Plato's Retreat was a buffet of bodies, and the film catches the moment America could think that was tasty.

The movie excoriates the hypocrisy of self-hating gay lawmakers (several of whom it outs), yet it also explores the burden of the public closet.

This brave documentary takes on the topic of anti-Semitism in a relentlessly probing and original way.

Rouses you in conventional ways, but it's also the rare animated film that uses 3-D for its breathtaking spatial and emotional possibilities.

Does the movie, with its sock-puppet intros and narration by RuPaul Charles, mock Tammy Faye, sanctify her, or turn her into a flamboyant image of distressed womanly martyrdom -- the Judy Garland of televangelism? All of the above.

The savviest and most exciting Bond adventure in years, and that's because there's actually something at stake in it.

A domestic tragedy of lacerating vision.

This lone, fallen Nazi's obsessive distance from his actions is enough to give The Specialist a lingering chill.

The Cockettes weren't talented, exactly, yet the bedazzled flakiness of their passion takes you closer than just about any movie has to what was once really meant by the term ''free-spirited.''

A sprightly, lovingly researched, rather misty-eyed sports documentary that's steeped in ethnic pride.

Pungent, funny, and surprisingly forceful.

The film satirizes, and celebrates, an idea pivotal to both Hollywood and love: that in a world of impostors, the pretender with the most conviction can become exactly what he pretends to be.

As compelling as it is bizarre.

Creates a flow of symbolism so potent, so transporting in its physicality, that its impact all but transcends its righteous liberal ''meaning.''

It takes skill these days, if not nerve, to put a vital, happy nuclear family on screen and to invite us to share in every quiet tremor, every gentle jostle and smile of their steady, deep-flowing contentment.

Watching Bounce, you look at him (Affleck) and believe how much he's got at stake, and you look at Paltrow and know why.

Turns the tricks of psychology into duplicitous high play.

Turns out to be a supple, intriguing, and beautifully staged movie. It features Dillon, in his most forceful performance since ''Drugstore Cowboy.''

Acting doesn't get more personal, or much greater.

When the submarine has to dive 400 meters beneath the surface to avoid detection, you can practically feel the water pressure crushing in on the sailors.

Linklater has hardly been a slacker this year. I'll take the tricky confrontational babble of Tape over some of the gauzier soliloquies in ''Waking Life,'' but either way, he's a filmmaker in love with the music of talk, and let's bless him for that.

Rarely have two actresses been so effortless in their intimacy.

This is the richest role Paltrow has had since ''Shakespeare in Love,'' and she rises to the challenge. She digs deep into Plath's mercurial nature, giving us a Sylvia who's fiercely independent and alive yet burdened with demons of insecurity that bubble up in a rage.

The nature of silent comedy was to elevate its heroes into myths, but after ''Charlie'' I can't wait to see Chaplin's movies again, this time to glimpse the man on the other side of the icon.

A big, square, rousing political thriller docudrama.

Branagh, chewing on a plummy Georgia accent, makes the divorced, boozing, and womanizing Magruder a smug yet touchingly vulnerable legal player.

On the eve of Wuornos' 2002 execution, Broomfield digs deep into her abusive hell of a background (beatings, incest, sleeping homeless in the frozen Michigan woods) as well as her quasi-psychotic defense mechanisms.

Brashly engaging.