The genuine article, a hard-core horror picture from start to finish... Prepare to get seriously stresed.

Terrifically charming and energetic film.

It’s a 21st-century version of "The Sting" for these so far rather unkind and ungentle times.

Against very steep odds, writer-director Billy Ray and company have, in telling the real-life story of fictionalizing "New Republic" writer Stephen Glass and his downfall, produced the most entertaining inside-journalism movie since "All the President's Men."

Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly create characters that live and seethe with absolute credibility, and Ron Eldard’s Lester is a subtle portrait of a good man who lets himself go bad, first out of boredom, then out of erotic fixation.

Beautiful, lyrical, but not in the least bit wimpy. [May 2004, p. 18]

By the end the movie has pretty much ceased taking itself at all seriously, devolving into a nonchalant giggliness of the stoned variety that's completely apropos.

Those who aren't inclined to lambaste will surely have some stimulating conversations after the film is over.

An epic treatment of epic themes that doesn't soft-soap its audience, but at the same time provides a terrifically satisfying entertainment.

So breathtaking is the action.

By turns harrowing and stirring, it’s a shame-inducing history lesson that never feels like a lecture.

Once the picture gets into Hollywood's bloodstream, it could well prove to be as influential as John Woo's 1989 crime thriller, "The Killer."

Once Palpatine's machinations set the cogs in motion for the creation of Vader, and the Clone Wars start getting bloody, Sith commences to cook in a way that no Star Wars movie has since "Empire."

This is not a perfect picture, but it’s a soulful one that offers a lot of pleasure and even a kind of wisdom.

Catherine Keener is remarkably subtle and soulful as Capote's friend and helpmeet Harper Lee, who delivers a shocking verdict against him at the end, but the movie, as you probably will not be surprised to learn, is owned by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

David Strathairn, playing Murrow, follows his writers' lead beautifully, delivering a performance that's all understatement on the surface and searing fire underneath.

The movie biz inside jokes eventually yield to fairly merciless plumbings about the construction of the self, resulting in a kind of philosophical discomfort that's much different from the run-of-the-mill humiliations this sort of thing usually trucks in.

The movie belongs to Wood, who creates a unique portrait of a girl hesitating at the threshold of womanhood; she's smarter, more attuned, and more spiritually ambitious than those around her, but also too decent and loyal to break from the world she knows-and too unformed to have a grasp of what she wants outside of that world. It's fantastic work.

As for this film's esteemed director, I don't remember getting such sheer pleasure out of an Altman movie since . . . hmm, lemme look at the filmo . . . hmm—"The Player"? Not so much . . . "O.C. and Stiggs"? I wish . . . Um, "Popeye"? More likely, but . . . Ah-"A Wedding." Yeah, that’s it, "A Wedding." Whoa. That was, like, almost 30 years ago.

But after surveying pop and rock hybrids, Akin and Hacke go deeper. You will be very happy indeed to make the acquaintance of such Turkish music luminaries as Orhan Gencebay and Sezen Aksu, whose stories and personalities are as fascinating as their music.

While I have no problem enthusiastically recommending writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy, I'd also heartily discourage all but the most rabid crime-movie nuts from consuming the whole thing in one afternoon or evening.

It's not likely you'll see a film more visually exhilarating until, well, Gondry's next.

von Donnersmarck delivers something extraordinary and rare: a thriller that's entirely adult in both its concerns and perspective which manages to be as thoroughly gripping as any finely tuned albeit adolescent Hollywood nail-biter.

Not that Diamond skimps on the social commentary; far from it. But it makes its points without too much breast-beating, caching its polemic within a tough-minded entertainment.

It makes for a daringly different kind of thriller -- cerebral, meticulous, haunting.

When the movie isn't being scary, it's crazily funny, so much so that critical watchers will wonder if Bong might tilt the balance of the picture too far in a comic direction and water down the scares. He doesn't.

A thoroughly engaging, terrifically moving family story that's rich in beautifully observed and lovingly conveyed human detail.

The masterly Panahi concocts a spellbinding, often corrosively and/or warmly funny story in which love of both country and sport tries to, but doesn't quite, transcend dogmatic and ingrained difference.