2006 Best Reviewed Movies (Page #11)

A deer buddies up with a domesticated grizzly bear when the two animals are alone in the woods during hunting season. Meanwhile, Beth, a forest ranger who raised the bear, embarks on a desperate search to find her friend.

Jim Davis (Christian Bale) is an ex-Army Ranger recently discharged from the military, yet still haunted by nightmares of his former occupation. While seeking a position with the LAPD that will allow him to marry his Mexican girlfriend and bring her to the United States, Jim kills time chilling with his best friend, Mike (Freddy Rodriguez). Mike is feeling the heat from his longtime girlfriend, Sylvia (Eva Longoria): either get a job or get out. But the love of a beautiful woman can't compare to the bonds of friendship, and Jim and Mike are soon cruising the streets of South Central, slipping back into a deceitful life of drugs, violence and petty crime, just like when they were kids.

This rites of passage comedy introduces a shy and downtrodden Ben (Rupert Grint) with yet another dreary school holiday coming around. Seventeen years of living in an absurdly conservative and traditional household with his highly-strung and overbearing mother (Laura Linney) and quiet, mild mannered vicar father have taken its toll on young Ben. While the other kids are out having fun, Ben spends these precious few weeks attending bible classes, having driving lessons with his mother and helping out at a local old people's home.

However, Ben's world is turned upside down when he's employed by an eccentric retired actress Evie (Julie Walters). Vulgar, dignified and childish all at once, she certainly is not the kind of person Ben expected when searching through the job listings in the stuffy parish magazine, "Hello Jesus". Evie enters Ben's life with a cataclysmic force, whisking him away on a series of adventures from camping, to performing Shakespeare in the garden, to attending the Edinburgh festival — where he finally meets a girl much nearer his own age.

Evie's unconventional and often downright bizarre behavior challenges Ben's beliefs, and forces him to confront the very idea of who he wants to be. Then, when it seems that his new-found freedom is about to be taken away, Ben has to suddenly choose; should he continue to conform, or break out and live his life as his own man?

Set amidst the backdrop of a 1930s southern speakeasy, the film follows two characters, Percival (Andre Benjamin), the club's piano player, and Rooster (Antwan Patton), the club's lead performer and manager, through intersecting stories of love and ambition.

New York City resident Edmond Burke (William H. Macy) encounters a fortuneteller, whose predictions throw him for a loop and lead him to abandon his previous life, wandering into the dark side of the city.

The cocaine cowboys of the '80s are gone, but Miami's Casablanca allure, the undercover cops and the attitudes of Michael Mann's culturally influential television series have been enhanced by time in the feature film version of Miami Vice.

Ricardo Tubbs (Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx of "Ray", "Jarhead") is urbane and dead smart. He lives with Bronx-born intel analyst Trudy, played by British actress Naomie Harris ("28 Days Later"), as they work undercover transporting drug loads into South Florida to identify a group responsible for three murders.

Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell of "S.W.A.T.", "The New World") ]to the untrained eye, his presentation may seem unorthodox, but procedurally he is sound] is charismatic and flirtatious until-while undercover working with the supplier of the South Florida group-he gets romantically entangled with Isabella, the Chinese-Cuban wife of an arms and drugs trafficker. Isabella is played by the Chinese actress Gong Li ("Raise the Red Lantern, Memoirs of a Geisha").

The best undercover identity is oneself with the volume turned up and restraint unplugged. The intensity of this case pushes Crockett and Tubbs out onto the edge where identity and fabrication become blurred, where cop and player become one- especially for Crockett in his romance with Isabella and for Tubbs in the provocation of an assault on those he loves.

"Miami Vice", as a large-scale feature film, liberates what is adult, dangerous and alluring about working deeply undercover...especially when Crockett and Tubbs go to where their badges don't count...

"Bobby" revisits the night Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in 1968. Story is about how the lives of those at the hotel that evening intersected. Movie will take place against the backdrop of the cultural issues gripping the country at the time, including racism, sexual inequality and class differences.

A remake of the 2001 Italian film "L'Ultimo bacio", the story concerns a couple who live together and could be undone by questions of whether they are meant to be together.

In the re-telling of this classic fable, the story begins at the end. Chief Grizzly (Xzibit) and Detective Bill Stork (Anthony Anderson) investigate a domestic disturbance at Granny's (Glenn Close) cottage involving a karate-kicking Red Riding Hood (Anne Hathaway), a sarcastic Wolf (Patrick Warburton) and an oafish Woodsman ( Jim Belushi). The charges are many: breaking and entering, intent to eat and wielding an axe without a license, but these unusual suspects have their story to tell first.

Good-hearted dreamer Larry Daley (Ben Stiller), despite being perpetually down on his luck, thinks he's destined for something big. But even he could never have imagined how "big," when he accepts what appears to be a menial job as a graveyard-shift night watchman at a museum of natural history. But during Larry's watch, something extraordinary happens: the museum's exhibits magically come to life. A fearsome T-Rex insists on a game of fetch (with one of his own skeleton bones); Mayans, Roman Gladiators, and cowboys emerge from their diorama to wage epic battles; and a wax figure of Teddy Roosevelt gives Larry important advice while harboring a crush for an Indian princess. As things spiral wildly out of control, Larry must find a way to control the magic to stop a nefarious plot and save the museum.

Pierre Dulaine is a Manhattan ballroom teacher and competitor who volunteers his time to teach ballroom dancing to a group of New York inner city high school kids. Initially forced to participate as a form of detention, the kids reject Mr. Dulaine's efforts until his unwavering commitment and dedication finally inspires them to embrace the program, infusing it with their own unique hip-hop style while subconsciously learning valuable life lessons about pride, respect, self-esteem and honor.

On what should be one of the happiest days of her life, high school senior Wendy joins her friends for a graduation night celebration at a local amusement park. As they're about to board a roller coaster, Wendy is suddenly spooked. Her boyfriend Jason reassures her that it's merely the act of relinquishing control that's giving her the jitters. Wendy overcomes her fear, but no sooner has the pneumatic harness descended, securing her in her seat, than Wendy experiences a vivid premonition of a fatal accident in which the roller coaster becomes a death trap for her and her friends. Emerging from her terrifying vision and still on the ride platform, Wendy freaks out and demands to be let off. Her classmate, Kevin, who's seated beside her, feels compelled to accompany Wendy. As they're leaving, Lewis taunts Kevin, calling him a wimp. Insults turn to blows, others join the scuffle, and soon a handful of students are forcibly ejected from the ride. As they watch from below, Wendy's premonition proves nightmarishly true--the coaster careens out of control, and all those aboard perish. But that's only about the beginning. Those who survive the disaster discover that fate is hard to escape. They were meant to die--and death is not so easily cheated! It's not long before death comes to claim its next victim, and it's through this tragedy that Wendy realizes there are clues to the survivors' impending demise contained in photos she took at the amusement park that fateful night. As Wendy and Kevin desperately try to interpret the clues that might save lives, one-by-one their friends meet fantastically gruesome ends--and soon it will be their turn.

A humorous story of what happens when the U.S. Government sends comedian Albert Brooks to India and Pakistan to find out what makes the over 300 million Muslims in the region laugh. Brooks, accompanied by two state department handlers and his trusted assistant, goes on a journey that takes him from a concert stage in New Delhi, to the Taj Mahal, to a secret location in the mountains of Pakistan. It's a comedic, insightful look at the some of the issues we are dealing with in a post-9/11 world.