The heroine of this story is the eloquent Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett's mother, who recalls her fight to have an open-casket funeral for her son.

In her clear and compelling film, Sanders lets the innocents do the talking.

Paradise Now plays like Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," but with explosives.

Jon Favreau, the actor-director who made the delightful family film "Elf," has a firm grip and a light touch with this material about bickering brothers who find a board game that zaps the family home into hyperspace.

Bee Season is lit by human sunbeam Flora Cross as Eliza.

It's a comedy that knows that no matter one's ethnicity, human foibles, follies and hopes are universal.

Goblet of Fire, fourth in the fantasy franchise, is the most fun and the most fraught with conflict.

A keen observational seriocomedy, The Syrian Bride, like "Paradise Now," suggests that all residents of the Middle East, no matter their faith or their nationality, are more alike than not.

Brazenly enjoyable, The Matador is a picaresque cocktail with a Tarantino twist. It is The Odd Couple with a buzz on.

Any resemblance between this film and "Casablanca" is purely deliberate.

Kenya and Bryan are both victims of racism and also guilty of it. But the colorful mosaic of their courtship is no downer like "Crash," but rather an upbeat account of expanding social and romantic possibilities in a world where women wear the suits and men speak the language of flowers.

Evocatively shot by cinematographer Lance Gewer in warm browns and reds that make Tsotsi seem all the more chilling, the film records his gradual metamorphosis from id-driven brute into empathic, if crude, care-giver.

Richard Wenk's script, taut and enjoyable, pays homage to those police procedurals, with a nod to the Brazilian hostages-on-mass-transit documentary, "Bus 174."

Carion's cri de coeur is at once a historical chronicle, an ode to the European Community, and a not-so-veiled critique of a 21st-century war.

Its portrait of an artist hungry for experience is as timely today as when it was written.

In this it succeeds. Like the Bard said, better witty foolishness than foolish wit.

While it lacks the heart and hipness of the similar-themed Pixar odysseys, The Meltdown has the physical humor of slapstick comedy.

Subversively funny, Stick It sees gymnastics as a microcosm of teen life.

In its final act, Akeelah is as exciting as any Final Four matchup. What it may lack in cinematic art it compensates for in abecedarian adrenaline guaranteed to pump the pulse and the spirits of viewers from 10 to 90.

Unlike the previous two films in this series, Abrams is more concerned with his hero's heart than with his hardware. The result is a pulse-racing thriller that restores the human factor to the franchise, and to its producer-star.

The fascinating aspect of the rambling and involving film is how Ralph and this no-nonsense dame who married Dad become confederates.

An enjoyably sudsy romance starring a moody Keanu Reeves, a broody Sandra Bullock, and the titular structure - a jewel box of glass and steel perched on stilts over Lake Michigan.

Setting her (Streep) face into a mask of composure that suggests Darth Vader by way of a Kabuki actor, the most expressive of American actresses shows how power is expressed in the lack of facial and vocal expression.

As efficient and zippy as its subject.

The film is suffused with the generous, nonjudgmental spirit of Uncle Tomas, whose live-and-let-live attitude warms like the sun and who helps Magdalena and Carlos make the safe passage from adolescence to maturity.

Core, a cinematographer who helms both camera and directorial duties here, creates a vivid sense of time and place without letting the period music, clothes or art direction intrude. The performances are likewise understated and unpretentious, especially those of Wahlberg and Kinnear.

Hugely entertaining catalog of MPAA follies.

With the exception of one sequence, this PG-13 movie is so youth-friendly that I thought I might take my 10-year-old. But that sequence, upsetting for those of any age, makes the movie better suited for mature 12-year-olds and older.