Nancy Tenenbaum Movies

After suffering the humiliation of being given the third degree by his girlfriend's father, one man now faces the even more embarrassing task of introducing his own mother and father in this star-studded sequel to the box-office smash Meet the Parents. After getting off on the wrong foot (to put it mildly) with his prospective in-laws, Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) has finally won the grudging approval of Jack and Dina Byrnes (Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner) to marry their daughter Pam (Teri Polo). But after clearing the first hurdle, now Greg has to face an even bigger challenge -- introducing the straight-laced Byrnes family to his folks, free-spirited sex therapist Roz (Barbra Streisand) and eccentrically open-minded Bernie, who blend with Pam's parents not quite as well as oil and water. Meet the Fockers was directed by Jay Roach, who handled the same chores for Meet the Parents. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The debut from writer/director Greg Mottola, The Daytrippers follows a Long Island family as they make a disastrous journey into New York City. The impetus is a love letter discovered by suburbanite Eliza (Hope Davis) which seemingly incriminates her publisher husband Louis (Stanley Tucci) in an extramarital affair. To solve the mystery, Eliza, her parents (Anne Meara and Pat McNamara), her oddball sister Jo (Parker Posey) and Jo's boyfriend Carl (Liev Schreiber) all pile into the family station wagon in a misbegotten attempt to track Louis down. Beginning as a playful, satiric look at family dynamics, The Daytrippers occasionally loses its way, becoming increasingly dark and venomous as it rushes towards the revelations of its final moments. For all of its flaws, however, it's often an engaging debut. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

An audacious film about faith, The Rapture is a contemporary fantasy that keeps its feet unnervingly planted in reality even as reality starts to collapse. Mimi Rogers, in a strikingly accomplished performance, stars as Sharon, a telephone operator who spends her off-hours engaging in casual group sex to blot out her boredom. By chance, she becomes aware of a small Christian sect whose members believe that they have found a child with the gift of prophecy who has seen the upcoming end times. Slowly but steadily, Sharon finds herself drawn to this group, and one night she abruptly turns a corner, renounces her old life, and embraces fundamentalism with passion. She marries one of her former lovers, Randy (David Duchovny), who takes up Sharon's evangelical fervor to atone for his past as a hired killer, and they have a daughter. All seems peaceful until Randy is unexpectedly murdered, and Sharon takes her child to the desert to await the rapture that will bring the chosen to heaven. The film neither supports nor scoffs at Sharon's views, and the superb performances add immeasurably to a film that presents the unbelievable (and unthinkable) at face value, making it seem oddly plausible in the process. Michael Tolkin has also written and/or directed such films as The Player (1992), directed by Robert Altman, and The New Age (1994), both of which also skewer contemporary American society as shallow, materialistic, and desperate for something authentic to believe in. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Steven Soderbergh kickstarted the independent film movement of the 1990s with this landmark drama about the tangled relationships among four people and a video camera. John (Peter Gallagher) is an unscrupulous, self-centered yuppie lawyer with a beautiful wife named Ann (Andie MacDowell). Ann feels secure and well provided-for in their relationship, but she has almost no interest in sex; she tells her therapist that she's more concerned about waste disposal. John, however, is still quite interested in sex and is having an affair with Ann's sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), whose personality is fire to Ann's ice; sex is the one area in which she's been able to best her more successful sister, and she relishes her ability to seduce Ann's husband. Into this dysfunctional picture comes Graham (James Spader), a college friend of John's whom he hasn't seen in nine years. Graham has decided that talking about sex is more interesting than actually having sex, so he meets women and asks them discuss their desires and fantasies as he tapes them with a camcorder. A sensation at the Sundance Film Festival, the film made that festival a synonym for a new brand of low-budget indie dramas about contemporary life and relationships. Together with Quentin Tarantino's very different Pulp Fiction (1994), sex, lies, and videotape was one of the most influential movies for independent filmmaking of the 1990s. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi