May register most immediately as a snappy whirl of visual gags, double entendres, overheated romance, and comically oversized living quarters, but beneath the exuberance of this fond counterfeit is a heartbeat as powerful as that of any film anchored in the present.

Hoffman (Soapdish, One Fine Day) leads a first-rate cast in an intelligent, fully realized adaptation of Shakespeare's most popular comedy that's at once highly cinematic and true to its source.

Memorable, deeply affecting movie.

Directed with depth, efficiency, and wit by Bryan Singer, the film suffered only from a tendency to seem like a setup for an even bigger movie...Fortunately, bigger usually equals better here, and when it doesn't, it equals just as good.

For as long as director and co-writer Jacques Audiard focuses on the central relationship, his stylish film stays on steady footing.

Now an invaluable time capsule, the film has to transcend its own conceptual messiness.

It's impossible not to admire what, apart from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," may be the most ambitious action film since "The Matrix."

A sight worth seeing.

When it's on its game, and it frequently is, South Park's portrayal of its foul-mouthed, pre-teen, construction-paper-like protagonists' navigation of the absurd adult world around them cuts as deeply as any other current comedy.

Teeters on the brink of New Age ludicrousness, but it never goes over: Like Kieslowski and others, Shyamalan knows that what makes for lousy metaphysics can make for powerful metaphor, and in the end he creates a deeply, surprisingly affecting film out of a little bit of smoke and brimstone.

It's funny, too, though marked by an uneasy humor that's usually difficult to achieve. Anderson handles it with expert ease: At this point in his career, he moves the camera like a skilled dance partner, investing the smallest gesture with significance.

Filled with video-game in-jokes, Spy Kids 3 comes roaring to life in action scenes based on different gaming genres, each of which takes full advantage of the 3-D effects.

Bielinsky's debut is a fine con picture, but at its best, it achieves even more, presenting the profession as a lifestyle with almost existential ramifications.

With its sharp wit and its portrayal of how broken families sometimes fit back together, Lilo would make a fine summer double feature alongside "About A Boy," another film that stays funny while dancing around a tiny abyss.

Where Noyce could easily have given Branagh a mustache and tilted the film toward old-fashioned melodrama, he leans on tactics that are less obvious and more effective.

Eason's twist of fate and too-sudden ending seems as rooted in Washington Heights as the music that pours from the neighborhood's car windows, the smoke that billows from its late-night eateries, and the stoic resignation inscribed on its inhabitants' faces.

Swimming Pool returns Ozon to the psychological complexities of "Under The Sand" and his early mini-feature "See The Sea," and he again proves himself a master of building shocking moments from a series of seemingly insignificant gestures and throwaway lines.

To concentrate on the minor faults of a fable as beautiful and unusual as Pleasantville would be missing the point.

Were he only trying to remark on that world's creepiness, Cronenberg would still succeed brilliantly, if coldly, but his sympathy makes the film.

What's more impressive, and in the end more important, is the high standard of storytelling that Pixar continues to meet by locating both humor and emotional depth in worlds created out of lines of code.

A combination of criminal smoothness and overloaded neuroses, Cage pulls off the lead role better than any actor imaginable.

This sort of film lives or dies by its promise of bullet-dodging, stylishly clad women throwing themselves into impossible feats of daring, and when the time comes for action, Yuen displays a rare gift.

An early shot of two turtles crawling through the classroom establishes the film's deliberate pace, and To Be And To Have benefits from the care.

McCarthy's characters make for good company even in their story's awkward patches, and in a film so unabashedly about the value of friendship, good company goes a long way.

Mostly content to observe with wary admiration, the film doesn't offer any answers, and life robs the story of any sort of resolution, leaving only footage of one remarkable example of charity in action.

In the end, the camper-lot prostitution serves as trapping for a weirdly touching coming-of-age film that leaves its heroine sadder but wiser.

Webber displays a great sense of understatement and a keen eye for careful framing, with cinematographer Eduardo Serra beautifully re-creating Vermeer's signature play of shadow and light.

It should be a personal triumph or a personal tragedy, but it's neither: just another moment between curtain-rise and curtain-fall in the glorious business of creating beauty.