Among the pleasures the film evokes, as few films have, is the bliss of conversation.

We may not fully grasp what Nora saw in Joyce, but what he saw in her is made unmistakable, and worth seeing.

The main body of the film earns comparison with the military parables of John Ford, particularly "The Long Gray Line" and "The Wings of Eagles."

Although the dialogue initially flakes with awkward exposition, writer Ruth Epstein and director Harvey Kahn have fashioned a riveting thriller full of good scares and learned, muckraking insight into the global labyrinth of oil and politics.

Some critics are badly selling the film short, when the story it tells, measured strictly in terms of emotional power and overall fun, is as moving and pleasurable as any matinee item by Ford, Hawks or Raoul Walsh.

Writer-director David Jacobson has an excitingly clear-eyed, unsentimental feel for the intensity of adolescent passion.

Writer Sam Catlin and director Danny Leiner have fashioned an alert, shrewdly observed portrait of a moment in time.

Lyrical and funny, Full Grown Men is a tough-minded film about the need to grow up.

Silver, manages the deft balance of making Seagal seem both genuinely courageous and charmingly blockheaded.

What is surprising, and what one takes away most deeply and happily from Triumph of Love, is a refreshed admiration for Mira Sorvino.

The film works, cleanly, without any tiresome reliance on computer graphics.

A snappy, delightfully balanced bit of historic whimsy.

Writer-director Hernandez is comfortable with violent, perverse emotions, and can find humor in them -- a refreshing quality that keeps one watching long after her movie has jumped its own tracks and zoomed to a private world of obscurely motivated quarrels and uninvolving reconciliations.

The Marat/Sade irony of setting these scenes in a madhouse helps, but Macfadyen's volcanic magnetism and spot-on mimicry of Hitler's body language and speech patterns make insight flesh.

The interactions between the realms of the magical and the everyday are carried off with an easygoing charm.

Well-tuned wisecracks and clever plot twists.

A near miss overall, but enjoyable in its littler particulars.

A happy vulgarity still reigns.

A fascinating tragedy, easy to underrate.

Less a movie about stepfamilies than a PSA about how cancer makes everyone behave themselves at Christmas.

A smoothly structured, earth-toned and well-drawn Japanese anime.

Taymor has done an inspired job of resurrecting one of Shakespeare's unruliest works, just in time for the new century.

Though the film overall is as disposable as a hot dog, it is just as enjoyable.

A cleverly plotted, cleanly crafted matinee item -- pure entertainment on a romping continuum with Frankenheimer's "Ronin."

Williams is a great clown, and Oedekirk and Shadyac give him room to really cut loose, and cure the movie. That’s as it should be.

The romance and sheer fun that Where the Money Is packs into its swift 89 minutes follow from the sweet surprise that neither is threatened by the other.

Overall, King of the Jungle never quite achieves a necessary, culminating insight about charity, or mercy -- though Leguizamo's performance puts one in reach.

Inglis offers complicated characters and uniformly worthy performances without falsely manipulating us into sympathizing with anybody but tries too strenuously to fuse his warring polarities of character-driven intrigue and plot-driven treacheries into an allegory of redemption. In the end, that feels like one or two big things too many.