With elegant, clockwork construction, Smith has transplanted his novel of greed, betrayal and getting what you deserve to the screen, where it is told by director Sam Raimi with a spareness befitting the whiteness of its snowed-in setting.

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.

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

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.

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 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").

Spielmann doesn't move his camera much, but he doesn't have to. The uniformly crackerjack cast keeps things electric, yet always believable, even when behaving in ways that are shocking.

Will keep you awake, jittery and perched on the edge of your seat for pretty much the entire flight.

Their characters' desire (Scott Thomas and Zylberstein) -- no, need -- to repair their fragile bond feels as achingly real as the mother lode of hidden pain that gets exposed by the work of these two great actresses.

Mostly, though, it's a film about that hollow feeling that hits you when the tears have all dried up and your face hurts way too much to even crack a smile.

Troubling and powerful film, lingering on screen well into the final credits and in the minds of its audience long after the house lights have come on.

It is through the genius of Frears, screenwriter Jimmy McGovern and this talented cast that Liam lets no one off the hook, least of all the audience.

An elegant drama about power and its frightening uses, The Cat's Meow is the bee's knees.

Wise, funny, sweet, sexy and kind.

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 truly, madly, deeply satisfying creep-out.

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.

A gift for those already in the fold, for those who get the joke and just want to savor it with other like-minded fans.

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.

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

Old-fashioned moviemaking at its best.

Jack is just one of a dozen enormously appealing personalities in Out of Sight.

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

In almost every way that I can think of, L'Auberge Espagnole is a perfect movie... It is a film that feels alive.

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.

A portrait of a sometimes surly, often foulmouthed, always brilliant artist that is at once humane, horrific, hilarious and deeply moving.

It's part sugar, part spice (cayenne, not nutmeg) and all-around brilliant.

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

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 fantastic and at times deliciously nihilistic world of X2 is fully, believably three-dimensional.

An extraordinary film in many ways, the least of which is its unorthodox casting.

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.

Really, really good -- Yes, it's over the top, giddy and parodistic (God bless it). But it also takes a thoughtful, if surreptitious, look at what eight women might act like when men aren't around.

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

You'll likely come away from this astonishing encounter between the three corners of a lovers' triangle not just amused but enlightened about such not-so-simple issues as fidelity, betrayal, lust, possessiveness, honesty and forgiveness.

Wickedly clever drama.

A small film of surpassing beauty and sadness. Yet its bittersweet flavor isn't artificial, but rather the product of the slow ripening of character.

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.

Fascinating and transgressive love story.

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

His story is sad, compelling and morbidly, tragically watchable.

Gorgeously animated and stirringly told, Disney's Mulan is a timeless story that will delight kids and divert adults with its sweeping scope, emotional intimacy and screwball humor.

Cogent, scary and, at times, sickening.

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

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

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

Part of the spell cast by this magical film is its ability to make an unvarnished political statement about economic reality and social alienation while, at the same time, seducing its audience into believing in the transformative power of love and the almost supernatural beauty of the everyday.

The Matrix Reloaded is about sensation, not logic. As such, it delivers, in spades, exactly what you should expect from a popcorn flick -- thrills, chills and spills -- plus a little more for good measure, just to keep anyone from whining who might want a beginning, a middle and an end.

It is incomplete, contradictory, as multifaceted (and as brilliant) as a diamond.

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.

Tells a tale of fortitude that comes not from muscle but from the ineffable, bungee-like sinew that is the human spirit.

What the movie may lack in "Saving Private Ryan"-style gloss, it more than makes up for in authenticity, or, in other words, heart.

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.

Scorsese creates a film so resonant that it is both a work of great art and an anthropological document.

Psychological suspense at its finest.

May be a fish tale, but its story of the paradox of love -- knowing when to hold on means knowing when to let go -- is profoundly humane and human.

It plays like a baldfaced, brazen insult, but it is a stunningly accomplished one.

Neither wholly cynical nor wholly romantic, Kaufman's story is a balance of smarts and sentiment. It's the most fully realized working out of his two favorite obsessions: the subjective nature of experience and the psychological mysteries of pair bonding.

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.

By land or by sea, there aren't many movies that can move you like that.

The events of the movie are filament-thin and insubstantial but, like fine silk threads, they weave together a fabric of surpassing warmth and texture. [25 Sep 1998, Pg.N.63]

The romantic comedy about a divorced couple having an affair manages to be both light on its feet and heavy enough to deliver something of a message.

Megamind has presentation in spades. But it also has something even rarer than that. It's got heart.

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim's scathing, moving critique of American public education, makes you actually want to do something after you dry your eyes.

The Muppets is both a delightful family film about the Muppets and a winking, self-referential satire about how lame the Muppets are.

Chandor's film goes a long way toward making understandable - in vivid, cinematic terms - what exactly happened to make that first big domino fall over.

Known for comedy, Rogen and Silverman are the film's most delightful surprises, and their performances shine.

It's a kid's Cirque de Soleil, for a lot less money.

McKinney, a woman whose spellbinding and baffling presence - nay, performance - in Tabloid more than lives up to her recent off-screen antics.

Life in a Day is, without exaggeration, a profound achievement.

Movie 43 is a near masterpiece of tastelessness. The anthology of 12 short, interconnected skits elevates the art form of gross-out comedy to a new height.

It's powerful, gut-wrenching stuff, and it doesn't need tarting up.

It's a thriller that feels like a documentary.

By turns sweet, sad, funny and poignant, We Have a Pope is the story of a man who doesn't want to be God's representative on Earth.

Polisse is hard to watch at times, but it's also hard not to.

Simon and the Oaks is not merely the story of two boys from opposite sides of the tracks. It's also a larger meditation on life's hardships and what endures: love, art and civilization.

A quietly brilliant study in cognitive dissonance, The Flat is a documentary look at Holocaust denial, but not the kind you might think.

The problem, as “Table” shows, isn’t that the next meal never comes. It’s that when it arrives, too often it is filled with empty calories.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist will likely make some people mad because of the way it holds the United States responsible for the repercussions of its actions in the world. Like Changez himself, the film has a complicated relationship with the superpower.

The film is a documentary, pure and simple. But the movie, by director Rick Rowley, plays out like something of a murder mystery.

The line between madness and genius is thin. Not to mention more than amply explored in any number of films about tortured artists. But to look at the almost religious ecstasy on Moreau's face is to feel the artist's passion and be inspired by it.

Works as both historical allegory and moving family drama.

The sprawling cast, the naturalistic, overlapping dialogue (here by screenwriter Jenny Lumet, daughter of director Sidney) and the swirling action: it seemed pure Robert Altman.

In one bold stride, Benigni has set himself apart from the rank and file of funnymen, joining the elite class of clowns who know that humor and heartbreak are only a howl of pain apart.

Haunting little film, whose chaotic universe is churned up by the conflict between the haves and the have-nots.

Visually stylish surrealist drama.

Sternfeld has created a garden on film that opens up its blooms for us, not in the dark of the movie house, but long after we've left the theater.

It's a story of jaw-dropping chutzpah, grim, mostly hindsight-based humor and more stomach-churning drama than you could find in 10 screenplays.

The film is a small study in the dignity of letting go.

Good old-fashioned movie storytelling that steadily builds, over the course of nearly three hours, to a white-knuckle conclusion that satisfies on nearly every level.

Sweet and wise little film.

A sweet, true and, at times, universal love story it is.

A blend of gentle comedy and poignant drama.

A kicky, twisted thrill ride, with enough laughs to leaven what can be read, at heart, as a metaphor for the modern marriage.

Plays a little like a mystery, the central question of which is not whodunit but why.

Startlingly erotic and surprisingly moving.