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LIFE AS A HOUSE The title is unfortunate, since it screams, "Look, Ma! I'm a metaphor!" But the wonder of Life As a House is how, with its understated approach and lack of artificial grandstanding, it gives audience members the choice of embracing its symbolic gestures or simply ignoring them outright. Certainly, the film feels a little too calculated at first -- its conflicted characters and sense of irony make it feel like a yard sale version of American Beauty -- but as the story progresses, its empathic nature and some choice performances eventually wear down all resistance to its rollicking charms. Kevin Kline stars as George Monroe, an architect who, upon learning he has cancer, decides to set things right before his time is up. He tries to establish a relationship with a troubled teenage son (Hayden Christensen) who hates him, attempts to make amends with the ex-wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) who left him, and sets about building his own seaside home. That we come to care about George, his family and his neighbors is a testament not only to the fine work by the entire cast but also to screenwriter Mark Andrus (As Good As It Gets), who, even during the more contrived sequences, keeps the emotions real (compare this to Riding In Cars With Boys, in which most characters behave as if they're in a feature-length sit-com). Christensen, incidentally, has been cast as the teenage Anakin Skywalker in the next Star Wars film, and if nothing else, this movie at least demonstrates that he can act. 
MULHOLLAND DRIVE Audacious, infuriating, and the sort of divisive movie we've come to expect from one of America's most idiosyncratic filmmakers, this actually began life as a TV series pilot that was quickly shelved. Seeking to then release it theatrically, Lynch secured backing from French financiers, shot additional scenes, and headed to Cannes, where he went on to win the Best Director prize. Like Lynch's Twin Peaks, this juggles a number of characters and plotlines, though the central one concerns the efforts of an aspiring actress (Naomi Watts) to help an amnesiac (Laura Elena Harring) discover her true identity. Just as the movie reaches the point when we expect everything to come together, Lynch goes ballistic in terms of time and characterization; the result is an unnerving watch that yields no easy answers but instead forces the viewer, in Memento mode, to mentally play the entire film backward and determine what's possibly real, what's probably a dream (a Lynch obsession dating back to Eraserhead), and where this ultimately leads. As an exercise in bravura moviemaking, as well as a commentary on the very nature of cinema itself, this works quite well, but on an emotional level, it's one of Lynch's most distant pieces, with practically all the characters being moved around the sets like so many chess pieces. It's only the unexpectedly complex portrayal by Watts that adds any lasting resonance to a work that, with apologies to Winston Churchill, can best be described as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
RIDING IN CARS WITH BOYS Director Penny Marshall, who's never met an interesting storyline she couldn't fumble (A League of Their Own excepted), applies her ham-fisted techniques to this adaptation of Beverly Donofrio's autobiography about how she escaped from her miserable lot in life by going on to, well, write her autobiography. Drew Barrymore, who ages from 15 to 35 over the course of the film, stars as Beverly, who becomes pregnant at 15 and finds her future instantly derailed. Forced to give up on her plans to attend college, she instead drops out of school, marries the simpleton (Steve Zahn) who knocked her up, and raises her son to the best of her abilities. It's not that this is a bad movie; it just never comes close to fulfilling its promise as either an inspirational human tale or a three-hanky weepie. Since most of the actors are appropriately cast -- Brittany Murphy is especially effective as Bev's best friend -- the fault rests mainly with Marshall and scripter Morgan Upton Ward, neither of whom care to offer more than a surface glimpse at the horrors that Bev had to endure most of her life (it doesn't help that the film can't stay serious for more than two minutes at a time, with dramatic scenes eventually taking a turn for the quirky or cute). In the later sequences, 28-year-old Adam Garcia is cast as 26-year-old Barrymore's son, perhaps the most egregious example of age-related miscasting since 51-year-old Ava Gardner played 59-year-old Lorne Greene's daughter in Earthquake.
