As quintessential a story of American ambition as Welles' own "Citizen Kane."

Paltrow and Fiennes are so good and the script, referencing not only "Romeo and Juliet" but "Twelfth Night," is so consistently intelligent that seduction is inevitable.

That rare cinematic experience-a movie so close to pure perfection that it seems a shame to spoil it by even reading a review beforehand.

It's a comic book at heart, albeit a thoroughly, grandly romantic one in the end.

Sure, the animation work is great, but it's the actors and their subtle, complex vocal performances that make us care about these fairy-tale characters. Shrek 2 is all about fantasy, but its characters are rousingly, affectingly real -- not to mention real, real funny.

It's a soaring achievement, without ever leaving the ground.

It knocks you off your feet and leaves you shaken.

Sean Penn makes a striking screen presence in This Must Be the Place, a smart, funny and original road movie by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino ("Il Divo").

All about undertones, obliqueness and expectancy, about the scent, if you will, of something no one can stop

With a cast of actors playing some of England's smartest people and with a crackling script by Stoppard -- no slouch in the brains department -- it pays to stay awake.

Wise, funny, sweet, sexy and kind.

Although the cast is uniformly strong, the real revelation here is "The X-Files' " Anderson, who plays Lily with subtle gradations of emotional depth unexpected from someone who has made a career out of deadpan.

Where Elizabeth really triumphs over its dusty source material is in transforming all this boring history into a real, rip-roaring adventure tale.

One of the most exhilarating movies ever made about absolutely nothing.

Works on two levels. First, it's a pure celebration of riding the waves. -- Second, Blue Crush is a clear-eyed portrait of the unique kind of power that women possess, a power that shows us that victory doesn't always mean vanquishing someone else. Either way, it's thrilling.

Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right: You can't go home again

The nail-biting quality of Shackleton's true story outdoes any dramatic fiction on the market.

One truly, madly, deeply satisfying creep-out.

It's a kind of 18th-century "Dead Man Walking" but with that earlier film's foreground arguments against capital punishment pushed to the background here.

It is difficult to watch, but it's also impossible to take your eyes off the screen. It does not blench at the things that Hollywood routinely blenches at: substance abuse, dying, family dysfunction, love.

Wickedly funny, jarringly transgressive, obdurately unpigeonholeable and startlingly moving.

The disturbing ideas it plants in the soil of the soul need time and darkness ? not light ? to germinate.

Aniston delivers an utterly un-Rachel-like performance. It's neurosis-free and unmannered, by turns funny, sad and profound.

With unsurprising irony, the "Sixteen" of the title foreshadows Liam's birthday and even worse calamity, which makes a grim and gripping story all the more heartbreaking.

Filmmaking at its purest and most visceral – a tale full of sound and visual fury, signifying, if not exactly nothing, then something not so readily articulated in words.

One thoroughbred of a movie. Sleek, well-muscled and brisk, director Steven Soderbergh's newest offering delivers just about everything anyone could possibly want from filmed entertainment -- except deep thought.

Part of this success is due to the exquisitely cast ensemble-composed of actors, not movie stars. To a man, woman and child, the unforced performers are spot-on.

The plot is far from intricate, but Waking Ned Devine more than makes up for its narrative simplicity with a uniformly engaging cast of Hibernian oddballs.