Douglas Crosby Movies

A parking garage attendant and lifelong New York Giants fan finds his life spinning out of control following an altercation with his favorite football player in this darkly comic drama starring Patton Oswalt. For 35-year-old Staten Island native Paul Aufiero (Oswalt), sports are a religion. Paul still lives with his mother, he's the self-proclaimed "world's biggest New York Giants fan," and he spends most of his spare time calling in to the local sports radio station 760 "The Zone," where he can frequently be heard bickering with his contentious on-air nemesis Philadelphia Phil (Michael Rapaport), a fervent Eagles fan. Berated by his family for his obsessive love of sports, Paul retorts that they simply cannot appreciate the responsibility that goes with being the New York Giants' number one fan. One night, Paul and his best friend, Sal (Kevin Corrigan), spot Giants linebacker Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm) at a local gas station and impulsively follow his SUV to a Manhattan strip club. Once inside, the two friends bask quietly in the presence of football greatness before cautiously approaching their idol. When things don't go as planned and Paul winds up in the hospital, the resulting media frenzy finds him questioning everything he believes in just as his beloved team begins preparing for a late-season showdown with the Eagles. Former Onion scribe and Wrestler screenwriter Robert D. Siegel makes his feature directorial debut with this film, which he also scripted. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A teenage take on Roman Polanski's post-noir classic Chinatown, The Sophomore stars Reece Daniel Thompson, Mischa Barton, and Bruce Willis in the tale of a Catholic high-school newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a disturbing conspiracy. Prompted by the most popular girl in school to investigate the theft of the SAT exams, an ambitious young fact-finder discovers that the school's president -- a disillusioned Gulf War veteran -- and the top jock are responsible for the crime. As if this information wasn't unsettling enough, it appears that both have been operation under the direction of an even higher power. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Estranged from his parents by circumstance and nudged toward a foster family, a young boy seeks out his long-lost folks and discovers prodigious musical talent in this family-oriented drama from Disco Pigs director Kirsten Sheridan. In the aftermath of a passionate night together above New York's Washington Square, a charismatic Irish guitarist named Louis (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and a reserved cellist named Lyla (Keri Russell) are forced apart by fate. Despite the fact that they do not remain together, however, their fleeting union has created something amazing that neither could have ever anticipated -- a baby. Unfortunately, just after the child's birth, the mother is misinformed that the infant has died. Cut to 11 years later, when the child, Evan, is living in a Gotham-area boys' home and has developed an acute ability to listen to the sounds of the outside world -- hoping against all hope that his biological mother and father will turn up to claim him, while those in charge try to encourage him to open himself up to the possibility of adoption. Unduly rejecting these bids, Evan runs away into the city. Out on the streets, the child falls into the clutches of a manipulative, untrustworthy street person named Wizard (Robin Williams), who renames Evan "August Rush" and opens the boy up to the depth and breadth of his own musical talent even as he smells the opportunity to grow rich off of the foundling. Meanwhile, Evan/August's hope persists that he will be reunited with his folks, and Louis and Lyla, unable to forget their initial night of love, feel themselves being drawn back together by fate. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Neil Jordan's The Brave One stars Jodie Foster as a happy woman whose life changes irrevocably after a brutal assault leaves her partner (Naveen Andrews) dead. The woman, feeling that the police investigation will be unable to catch the perpetrators, begins to live in constant fear. This outlook results in the woman eventually dispatching vigilante justice. Terrence Howard co-stars as the officer in charge of the investigation. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

An unemployed, alcoholic thirtysomething who still lives with his mother and can't seem to muster the motivation to turn his life around finds that all's fair in love and softball when his team is threatened with ejection from the league in a raunchy sports comedy starring Howard Stern Show regular Artie Lange. For the sluggers from Ed's Bar and Swill, the weekly trip to the local diamond is more about drinking and roughhousing than it is about such technicalities as hitting home runs and striking out the opposing team. When their favorite pastime is threatened by the ultra-competitive athleticism of the league's villainous perennial champions -- led by local gym owner and current mayoral candidate Manganelli (Anthony de Sando) -- this motley group of hard-drinking sportsmen must make one final push for the pennant and end their unprecedented losing streak if they hold out any hope of making it to another season. Ralph Macchio, Seymour Cassel, and Laurie Metcalf co-star, and longtime Saturday Night Live contributor Frank Sebastiano makes his directorial debut. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Todd Field teams with novelist Tom Perrotta to adapt Perrotta's acclaimed novel concerning the suburban malaise experienced by a handful of small-town individuals whose intersecting lives converge in a variety of surprising, and sometimes ominous, ways. Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, and Patrick Wilson star in a cinematic adaptation that doesn't aim so much to simply reproduce the book for the screen as it does to re-imagine the written word by exploring new possibilities for the characters and situations originally presented in Perrotta's 2004 best-seller. Sarah (Winslet) is a suburban outsider who, unlike the other playground moms, isn't afraid to approach the dreamy but long-absent father whom smitten housewives have taken to calling the "Prom King." Long days at the local community pool with their respective children soon find Sarah becoming acquainted with local husband and father Brad (Patrick Wilson) -- who seems to share in her seething discontentment with life in their quaint commuter town. An English literature major who never envisioned a fate as a soccer mom, Sarah has a growing dissatisfaction with her successful husband (Gregg Edelman) that parallels Brad's increasing frustration with his inability to pass the bar and connect with his wife, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), a successful documentary filmmaker. It's not long before the dejected pair is meeting for a series of illicit afternoon trysts as their unsuspecting spouses work and their children lie quietly napping. Meanwhile, after the community is riled by the return of a convicted sex offender (Jackie Earle Haley) who leaves the concerned parents scrambling to protect their young ones, an attempt made by Sarah and Brad to legitimize their clandestine relationship by dining together with their respective spouses begins to awaken Kathy's suspicions about the fidelity of her husband. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

From the producers of The Rookie and Remember the Titans comes an inspirational sports drama detailing the true story of a down-on-his-luck football fan whose dreams of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of the gridiron became a once-in-a-lifetime reality when he took part in an open tryout organized by Philadelphia Eagles coach Dick Vermeil. Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg) was a 30-year-old substitute teacher and part-time bartender who had never even played college football. When Coach Vermeil (Greg Kinnear) made the unprecedented announcement that he would be holding open tryouts for the Philadelphia Eagles, Papale would go against incredible odds to live the dream and experience every fan's biggest fantasy. With a position on the Eagles secured and a new life path forged out of little more than determination and persistence, Papale takes to the field to experience the life-altering rush of running yards as a stadium full of cheering fans burst from their seats to support the hometown hero who proved it's never too late to take control of your own destiny. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A man struggling to save the life of another finds himself drawn into a strange netherworld he didn't know existed in this stylish thriller. Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) is a psychiatrist living in New York City with his girlfriend, Lila Culpepper (Naomi Watts), who was once one of his patients. However, it's another one of his patients who becomes the focus of his obsessions when Henry Letham (Ryan Gosling), a disturbed young man whom Foster took over from a colleague, announces during a session that he intends to commit suicide in three days, on his 21st birthday. Sam takes the threat quite seriously and tries to track down Henry, who seems to have disappeared. Sam speaks to a number of Henry's friends and acquaintances -- his mother (Kate Burton), the man he claimed was his father, Dr. Leon Patterson (Bob Hoskins), a waitress who regularly served Henry at the coffee shop where she works (Elizabeth Reaser), and his former therapist Dr. Beth Levy (Janeane Garofalo). As Sam talks to people in Henry's circle, he finds he's learning more about himself than the man he's supposed to save, and he begins to drift into an emotional netherworld where the supposedly dead and the living cross paths. Stay was directed by Marc Forster, who had previously enjoyed breakthrough hits with two very different films, Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

American independent filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan returned after a six-year hiatus with this formally challenging tale of a disheveled man desperately searching New York City for his young daughter. Keane takes its name from its central character, a middle-aged man (Damien Lewis) who wanders Port Authority with a seemingly tenuous grasp of his sanity, muttering to himself and causing altercations with passers-by. He claims to have lost his daughter at a bus station, and consistently pleads for assistance from indifferent authority figures. When he's not roaming the streets, he uses his meager savings to rent out a room nightly in a cheap hotel; there, he meets Lynn (Amy Ryan), a single mother with a daughter, Kyra (Abigail Breslin), almost the same age as Keane's missing child. As he grows closer to Lynn and Kyra, he starts to see the young girl as instrumental in deciphering his own loss. Keane premiered at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival before securing a 2005 theatrical release. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

This Big Apple-based romantic comedy charts the tumultuous relationship between liberal arts student and budding chef Al (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and his first girlfriend, Imogen (Julia Stiles), a self-possessed freshman who wants to become an artist. After meeting in a bar, the pair jump into a giddy, passionate affair that's grown-up enough to include face time between the young lovers and Al's DJ mom and TV-chef dad (Henry Winkler). After a summer abroad, however, Imogen feels like the relationship is robbing her of her youth, and the couple must struggle with romantic and domestic growing pains. Meanwhile, their wacky friends -- who include porn stars (Selma Blair and Zak Orth), stoners (Rosario Dawson), a mullet-haired lunkhead (Shawn Hatosy), and a Jim Morrison look-alike named Jim Morrison (Ashton Kutcher) -- provide laughs, advice, and sexual temptation. The debut film from writer/director Kris Isacsson, the teen-themed Down to You marked a change of pace for normally grown-up Miramax Films. In addition to a slew of recent rock and pop, the film prominently features music from such downtown New York fixtures of the past decade as Deee-Lite ("Groove is in the Heart") and Cibo Matto ("Moonchild"). ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide