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.