Joel Siegel Movie Reviews

July 23 -- Now in theaters: Seabiscuit, Laura Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over.

Seabiscuit The Great Depression didn't get its name because everybody was having so much fun. We needed a hero back then and we found him in Seabiscuit, the ultimate long shot, the undersized racehorse who lost his first race but never quit.

"Don't throw a whole life away because it's banged up a little," says Chris Cooper, who plays horse trainer Tom Smith.

Cooper is talking about a horse. But he might as well have been talking about Depression-ravaged America, and just about every person in it.

This isn't a movie about a horse. It's a movie about people, and that's why it's almost an hour before Seabiscuit makes his first appearance. Writer-director Gary Ross wants us to know these people and the time they lived in.

Seabiscuit is two hours of gloriously beautiful filmmaking. And not one car chase. Yes, Hollywood, it can be done.

Cooper, Tobey Maguire and Jeff Bridges are superb, as are the cinematography, Randy Newman's score, and film editing that brings the races to life.

This is Oscar-caliber work that combines to make your heart race like you're not just rooting for Seabiscuit, but like you have money on him.

And it's all true, except for William H. Macy's character, invented to add humor that this drama doesn't need. It's the one time the script pulls up lame.

Seabiscuit starts slow, finishes fast, not an eye without a tear, not a throat without a lump. It jumps out of the gate as a front-runner in the race for Hollywood's Triple Crown: best actor, best direction and best picture. Grade: A-

Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of LifeThe second Laura Croft film takes us from Croft Manor in England to the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro in England to China, doing what the Bond films used to do — taking us to amazing places in amazing ways, foiling a fiendish villain out to rule the world.

But she's Bond, Jane Bond. And even the East German judge would rate Angelina Jolie higher than 007.