The ridiculously awful love child of Sliding Doors and Back to the Future, The Butterfly Effect is likely meant to be some debutant ball for a serious, pensive Ashton Kutcher.  Jim Carrey in The Truman Show this is not.  Instead, it's two hours of watching people complain and debase each other in different lifetimes.  A wholly uncomfortable experience, by the dénouement, you feel punk'd without being able to laugh it off because you're rich and famous.

Director:
Eric Bress
J. Mackye Gruber

Starring:
Ashton Kutcher
Amy Smart
Melora Walters
Elden Henson

Release: 23 Jan. 04
IMDb

Calendar Girls is an inoffensive little trifle of a film, patterned after decades of disposable minor comedies coming from the U.K.  The cast seems to be having fun, and some of this is infectious during bits, but by the fifth old lady's imperfect breast joke, the whole thing just becomes thinner than the film's flimsy premise.

Director:
Nigel Cole

Starring:
Helen Mirren
Julie Walters
John Alderton
Linda Bassett
Annette Crosbie

Release: 19 Dec. 03
IMDb

Poingiant and often uncompromising in its finger-pointing, The Cuckoo may not be exactly The Grand Illusion or even No Man's Land, but it still has something to say and a useful, if awkward way to say it.  The overall impression is admirable, even if its romantic subplots become hilariously outrageous as the film attempts to find some meaning in their presence.

Director:
Aleksandr Rogozhkin

Starring:
Anni-Christina Juuso
Ville Haapasalo
Viktor Bychkov

Release: 11 Jul. 03
IMDb

Das Experiment seems like a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film but never packs anything remotely like the punch brought by the Japanese thriller auteur in Cure.  Instead, the film's reenactment of a real psychology experiment gone awry becomes tedious, and the way it poses questions of class and superiority are too simplistic and remedial to mean much.

Starring:
Moritz Bleibtreu
Christian Berkel
Andrea Sawatzki
Justus von Dohnanyi
Timo Dierkes

Release: 20 Sep. 02
IMDb

For Danny DeVito's recent directorial works, Duplex is a huge step up.  For anyone else (short of Michael Bay and Ron Howard), this would still be passably minor.  The whiny Ben Stiller characterization is getting older than this film's weary jokes and Eileen Essel's SAG card (nonetheless, she's devine).  The biggest treat in Duplex, if short, is an appearance by Wes Anderson regular Kumar Pallana.

Starring:
Ben Stiller
Drew Barrymore
Eileen Essel
Harvey Fierstein
Justin Theroux

Release: 26 Sep. 03
IMDb

The Pang brothers are supposedly famous for their riveting Asian thrillers, but The Eye, their biggest North American release, makes such comparisons to Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Takeshi Miike feel like a lie.  With a mystery that can be unraveled fifteen minutes into the film's overreaching length, The Eye just never delivers the jolts that were promised.  I didn't particularly like Miike the first time, so maybe there's still hope, though, for the Pangs.

Director:
Oxide Pang
Danny Pang

Starring:
Angelica Lee
Lawrence Chou
Chutcha Rujinanon
Yut Lai So

Release: 6 Jun. 03
IMDb

Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy received barely any fanfare for a fairly well-known French filmmaker (hell, every Patrice Leconte release is treated like an Event), but the film, admittedly, merits such a tepid response from its distributor.  The film's attempts to eroticize a clearly uninteresting affair is tedious for much of the film, even if the screenplay offers a few surprising complexities to ponder during the cold sex scenes.

Starring:
Mark Rylance
Kerry Fox
Susannah Harker
Alastair Galbraith
Philippe Calvario

Release: 19 Oct. 01
IMDb

Other than featuring the year's worst original songs, Laurel Canyon also features the Frances McDorman performance at her annoyingly worst and a gaggle of sexual pairings that couldn't be less convincing.  It's been some time since Kate Beckinsale arrived for cineastes to drool over in Cold Comfort Farm and The Last Days of Disco -- by now, with Michael Bay and this film's yawn-worthy strip tease, it's time, Kate, to just call it quits.

Starring:
Frances McDormand
Christian Bale
Kate Beckinsale
Natascha McElhone
Alessandro Nivola

Release: 7 Mar. 03
IMDb

Valeria Golino, who I thought had dropped off the face of the planet, shows that she's finally found her niche: charming, disposable Mediterranean romantic dramas.  There's nothing especially great about Respiro, but at least it has amazing scenery and a plot that couldn't be less distracting for the viewer while gawking at the vistas.

Starring:
Valeria Golino
Vincenzo Amato
Francesco Casisa
Veronica D'Agostino
Filippo Pucillo

Release: 23 May 03
IMDb

Even though it isn't anything near the surprise treat of the first two Spy Kids films, the third time around isn't especially bad.  The removal of Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino is a bit disappointing, but the kids do fine carrying the film on thier own, especially when joined by Sylvester Stallone, admirably chewing the scenery at a rate unparalleled since his "Eh, yo, Tommy Gunn" days.

Director:
Robert Rodriguez

Starring:
Daryl Sebara
Alexa Vega
Ricardo Montalban
Sylvester Stallone
Salma Hayek

Release: 25 Jul. 03
IMDb