THE BANGER SISTERS

The Banger Sisters is a textbook example of the alchemy that can occur when two movie stars, stuck in a rather worthless vehicle, say, “What the hell, let’s run with it.”

ONE HOUR PHOTO

One Hour Photo has a simple, juicy premise that’s just right for an art-film creepshow. The meek, late-middle-aged nebbish Sy Parrish (Robin Williams) has, for 11 years, run the photo lab at the California discount store Sav-Mart and has become inordinately fond of his regular customers, the Wilsons.

CITY BY THE SEA

If Robert De Niro ever decides to quit acting, I hope he receives retirement benefits from the NYPD. In Michael Caton-Jones’s police melodrama City by the Sea, De Niro plays Vincent LaMarca, who is, by rough estimate, the 7,000th cop character he has played onscreen in the past two decades.

THE GOOD GIRL

The Good Girl is the most fun I’ve had at the movies since Spider-Man and, with the possible exception of Y tu mama tambien, the finest movie I’ve seen all year, and I can’t begin to describe how shocking that is.

SIMONE

Andrew Niccol appears to be obsessed with a theme that, in all likelihood, he can spend his entire filmmaking career exploring: What is the nature of reality? In 1997’s vastly underrated Gattaca, which Niccol wrote and directed, he investigated the perils of genetic engineering, as his biologically “natural” protagonist Vincent assumed the identity of the genetically “perfect” Jerome to further his space-exploration career; the film, which on paper might seem a cerebral sci-fi comedy of mistaken identity, dramatized what it meant to be “real” in an unreal world, and was a heady, thrilling experience.