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COLLATERAL The notion of matinee idol Tom Cruise playing a hardened assassin may sound like a gimmick, but his performance in director Michael Mann's drama is a fine one, nicely seasoned with just the right touch of piquantness. Sporting salt-and-pepper hair that suits him well, Cruise stars as Vincent, a contract killer who forces a cab driver named Max (solid Jamie Foxx) to ferry him around nocturnal Los Angeles so he can carry out his hits. Scripter Stuart Beattie creates some interesting give-and-take dynamics between Vincent and Max, yet he and Mann (Heat) seem to be equally interested in the peripheral elements, a decision that gives the film added resonance. 
GARDEN STATE With his first endeavor as writer-director-star, actor Zach Braff (TV's Scrubs) does more than knock it out of the park -- this one reaches all the way to the county line. Braff plays Andrew "Large" Largeman, a struggling LA actor who returns to his New Jersey hometown to attend his mother's funeral. While in town, Large hooks up with his old high school acquaintances, yet his most significant relationship turns out to be with someone new to his circle: Sam (Natalie Portman), a vibrant life force who's the perfect remedy for an emotionally bottled-up guy trying to make some sense out of his muddied existence. Braff drastically switches gears from providing laughs to imparting poignant life lessons; it's a gamble that pays off, resulting in a film that gives our emotions a vigorous workout. The performances are uniformly fine, with Portman nothing short of sensational. 1/2
LITTLE BLACK BOOK Brittany Murphy trots out so many adorable tics during the course of this film that she ends up making Meg Ryan in Sleepless In Seattle seem as dour as Anne Ramsey in Throw Momma From the Train. Better to focus on the excellent performances by Holly Hunter and Julianne Nicholson, the primary reasons that this mean-spirited comedy can be tolerated at all. That the film centers around one of those reprehensible trash-talk TV shows of the "My grandmother is a hooker" variety immediately signals the sort of crowd this is targeting -- it's feeble stuff, with Murphy as a TV show producer whose peek at her boyfriend's Palm leads her to suspect he might be cheating on her. Hunter is stellar as usual, while Nicholson almost humanizes this otherwise nasty tale.
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE Granted, this isn't a masterpiece like the '62 edition, which still reigns as one of the finest thrillers ever made. Yet in most other respects, this is that rare remake that paves its own way without exploiting or cheapening its predecessor. No longer a Cold War product, this finds the action updated, with Denzel Washington as an army officer who realizes that a former comrade (Liev Schreiber), now a politician running for his party's Vice Presidential slot, might be the unwitting pawn of a major corporation (Manchurian Global) that's trying to seize control of the country. The film's topicality can't hurt -- this could easily have been called The Halliburton Candidate -- yet director Jonathan Demme's principal goal is to produce a taut, efficient thriller. On that score, he succeeds.
OPEN WATER Forget all those vague, attention-grabbing warnings from the White House about Al-Qaeda operatives in our midst: For a true Terror Alert, look no further than the auditorium housing Open Water. Shot in a grainy, you-are-there style reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, this compact thriller centers on two vacationers (Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis) who find themselves stranded in the ocean after a scuba-diving excursion goes awry. The lack of inevitability -- will they be rescued in time, or end up as shark entrees? -- makes the picture such an uneasy watch, with writer-director-editor Chris Kentis effectively stripping away all the protections of the modern world until nothing is left except two individuals stranded in the middle of a beautiful yet deadly expanse that neither seeks nor provides favors.
THUNDERBIRDS For those not into trivial pursuit, Thunderbirds was a British TV series from the 60s in which the characters were all played by marionettes. This pointless update replaces the wooden dummies with human actors, though one would scarcely notice the difference. The show focused on billionaire astronaut Jeff Tracy and his sons, constantly saving the world with the help of their nifty spaceships and submarines. Here, Jeff (Bill Paxton) and the boys are largely tossed aside -- with the focus shifting to the younger cast members, this qualifies as nothing more than a blatant Spy Kids rip-off. It's troubling that the villains are all ethnic or ugly, but maybe I'm reading too much into a film that, by every other indication, contains the depth of a petri dish that's already filled to the rim.
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