sachar's popular children's book. It's about a young boy who is punished for a crime he didn't commit and is sent to a juvenile detention center where he is forced to dig holes under the watchful eye of a mean-spirited warden.

Avery has finally gotten his life back on track. A competitive swimmer, he had to drop out of college to support his girlfriend, Krista, and their son, Jordan. He's back on the swim meet circuit, and starting to have some success. When he's approached by a college scout after winning his latest race, he goes out to celebrate with his friends, Cashmere and Dre. In an instant, Avery's luck is about to run out...

Spider is a strange and lonely man. After a long period in a mental institution, he returns to the streets of the East End of London where he grew up. The sights and sounds and the smells of those streets begin to awaken the deeply buried memories of his childhood. At the centre of these memories is the great trauma of losing his mother, a trauma which occurred, he believes, because his plumber father, Bill Cleg, murdered her in order to move a prostitute, Yvonne, into the house in her place.

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.

A sweeping epic charting the early years of the Civil War and how the campaigns unfolded from Manassas I to the Battle of Fredericksburg, this prequel to the film Gettysburg explores the motivations of the combatants and examines the lives of those who waited at home.

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.

This is the story of an illegal Honduran immigrant living in the U.S., Pablo Fernandez (Jesus Nebot), working on a tomato farm, who gets in trouble when he accidentally hits a girl with his employer's truck. Deciding to try to escape the law, Pablo goes on the run with his young daughter, Christina (Chelsea Rendon), but as the title says there is "no turning back." As he flees, his experience is recorded in print and on video by a mysterious "guerrilla journalist" (Lindsay Price), who also helps him hide from his pursuers.

Based on "The Age of Grief" by Jane Smiley, it centers on a dentist that has a dream that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality. Dr. Dave Hurst (Campbell Scott) shares two homes, three children and a private practice with his dentist wife Dana (Hope Davis). One evening, backstage at Dana's drama club production, Dave believes he witnesses his wife in an intimate exchange with another man. Emotionally repressed by nature, Dave's jealousy flares up in the form of a raucous alter-ego personified by an unsatisfied patient named Slater (Denis Leary). Slater goads the quiet dentist toward violent action, but the unraveling of the emotional bonds in the marriage is more than a simple threat of aggression can solve.

The plot is based on the true story of Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti), a Cleveland Hospital file clerk who writes comic books about his life and experiences in his free time.

In this romantic triangle teen drama set in modern Taipei, high school students Ke-Rou (Lun-Mei Guey) and Yueh-Chen (Shu-Hui Liang) are best friends. When Yueh-Chen asks Ke-Rou to approach a boy, Shih-Hao (Bo-Lin Chen) that she has a crush on (but is too shy to ask), Shih-Hao unexpectedly asks Ke-Rou out instead. She excepts, but with a warning, because she has a secret: she thinks she might be a lesbian because she's actually in love with Yueh-Chen. Going out with Shih-Hao, however, is her chance to test herself to see if she is, or if she isn't...