2003 Best Reviewed Movies (Page #6)

Based on the Bram Stoker Award nominee short story by acclaimed author Joe R. Lansdale, "Bubba Ho-tep" tells the "true" story of what really did become of Elvis. We find the King (Campbell) as an elderly resident in an East Texas rest home, who switched identities with an Elvis impersonator years before his "death", then missed his chance to switch back. Elvis teams up with Jack (Davis), a fellow nursing home resident who thinks that he is actually President John F. Kennedy, and the two valiant old codgers sally forth to battle an evil Egyptian entity who has chosen their long-term care facility as his happy hunting grounds...

Polite, mild-mannered Dan Mahowny is an assistant bank manager with a head for numbers, a knack for making decisions, and a devastating appetite for gambling. Dan Mahowny is the unlikely hero who takes on two of the financial institutions everyone loves to hate, the bank and the casino, and, for a brief while, he wins.

The film follows 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain (Romola Garai), and the fortunes of her eccentric family, struggling to survive in a decaying English castle. Her father (Bill Nighy) is desperate to repeat the spectacular success of his first novel, but hasn't written a word for 12 years; her exquisite sister Rose (Rose Byrne) can only rail against their fate, and their bohemian step-mother Topaz (Tara FitzGerald) is a nudist and no help at all. Salvation comes in the form of their American landlord Simon Cotton (Henry Thomas) and his brother Neil (Marc Blucas).

In the Latino neighborhood of New York City's Washington Heights, two sons of immigrants -- one Dominican, one Irish, wrestle with ambition and identity, only to discover that sometimes pursuing one's dreams comes at a heavy cost. Carlos (Manny Perez), 28, lives in the Heights, where his father Eddie (Milían) runs a bodega. He works in the East Village as an inker for comic books, but is developing his own project, something he hopes to sell to a well-known publisher. Mickey (Hoch) is the sweet-natured superintendent of their building, a man whose loopy dreams of becoming a professional bowler are met with only derision by his father, Sean (Jude Ciccolella). Both Carlos and Mickey are burning with desire to get out of the Heights. Unlike their sons, Eddie and Sean are immigrants or children of immigrants who have made their peace with their unfulfilled dreams. Like Carlos and Mickey, the two are best friends and Sean has made the mistake of lending Eddie $25,000 to cover his profligate spending. When Eddie is injured during a robbery, Sean convinces Carlos to take over the store and protect his investment. For Carlos -- who has been challenged by his mentor to rework a superficial comic strip into something of substance -- running the store is the last thing on his mind. Nevertheless, he puts his artistic aspirations on hold to take over the store and care for his father. Together they work through their mutual mistrust and grief over the death of Carlos' mother. Through it all, Carlos comes to understand that if he is to make it as an artist, he must engage with the community he comes from and take that experience back out into the world by putting it in his work.

This is the story of two criminals who disguise themselves as Santa Claus (Billy Bob Thornton) and his elf, traveling across the country to major malls, using the good will people have towards Santa to rob the stores blind. The plan is going great until the two baddies meet an introverted 8-year-old boy who reminds them of the true meaning of Christmas.

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.

A documentary about the pivotal hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur that is narrated entirely in the words of the deceased artist himself. Through a variety of interviews, journal readings, poetry performances, private home movies, and never-before-seen concert footage, the film serves as a "self-portrait" of a cultural icon whose career and persona, both, continue to grow from beyond the grave.

After it is killed in a bullfight, a bull's body parts are transported across Europe, in Spain, France, Italy and Belgium, with this ensemble drama showing us the people who are the recipients of the remains in one way or another, like an Italian actress (Chiara Mastroianni) selling the bones in a supermarket promotion, a Spanish woman (Angela Molina) who dines on its steaks, a little girl (Raphaelle Molinier) in northern France who imagines a world where animals are much larger than humans, and a taxidermist (Jacques Gamblin) whose wife is simultaneously giving birth to quintuplets.

This is the true story of a former bicycle repairman, Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges), who made his fortune introducing the automobile to the American West, and who owned a small, knobbly-kneed horse called Seabiscuit. Howard teamed up with a half-blind ex-boxing prize fighter, Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), who became the horse's jockey and a former "mustang breaker" Wild West performer called "The Lone Plainsman", Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), who became the horse's trainer. As the United States struggled through the Great Depression, people around the country followed with rapt interest of the Seabiscuit story, leading to his win of the Horse of the Year honors in 1938...

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...