Written and directed by Steven Spielberg, “A.I.” is a science-fiction film that stars Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, and William Hurt. The movie takes place at some future time when global climate changes have caused the American coastline to become flooded and laws severely restrict human reproduction to conserve resources. Professor Hobby (Hurt) develops an android that looks and behaves like a child, and a married couple brings home such an android named David (Osment). At first they treat David like a son, including reading “Pinocchio” to him, but they eventually abandon him in a woods. David then seeks the Blue Fairy from the Pinocchio story in the belief that it can turn him into a real boy, and along the way he befriends a strange android named Gigolo Joe (Law), leading to many adventures. “A.I.” is complex and provocative and does not provide the comfort level of most previous Spielberg films.

Robert Redford and James Gandolfini star in this drama set in a military prison. General Irwin (Redford) is a hero of three wars who is court-martialed and sentenced to ten years in an American military prison run by the sadistic Colonel Winter (Gandolfini). Irwin and Winter soon clash, and as Irwin sees more and more of Winter’s brutality, he reluctantly decides that something must be done. The two men become locked in an escalating battle of wills, and eventually Irwin recruits a ragtag team of other soldiers incarcerated at the prison, leading to a violent confrontation. The struggle between the virtuous character played by Redford and the villainous character played by Gandolfini makes for compelling drama and the climactic action sequence is exciting, but many critics thought the plot too contrived and the storytelling too heavy-handed.

Jet Li stars in this martial-arts action movie, which features a story taken from the world of science fiction. The sci-fi premise of “The One” is that rather than there being just one universe, there are 125 parallel universes that are interconnected to make up a multiverse. Furthermore, an individual in one of the universes will ordinarily have another self in each of the other 124 parallel universes. But the power-hungry, evil Yulaw (Jet Li) discovers that whenever he kills one of his counterparts in another universe, the powers of that individual are distributed over the selves surviving in the other universes. Eventually, Yulaw kills all but one of his counterparts, whose name is Gabe (also played by Jet Li). Pursued by agents of the Multiverse Bureau of Investigation, Yulaw heads for a showdown with Gabe. But the plot in “The One’ is merely a clothesline on which to hang a series of Jet Li martial-arts action sequences.

This taut thriller stars Paul Walker, Leelee Sobieski, and Steve Zahn. Lewis (Walker) is a college student who makes a cross-country automobile trip, picking up his brother Fuller (Zahn) and his friend Venna (Sobieski) along the way. They pull a prank on a truck driver who calls himself Rusty Nail, but things go awry and a motel occupant is severely beaten as a result. It’s not long before Lewis, Venna, and Fuller hear Rusty Nail on their CB radio and realize that he is after them. Much of the rest of the movie revolves around a series of hair-raising incidents where the psychotic trucker uses his huge tractor-trailer rig to try to run down the three young people. Although “Joy Ride” has a few funny moments, it’s basically an unusually well-crafted thriller. Fully 77 percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie a positive review.

This drama tells the tale of a working-class Irish family living in Liverpool during the Great Depression. While the young boy Liam (Anthony Borrows) prepares for his first communion, his father (Ian Hart) loses his job and finds it difficult to get another. Liam’s loving mother (Claire Hackett) struggles to keep the family together, and his older sister Teresa (Megan Burns) takes work as a maid for a wealthy Jewish family. As Liam tries to come to terms with the Roman Catholic concept of sin, his family must pawn things with a Jewish pawnbroker to keep afloat financially. Eventually, Liam’s proud father comes to believe that Jews are at the root of his problems, and he joins a fascist organization where he can vent his anti-Semitic feelings. Most of “Liam” consists of a carefully drawn portrait of the title character and his family, but as the movie nears its end, it takes a melodramatic turn.

Ben Kingsley gives a fine performance in this crime drama. Gary “Gal” Dove (Ray Winstone) is a criminal who has happily retired to Spain’s Costa del Sol with his wife Deedee (Amanda Redman), a former porn star. But Gal’s tranquillity is shattered by the news that violent London gangster Don Logan (Kingsley) is coming to recruit him for a heist that requires his special safecracking skills. Gal eventually has little choice but to give in to Logan’s demands, and he travels to London where he participates in a robbery that involves drilling into a vault from a Turkish bath next door to a bank. “Sexy Beast” is a character-driven drama that features both humor and brutality, and a whopping 87 percent of the critics on the Rotten Tomatoes Web site liked this movie.

Starring Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg and written and directed by DJ Pooh, this loosely structured comedy may have been inspired by the 1976 movie “Car Wash.” Sean (Dr. Dre) takes a job as the manager of a car wash where his roommate Dee Loc (Snoop Dogg) and a number of other colorful characters are employed. Mr. Washington (comedian George Wallace) owns the car wash, and Antoinette (Angell Conwell) is the saucy cashier there. In his new role as manager, Sean butts heads with Loc, who deals marijuana on the side at the car wash. But when Mr. Washington gets kidnapped by a pair of bungling criminals, all the car wash employees decide to try to set their differences aside while they attempt to rescue him. In its theatrical release, 93 percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes found “The Wash” to be rotten, but it may play better on the small screen.

This politically incorrect comedy about the fashion industry stars Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Stiller also cowrote and directed the film, and his wife, father, mother, and sister appear in it. In the movie, Derek Zoolander (Stiller) is a veteran top male model whose career is threatened by Hansel (Wilson), a newcomer to modeling. This sends the monumentally stupid Zoolander into a funk and sets him up to be brainwashed by a nefarious group of fashion designers to kill the prime minister of Malaysia. The fashion designers want to get rid of the prime minister because his support of laws restricting child labor endangers their industry. There are some big laughs in “Zoolander” and about two-thirds of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked the movie, but many questioned the appropriateness of specifying the head of state of a real country as the target of an assassination plot.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars in this puzzle movie that is part science fiction, part thriller, part melodrama. Donnie Darko (Gyllenhaal) is a high school student who lives with his nice family in pleasant suburban surroundings. But Donnie is a troubled young man who is sometimes visited by a six-foot rabbit and has other experiences that may be delusions. In fact, Donnie is under a psychiatrist’s care and is on medication. Of course, Donnie is a misfit at school and has problems dealing with teachers. However, as he struggles with a number of unsettling incidents, Donnie apparently develops some ability to see into the future and perhaps even be able to travel through time. The plot of “Donnie Darko” goes through many twists and turns, and trying to figure out what it all means is supposed to be part of the fun of watching this film.

Based on a memoir by Beverly Donofrio and directed by Penny Marshall, this drama stars Drew Barrymore. The movie starts out with Beverly Donofrio (Barrymore) in her mid-30s on a journey with her 20-year-old son to see her ex-husband about signing a release so she can publish her memoir. Then we are shown in flashbacks some of the events in Beverly’s life that led up to this, including her pregnancy and marriage at age 15. Beverly desperately wanted to go to college, but problems with her husband (Steve Zahn) and the demands of motherhood prevented it, and her marriage eventually ended in divorce. Drew Barrymore shines as she plays Beverly from age 15 through about age 36, and the movie achieves considerable dramatic impact by mostly avoiding the cliches typically found in this kind of film.

Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke give outstanding performances in this police drama. Alonzo Harris (Washington) is a veteran Los Angeles Police Department narcotics detective who is assigned the task of taking a rookie cop named Jake Hoyt (Hawke) on a training day. Harris and Hoyt soon make a drug bust, but Hoyt quickly becomes aware that his training will be highly unconventional when Harris makes him smoke the PCP-laced marijuana they confiscated. As the day progresses, the rookie sees the veteran’s renegade approach to law enforcement in situation after situation, including a lunch meeting with a whole group of dirty cops. As incident piles upon incident, Hoyt’s disgust at Harris’ way of doing police work mounts, but the rookie finds himself being pulled into the veteran’s web of corruption.

An Italian-language romantic comedy, “Bread and Tulips” features several likable characters. The story centers around a woman named Rosalba (Licia Magliettia), a forty-something homemaker who is unhappily married. On a vacation with her self-centered husband and teenage children, Rosalba gets separated from her family at a rest stop when their tour bus leaves with them on board while she is still in the bathroom. She impulsively travels to Venice, where she moves in with a melancholy waiter named Fernando (Bruno Ganz), takes a job with a florist, and makes friends with a masseuse. Meanwhile, Rosalba’s husband sends a bumbler named Costantino (Giuseppe Battiston) to Venice to find her. “Bread and Tulips” is lightweight, but it’s very successful in creating sympathetic characters for whom audiences want things to come out right.

The Cantonese-language Hong Kong martial-arts movie “Iron Monkey” played in U.S. theaters in 2001, but this was actually a cosmetic makeover of the original 1993 version of the film. Although the older version of the movie has been available on video for some time, it’s only now that the 2001 version is being released on video and DVD. Set somewhere in the Chinese countryside in the 19th century, “Iron Monkey” is about two good guys teaming up to fight against an evil governor. One of the good guys is the title character, a legendary Robin Hood-like figure. The other good guy is martial-arts expert Wong Kei-ying, who is accompanied by his 12-year-old son Wong Fei-hong (played here by a girl). But of course “Iron Monkey” isn’t about plot or characters--it’s about spectacular martial-arts action sequences.

Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges star in this drama about a man who is either mentally ill or a being from a distant planet. The Psychiatric Institute of Manhattan admits a patient (Spacey) who calls himself Prot and claims to be from K-PAX, a planet that is one thousand light years from Earth. The psychiatrist who treats Prot is Dr. Powell (Bridges), a workaholic whose relations with his wife and children are strained. Externally Prot appears to be a normal man, but Powell gradually discovers that Prot has some peculiar abilities and special knowledge that make it seem as though he could be an extraterrestrial that has somehow assumed human form. But even as the psychiatrist tries to determine whether Prot is really an alien or simply a delusional earthling, he finds that Prot is able to provide insights that help him deal with his family problems.

Starring Kevin Kline and Kristin Scott Thomas, this drama tells the story of a dying man who tries to set things right during the last few months of his life. Divorced for a decade, estranged from his teenage son, and fired from his job, George Monroe (Kline) learns that he is terminally ill and has only about four months to live. George resolves to tear down the shack he lives in, build a new house using the money from his severance pay, and try to reconcile with his alienated son Sam (Hayden Christensen). As George works on the new house and spends time with Sam, the teenager’s outlook on life markedly improves, and George rekindles his friendship with his ex-wife Robin (Scott Thomas). Reviewers split about 50-50 on “Life as a House,” with many feeling that the movie is painfully manipulative.

Lance Bass and Joey Fatone from ‘N Sync star in this romantic comedy aimed primarily at teenage moviegoers. Kevin (Bass) works at a Chicago ad agency and has Rod (Fatone), Eric (comedian GQ), and Randy (James Buillard) as roommates. One day while riding on the L, Kevin meets a good-looking young woman (Emmanuelle Chriqui). He thinks they are attracted to each other, but they part without either of them getting the other’s name or phone number. In an attempt to find her, Kevin puts up fliers which result in his story running in a newspaper, drawing a lot of attention to his search. Soon so many women are responding that Kevin’s roommates start going out with them. But will Kevin ever get together with the woman he met on the L, and if so, how will things work out?

This romantic drama stars Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie. In Cuba near the end of the 19th century, Luis Vargas (Banderas) arranges by mail to marry an American woman. When Julia Russell (Jolie) shows up, Vargas observes that she looks nothing like the plain woman in the photograph he had received. She tells him she didn’t want a man to marry her just for her good looks, and he admits that he had concealed from her that he was a coffee plantation owner because he didn’t want a woman to marry him just for his money. They marry and make passionate love before she takes all his money and leaves. Still lovestruck, Vargas sets out to find Julia and learn the truth. Considering how marvelous Banderas and Jolie look, it’s a little surprising that 90 percent of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes found “Original Sin” to be rotten.