Bergman wants the viewer to empathize more with the characters’ perseverance than their pain, and he pulls it off, thanks to his sharp eye, compassion, and humor, and of course to the performances. [March 2004, p. 26]

It’s tempting to summarize this Irish picture as a working-class version of "Love Actually," and indeed, the hardscrabble lives of most of its amorously unfulfilled characters go a long way in making it a whole lot less emetic than Richard Curtis’s hugfest.

It’s rich enough in atmosphere to make you almost buy the quasi-allegorical absurdities.

While Solondz's world is a hell hole and Anderson's "Rushmore" is a place of high-toned and often poignant whimsy, Napoleon Dynamite's unceasing burlesque creates a world that is pretty much a cartoon--and it's a damn funny cartoon to boot.

There are more than a couple of moments in this film, adapted by writer-director Tod Williams from a big swatch of Irving’s multigenerational quilt "A Widow for One Year," that get Irving’s sense of grotesque tragedy and tragic grotesquerie just right

The action is great, the story line unpredictable, the ending satisfying. Stander is crackling. Really.

This is a real grabber.

Some might not even notice what's going on when director Walter Salles finally shows his hand, and ends the film with documentary footage of the real-life Granado, now aged 81, romping in the earthly paradise that is present-day Cuba.

Shame is a welcome reminder that sex is sometimes too ridiculous to take so seriously.

Imelda Staunton is absolutely astonishing.

In equal parts powerful and peculiar, the film is not my favorite of Green’s, but it helps solidify his position as one of the most visionary young directors around.

Most of the dialogue is pretty fresh, and it’s delivered with great brio, particularly by Owen. Roberts, alas, is not at her best here, but she has almost nothing to work with.

All told, while the goods that Daggers offers are choice, the movie ultimately demonstrates that too much can be, well, more than enough.

Soderberg provides a cornucopia of fizzy, post–New Wave imagery, fitting for a picture that’s pretty much all about surfaces.

Though Melinda is no masterpiece, it’s also an Allen film that requires almost zero special pleading.

What could have been Solondz's most complex and challenging film winds up being a bit on the flat side. Still, the life-forms skittering over its surface are fascinating to behold.

It’s hilarious, and genuinely cool.

In the end it's still Gilliam Lite, but Gilliam Lite is better than no Gilliam at all.

With almost palpable anger, Meirelles hammers home the point that crushing poverty is only one problem for Africa that the West needs to do something about.

As exciting and involving as it is brainy.

I have misgivings about Schreiber's use of the well-worn "I'll make you empathize with these Others, but first let's have laughs at their expense" approach, but eventually I was won over by his humane, moving road trip.

The movie has a lot of good bits and terrific performances, including a too-perfect Keanu Reeves as a mystic orthodontist.

It touches deftly on class and race and sexual dissatisfaction and never lets up once it has put its characters under a microscope. Beautifully acted throughout, it showcases Watson's most complex performance in years.

A sweet, sunny, cinematic song of praise to simple '70s pleasures, Roll Bounce isn't any kind of life-changing picture, but it's breezy, good-hearted fun.

The picture’s great, fast-moving fun for the most part, and Kilmer gives his most appealing, relaxed, and amusing performance since "Real Genius."

Thanks to the movie's very clear respect for Cash and his music, and thanks mostly to the two superb, heartfelt performances by Reese Witherspoon as Carter and Joaquin Phoenix as Cash, Walk the Line eventually earned my sympathy.

Syriana depicts a system so thoroughly and intractably rotten that the standard liberal how-you-can-make-a-difference solutions--being more conscientious about using electricity, getting a hybrid car, and so on--only look like so much spit in the face of an atomic fireball.

I say this as someone for whom the very idea of a Kong remake is sacrilege, Jackson's straitened conception yields up a pretty damn good popcorn movie.