MY LIFE WITHOUT ME (R) Young, happily married-with-children Ann (Sarah Polley) is diagnosed with terminal cancer, given two months to live, and immediately starts checking off items on her "Things To Do Before I Die" list. Oddly enough, the plucky, doomed girl doesn't bother telling the kids or hubby; she does, however, indulge herself in a number of other activities, including sleeping with another man (Mark Ruffalo from You Can Count on Me). Director Isabel Coixet avoids most of the Lifetime Movie disease-of-the-week cliches you might expect with material like this, but some of the dialogue exchanges aren't entirely convincing, and a number of borderline surreal interludes (including a dance number in a supermarket) seem awkward and gratuitous. Polley is fine, though, and the movie gets extra points for featuring various versions of Brian Wilson's God Only Knows. Also stars Scott Speedman.
MYSTIC RIVER (R) Clint Eastwood's latest directorial offering dives into somewhat unfamiliar waters, with mostly successful results. Mystic River is an epic tragedy about how two devastating events, a quarter-century apart, change a handful of lives in a Boston working class neighborhood. Eastwood's film is uncharacteristically filled with charged symbols and nakedly emotional Big Speeches, but the top-notch ensemble cast is good enough to pull it off and leave us wanting more. Tim Robbins is particularly effective as the damaged man-child who never quite recovered from being molested as a child, and Sean Penn burns up the screen as a man with a dead daughter and one too many secrets. Also stars Kevin Bacon, Laura Linney, Laurence Fishburne and Marcia Gay Harden. 1/2
RADIO (PG) Apparently pitched very much in the same territory as The Rookie, this feel-good tale combines sports, soap opera and nostalgia for the kinder, gentler ways of small-town America, circa anytime but now. The same guy who wrote The Rookie supplied the story, in fact, which is based on the actual life of a mentally challenged man whose eternal optimism inspires the local high school football team. Stars Cuba Gooding, Ed Harris and Debra Winger. (Not Reviewed)
THE SCHOOL OF ROCK (PG-13) Rocker Jack Black (Tenacious D), in this new Richard Linklater film, is a harmless but not terribly talented slacker who wants to rock so hard it's practically heartbreaking, and pulls off a scam that allows him to get paid for secretly teaching "Smoke on the Water" to nerdy students at an elite prep school. In lesser hands this could have been Kindergarten Cop, but Linklater makes most of it work, albeit not in a laugh-out-loud Dazed and Confused sort of way. Also stars Joan Cusack, Sarah Silverman and Mike White (Chuck & Buck), who also wrote the script.
SHATTERED GLASS (PG-13) Before Jason Blair, there was Stephen Glass, the respected New Republic journalist who turned out to have built a career on writing fabricated stories. Shattered Glass is part character study of the needy, neurotic Glass (beautifully played by Hayden Christensen), but mostly it's a crackling good mystery, one that unfolds with the straightforward, no-nonsense approach of an old-fashioned police procedural. There are broader political and cultural implications here, of course, and the movie does in fact often seem like an All the President's Men for the new century — one where the media is on the prowl again, only this time they're out to get themselves. Consider it a cautionary tale for the Jerry Springer Age, in which the drive for increasingly sensationalized versions of reality inevitably leads to everyone's fall from grace. Also stars Peter Sarsgarrd and Hank Azaria. 1/2
THE STATION AGENT (PG-13) A touching and mildly quirky little film about a train-loving, tight-lipped loner named Finbar (Peter Dinklage), who moves to the sticks in search of solitude and, instead, finds himself opening up to strangers and to life. Fin also happens to be a dwarf, although, while it eventually emerges that he has some unresolved height-related issues, size is not really what matters here. To its credit, the film barely notices Fin's physical stature until it's practically forced to. Rather, The Station Agent is simply about people who need people, as they say, and what happens when fate throws a few of those people together. There are few revelations here, but the movie offers numerous small pleasures as it details the unlikely bond that forms between Fin, a frazzled painter grieving for a dead son (Patricia Clarkson), and a lonely hot-dog salesman who's as unabashedly enthusiastic about life as the other two are reserved. Also stars Bobby Cannavale. 1/2