Quietly overwhelming.

Unassuming masterpiece about life, love and the cruel joke of old age.

The director seems to be saying that, for survivors, art may be a way back to our finer selves -- extraordinary.

One of the loveliest and happiest of American movie entertainments.

One of the most joyous movies I've ever seen, and one of the handful of great erotic films the movies have given us.

The most original, daring, thrilling movie to be released this year, Trainspotting is one of those occasional, astonishing triumphs of risk and imagination that gets you excited about what smart people, pushing themselves and the medium, can accomplish in the movies.

Jim Sheridan's miraculous In America, a generous but never sentimental fable of Irish immigrants in '80s New York, may be the great movie of 2003.

One of the most ravishing spectacles the movies have given us.

What Ray does right, combined with its generosity of spirit, makes it the most satisfying American movie of the year.

Surely one of the canniest and most accurate films about American working-class life ever.

A delight from top to bottom, packed with romance, adventure, beautifully executed swordplay and a sumptuous period look.

One of those rare literary adaptations that finds its fidelity in freedom, that stands as both a fitting version of its source material and as its own creation.

A giddy madcap classic, one of the wildest and funniest American comedies in years.

It's a deluxe vacation for adults with all frills included: glamorous settings, glamorous clothes, glamorous sex.

Walking out of the theater, I felt so bereft that I couldn't speak. And it doesn't hurt any less thinking about the movie now, as I write this.

Shot in sumptuous black-and-white by Dreujou, Girl on the Bridge might just be the most beautiful-looking movie of the year.

Holds us in a state of horrified empathy.

From moment to moment, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a pleasure. But when the Coens are really cooking, when the acting and the conception and the music all come together, it's something more -- Dogpatch rapture.

Affliction is a harsh experience, but the harshness isn't a matter of punishing the audience or of the director, Schrader, showing off his toughness: That unvarnished harshness is the very essence of the material.

This long shot pays off -- in spades. Not only has Jordan made a movie that's looser, hipper, freer and -- abetted by his great cinematographer, Chris Menges -- more sheerly beautiful to look at, he's also made the best movie of his career.

Yes, there are some "middle-chapter" problems, but Peter Jackson's Tolkien adaptation hasn't lost its devastating humanity, its heart-stopping cinematography or its epic sweep.

In his dazzling and luxuriant new thriller Femme Fatale, De Palma turns trash into chic. It's a sexy, violent, glamorous, sinfully funny movie with a surface as hard and brilliant as diamonds.

Never less than witty, charming, accomplished.

Consistently interesting without feeling essential until, in its last half-hour, it becomes utterly compelling.

Claire Denis' baffling and exhilarating "Billy Budd" smolders with heat-blasted rhythms and supercharged acting.

You wouldn't mistake Donnie Brasco for a great movie or an important one, but it's something that's become almost as rare in American movies: a consistently absorbing and intelligent adult entertainment.

It's a wholly amoral movie, but it's honestly amoral. And that's a relief for the audience.

What holds the movie together is its modest, sweet spirit.