2003 Most Anticipated Movies (Page #8)

When the police chief (Denzel Washington) of a small Florida town "borrows" money from the evidence room so he can run away with a woman (Sanaa Lathan) he's always been in love with, she quickly betrays him, revealing that she only began having an affair with him as a way to seek revenge... Now, with his reputation and career on the line, an otherwise good cop must resolve his life before he runs... "Out of Time".

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.

Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is the unluckiest man in Las Vegas... he's so unlucky, it's contagious. Looking to knock out their highest rollers, one of the last mob-run casinos in town, the Shangri-La Hotel and Casino downtown, decides to use Bernie as a "cooler" to defuse their lucky streaks. The scheme goes fine until Bernie falls in love with a cocktail waitress, Natalie (Maria Bello), who becomes his "lady luck", much to the chagrin of the casino's crooked director (Alec Baldwin) who aims to break up the romance, and Bernie's newfound luck...

Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor are the toast of the town in the most stylish romantic comedy of the year! From the producers of "American Beauty" and the director of "Bring It On" comes a teasing, tantalizing battle of the sexes that is "pure enchantment" ("Daily News"). When best-selling feminist author Barbara Novak (Zellweger) becomes the target of dashing playboy Catcher Block (McGregor), these sparring, would-be lovers generate enough sparks to fly you to the moon and back. In other words, the ultimate catch has just met his match!

Shaolin was an art practiced through the ages; a skill mastered in the heart. In "Shaolin Soccer", it is so much more than a philosophy for six young believers. It is a complete way of life. But as the world changed around them, and Honor and Discipline become forgotten virtues, they lose their way - except for one loyal follower, Sing (Stephen Chow). With the help of a former soccer star, he reunites his old, out of shape, misfit friends, and recruits a young woman with extraordinary Kung Fu skills. Together, they're out to combine the ancient power of Shaolin with the modern game of soccer and in the process, just might take the world's most popular sport to its most extreme.

Set in the LAPD in April 1992, it takes place just days before the acquittal of four white officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King and the subsequent LA riots. In this racially charged climate, the LAPD's elite Special Investigations Squad (SIS) is assigned a high-profile quadruple homicide. As they work the case, veteran detective Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell) tutors rookie Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman) in the grim realities of police intimidation and corruption. Meanwhile, Assistant Chief Holland (Ving Rhames), the only man in the department willing to stand up to the SIS, threatens to end Perry's brand of single-handed "justice" on the LA streets. While navigating through tumultuous neighborhoods of South Central LA, Perry and Keough must track down killers and face their own demons.

In an era when the country's first line of defense, human intelligence, is more important than ever, comes a thriller that gives an insider's view into the CIA's secret training ground: The Farm. James Clayton (Colin Farrell) might not have the attitude of a typical recruit, but he is one of the smartest graduating seniors in the country – and he's just the person that Walter Burke (Al Pacino) wnats in the Agency. James regards the CIA's mission as an intriguing alternative to an ordinary life, but before he becomes an Ops Officer, James has to survive the Farm, where the veteran Burke teaches him the ropes and the rules of the game. James quickly rises through the ranks and falls for Layla (Bridget Moynahan), one of his fellow recruits. But just when James starts to question his role and decides to "wash out," Burke taps him for a special assignment to root out a mole. As the suspense builds toward a gripping climax, it soon becomes clear that at The Farm, the CIA's old maxims are true: "trust no one" and "nothing is as it seems."

This love story chronicles the romance that develops between an American disaster relief doctor (Clive Owen) and an aristocratic philanthropist socialite (Angelina Jolie) who keep meeting over several years in countries torn apart by wars and disasters.

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.

John J. (Robert Duvall) is a seasoned hit man sent on a job to Argentina. When the General he's sent to kill delays his return to the country, John passes the time with Manuela (Luciana Pedraza), a beautiful dancer who becomes his teacher and guide into Argentina's sensual world of the tango. Spellbound by the rich and mysterious world Manuela has shown him, his idyll is shattered when the reality of why he's there comes crashing down around him.

Western Front, 1917. In the chaos of a trench war battle, a small company of men get lost, surrounded by a thick mysterious fog. As they emerge from it, they come across a deserted German trench. Convinced they have broken through the enemy lines, they decide to secure the trench and begin to explore it. Only to find mutilated German corpses everywhere. Something very strange and evil has happened here. When one of them is found horribly murdered, wrapped in barbed wire, they know they are not alone!

Set in the 1970's, two young couples take a misguided tour onto the back roads of America in search of a local legend known as Dr. Satan. Lost and stranded, they are set upon by a bizarre family of psychotics. Murder, cannibalism and satanic rituals are just a few of the thousand horrors that await.

A mild-mannered businessman (Adam Sandler) is wrongly accused of a crime and sentenced to an anger management program, where he discovers that his instructor (Jack Nicholson) is a crazy psycho with his own serious anger management problem, and is probably the one man in the world most capable of making his new student blow his lid.

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.

Alex Bernier (Heath Ledger) is a member of an arcane order of priests who is sent to Rome to investigate the mysterious death of the head of this order. The body may be of a Sin Eater, a renegade who offers absolution, last rites and therefore a path to heaven outside the jurisdiction of the church. Alex enlists the aid of his old comrade Father Thomas and of a troubled artist (Shannyn Sossamon) upon whom he once performed an exorcism. He soon finds himself plunged directly into the face of unimaginable evil, murder, and ultimately, a fate worse than death.

Mandy Moore stars as Halley, a young high school student who is disillusioned with love after seeing the many dysfunctional relationships around her. Her father has a pretty new girlfriend who she can't stand. Her mother can't seem to find anyone. Her sister is so dumbstruck with the planning of her marriage that she has become a non-person, and the shallow cheerleaders at her school and their jock boyfriends are beyond comprehension. All these have combined to convince Halley that love is a ridiculous impossibility. But when a tragic event in her life leads to a romantic encounter with a young man, Halley realizes the possibility of true love can sometimes lie in the most unconventional of places.

Set in a small Edo period Japanese brothel near Tokyo, this is the story of a young samurai, Fusanosuke (Hidetaka Yoshioka), who seeks refuge there in the company of a young prostitute, Oshin (Nagiko Tono), after he accidentally wounded a powerful samurai during an argument whose colleagues are now seeking to kill Fusanosuke in return. Soon falling in love with Oshin, Fusanosuke hopes to be able to cleanse her from the sins of her occupation so that she may be his wife, even as danger lurks all around the brothel.

A chronicle of the true story of Kurt Gerron, a well known and beloved German-Jewish actor, director and cabaret star in Berlin in the 1920's and '30's. Among his greatest accomplishments, he co-starred with the legendary Marlene Dietrich in the film classic, "The Blue Angel." He also sang "Mack The Knife" in the original production of "Threepenny Opera." Ultimately, Gerron was captured and sent to a concentration camp, where he was ordered to both write and direct a pro-Nazi propaganda film.

This documentary investigates the stories of the dozens of thousands of Jews who emigrated to Israel in 1948 from Iraq, making up 25% of the new nation's Hebrew population. Leaving an Iraq in the 1940s in which Jews lived in peace with Christian and Muslim neighbors, these emigres found themselves pitched into a new political environment in which they were not exactly welcomed, with Ben Gurion once saying of the Iraqi Jews, "We kicked out good Arabs and brought in bad Jews". Director Samir interviewed a quartet of elderly survivors from that time (who also happened to be Communists, which was another reason they were not welcomed), along with NYU film historian Ella Shohat, to make a film that combines their testimony with light-hearted fragments of the last 100 years of Jewish culture as documented in the movies, to demonstrate the sometimes thin, sometimes thick lines between Arabs, Jews, and those who have claim to both heritages (ie, the "Mizrahim", or Eastern Jews).

Harry Mayfield (Baker Hall) was once an extremely successful Los Angeles architect. Today, he is an aging, charming but cantankerous idealist who teaches rather than practices architecture. Decades earlier, he had started work on a magnificent house for his family on a hillside site overlooking the city and the sea. A rich young couple, Kate and Richard Banks, see the charred remains of what was once his house, and decide they want Mayfield to come out of retirement and re-build the house for them. Mayfield, flattered by the attention and attracted by the challenge, agrees. Kate hires him to redesign the house and asks a young Hollywood friend, Gaby (Sangiacomo), to make a documentary record, a film of the building of the house. She learns that Mayfield's work made considerable impact on his colleagues and experts in the field, but for some reason he never achieved great public fame. The house was not finished, and the incidents surrounding its failure to be completed caused the tragic death of his young son, and possibly the end of his career. Mayfield works hard to make a new design. After getting it approved by Kate he starts construction with the contractor he has hired to rebuild the house.