2006 Best Reviewed Movies (Page #10)

"The Fountain" is an odyssey about one man's thousand-year struggle to save the woman he loves. His epic journey begins in 16th century Spain, where conquistador Tomas Creo (Hugh Jackman) commences his search for the Tree of Life, the legendary entity believed to grant eternal life to those who drink of its sap. As modern-day scientist Tommy Creo, he desperately struggles to find a cure for the cancer that is killing his beloved wife Isabel (Rachel Weisz). Traveling through deep space as a 26th century astronaut, Tom begins to grasp the mysteries of life that have consumed him for more than a century.

"The Protector" is the highly anticipated full bodied action film starring International Martial Arts superstar, Tony Jaa (Ong Bak). His world shaped by ancient traditions, a young Thai fighter (Jaa) is called to defend his people and their honor after outsiders ruin all that is sacred. Fueled by desire to protect a way of life and avenge the wrong done to his family, he will bring the fight to their city.

Based on the novel by Mary O'Hara, the updated "Flicka" is set against the backdrop of a modern-day ranch in Wyoming. It tells the story of Katie (Lohman), a teenager who dreams of running her family's ranch, much to the dismay of her father (McGraw). Katie finds a wild horse she names Flicka and claims it as her own.

Three actors learn their respective performances in the film "Home for Purim," a drama set in the mid-1940s American South, are generating award-season buzz.

A new take on Wes Craven's 1977 film of the same name, "The Hills Have Eyes" is the story of a family road trip that goes terrifyingly awry when the travelers become stranded in a government atomic zone. Miles from nowhere, the Carters soon realize the seemingly uninhabited wasteland is actually the breeding ground of a blood-thirsty mutant family...and they are the prey.

In Venice Beach, naive Midwesterner JB (Black) bonds with local slacker KG (Glass) and they form the rock band Tenacious D. Setting out to become the world's greatest band is no easy feat, so they set out to steal what could be the answer to their prayers -- a magical guitar pick housed in a rock-and-roll museum some 300 miles away.

"Down in the Valley", which stars Academy Award Nominee Edward Norton and Evan Rachel Wood, is a suspenseful crime story set at the edge of the San Fernando Valley, a seedy place of horse ranches and immigrant gangs, where ten-lane freeways converge to create a cultural no man's land. A rebellious high school senior Tobe (Wood) and her anemic 11-year old brother Lonnie (Rory Culkin) struggle to escape their grim and hopeless existence and their overbearing father, Wade (David Moorse). Their hoped-for deliverance comes in the form of Harlan, a charming, yet mercurial man (Norton) who thinks he's a cowboy.

"Romance and Cigarettes" is a down-and-dirty musical love story set in the world of the working class. Nick (James Gandolfini) is an ironworker who builds and repairs bridges. He's married to Kitty (Susan Sarandon), a dressmaker, a strong and gentle woman with whom he has three daughters. He is carrying on a torrid affair with a redheaded woman named Tula (Kate Winslet). Nick is basically a good, hardworking man driven forward by will and blinded by his urges. Like Oedipus at Colonus, he is sent into exile and searches to find his way back through the damage he has done. In an imaginative, humorous, and touching way, "Romance and Cigarettes" explores the cost and value of a relationship through life and death. When the characters can no longer express themselves with language, they break into song, lip-synching the tunes lodged in their —to dream, to remember, and to connect to another human being.

The story follows the misadventures and confusion of a groom (Ed Burns) and his four groomsmen the week before a wedding. Wrestling with issues of fatherhood, honesty and growing up, the five thirtysomethings discover their extended adolescence might be finally coming to a close.

Based on the Alice Hoffman novel, the film revolves around two teenage girls (JoJo, Emma Roberts) who discover a mermaid (Sara Paxton) in their beach club's swimming pool.

This is the strange, disturbing story of the Manderlay plantation.

Manderlay lay on a lonely plain somewhere in the deep south of the USA. It was in the year of 1933 that Grace and her father had left the township of Dogville behind them. Grace's father and his army of villains had spent the entire winter seeking out new hunting grounds in vain, and now they were heading south in one last attempt to find a favourable location in which to take up residence.

By chance their cars stop in the state of Alabama in front of a large iron gate bearing a thick chain and a padlock. Beside the gate, a dead oak tree towers over a heavy boulder with Manderlay hewn in monumental letters into the granite.

Just as Grace, her father and his men are about to leave after a short break and a quick lunch, a young black woman runs up to the car. She knocks on Grace's window. She hammers at the glass in despair. Ignoring her father's advice to leave others to their own affairs, Grace follows the girl through the gates of Manderlay and there, she finds a group of people living as if slavery had not been abolished seventy years earlier, with white masters and black slaves...

Grace believes that she has a duty to make it up to the slaves for injustices they have suffered at the hands of her kind: 'we brought them here, we abused them and made them what they are', as she argues to her father; and she decides that having liberated Manderlay, she will remain at the plantation until she has seen them through their first harvest.

Her father grudgingly leaves her with four henchmen and a lawyer, warning Grace that he won't be there to pick up the pieces when her plans for the resurrection of Manderlay fall apart...

The true story of celebrated Scottish cyclist Graeme Obree, a former world champion who broke the world one-hour record on a bike of his own design, made partly out of sections of a washing machine. It follows his life's victories as well as his debilitating battles with mental health problems.

Are we what we eat? To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society.

The movie revolves around the events following the 1970 plane crash that killed members of the West Virginia-based Marshall football team, along with most of its coaching staff, sports commentators and many of its local boosters.