Recidivist hold-up man H.I. McDonnough and police woman Edwina marry, only to discover they are unable to conceive a child. Desperate for a baby, the pair decide to kidnap one of the quintuplets of furniture tycoon Nathan Arizona. The McDonnoughs try to keep their crime secret, while friends, co-workers and a feral bounty hunter look to use Nathan Jr. for their own purposes. Written by Scott Renshaw {as.idc@forsythe.stanford.edu}

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Director Ayer has a real eye for capturing LA’s less glamorous streets, and with a story and screenplay by James Ellroy, another storyteller who knows his way around the turf, Street Kings has the makings of a classic cop drama. But somewhere along the line the dialogue and story took a turn down a dark alley lined with film clichés and Hollywood melodrama and didn’t emerge unscathed.

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Elvis lives! I knew it all along. No way could The King die on a toilet. It’s much more reasonable to believe he traded places with an impersonator to live out his life in relative obscurity, playing dive bars and Indian casinos, having a grand ol’ time pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.

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The trailer for “The Forgotten” gives too much away and that’s a shame. The less you know going in, the better. It’s tough to thrill audiences when the plot is totally laid out in advance. All the anticipation is ripped away when the best scenes from the film are played over and over again on TV and on the Internet. With “The Forgotten,” knowing too much going in ruins the enjoyment you might have gotten out of the moviegoing experience.

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Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell and director Ridley Scott team up for the first time and the result is one of 2003’s most entertaining movies. “Matchstick Men” is a fast-paced comedy/drama with a snappy script full of well-disguised plot twists. You don’t know where the story’s going, but you do know you want to go along for the ride. It’s refreshing to be able to sit through an entire movie where the plot isn’t telegraphed ahead of time.

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A small, seemingly innocuous plastic reel of film leads surveillance specialist Tom Welles down an increasingly dark and frightening path. With the help of the streetwise Max, Welles relentlessly follows a bizarre trail of evidence to determine the fate of a complete stranger. As his work turns into obsession, he drifts farther and farther away from his wife, family and simple life as a small-town private eye. Written by Columbia Pictures

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If the world’s not tired of Tom Cruise, then “War of the Worlds” should do spectacular business at the box office. Cruise’s recent attention-grabbing engagement to Katie Holmes and his desire to talk about Scientology at every possible opportunity have turned a few people off. But will that stop the majority of moviegoers from checking out his latest collaboration with Steven Spielberg? Probably not. And that’s a darn good thing as “War of the Worlds” is immensely entertaining.

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Royce and Dexter are two slackers who live in the strange little town of Weedsville. When Royce’s girlfriend Matilda overdose’s on their stash and dies, they decide to bury her in an abandoned Drive-In theater. Things get out of control when they discover Satanists performing a ritual sacrifice right where they were going to bury the body… Written by CaptainStigmata

An eager young Englishman is dispatched to Sarawak to become part of the British colonial government, encounters some unorthodox local traditions, and finds himself faced with tough decisions of the heart involving the beautiful young Selima, the unwitting object of his affections. Written by Anonymous

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In rural Texas, welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss discovers the remains of several drug runners who have all killed each other in an exchange gone violently wrong. Rather than report the discovery to the police, Moss decides to simply take the two million dollars present for himself. This puts the psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh, on his trail as he dispassionately murders nearly every rival, bystander and even employer in his pursuit of his quarry and the money. As Moss desperately attempts to keep one step ahead, the blood from this hunt begins to flow behind him with relentlessly growing intensity as Chigurh closes in. Meanwhile, the laconic Sherrif Ed Tom Bell blithely oversees the investigation even as he struggles to face the sheer enormity of the crimes he is attempting to thwart. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)