Writer and first-time director Anthony Minghella lays on the whimsy a bit thick at times, but his wryly funny and heartfelt observations on sorrow go down much easier than the Hollywood brand of lump-in-the-throat histrionics.

Broken Arrow delivers the hippest action fun around. Travolta's "Dr. Strangelove" exit will blow you away. Ditto the movie.

But Stone has found in Cruise the ideal actor to anchor the movie with simplicity and strength. Together they do more than show what happened to Kovic. Their fervent, consistently gripping film shows why it still urgently matters.

Fighter shapes up as one of the great documentaries of this year, or any other.

Keep your eyes on Garfield - he's shatteringly good, the soul of a film that might otherwise be without one. The Social Network is the movie of the year. But Fincher and Sorkin triumph by taking it further. Lacing their scathing wit with an aching sadness, they define the dark irony of the past decade.

A brilliant piece of nasty business that races on a B-movie track until it switches to the dizzying fuel of undiluted creativity. Damn, it's good. You can get buzzed just from the fumes coming off this wild thing.

Payne's low-key approach only deepens the film's intimate power. Want a movie you can really connect with? The Descendants is damn near perfect.

Hang on tight. The knockout punch of the movie season is being delivered by Zero Dark Thirty.

There's no way you won't be captivated by Wallis, chosen ahead of 3,500 candidates to play the tiny folk hero who narrates the story. Her performance in this deceptively small film is a towering achievement.

Written, directed, acted, shot, edited and scored with a bracing vibrancy that restores your faith in film as an art form, The Master is nirvana for movie lovers. Anderson mixes sounds and images into a dark, dazzling music that is all his own.

Like Vardalos and Corbett, who play their roles with vibrant charm, the film, directed by Joel Zwick, is heartfelt and hilarious in ways you can't fake. It's a keeper.

Glorious, a colossus of rousing action and ferocious fun.

Thanks to the clever, caring touch of director Ismail Merchant, working from a script by Caryl Phillips, this steadily engrossing film captures the book's bracing humor and humanity.

Elegant, funny and unexpectedly touching, this whodunit about a murder aboard the yacht of William Randolph Hearst represents a bracing comeback for Peter Bogdanovich.

It's a role of fierce demands, and Rampling meets them all. In a summer of crass, Rampling is a true class act.

Get your titles straight -- this is the good one, and a roaring good time.

Fierce, funny and vividly moving.

Unique and unforgettable.

It's a powerful and provocative achievement from a first-time filmmaker of enormous promise.

Bell explodes onscreen in a performance that cuts to the heart without sham tearjerking. Look for Billy to blast off.

Nunez finds a striking lyricism in simple lives that inspires an uncommonly fine cast and ranks him as a world-class filmmaker.

A funny and touching film that is gorgeously acted by a British cast to rival Gosford Park's.

McTeer and Brown make magic ina film that is wonderfully funny, touching and vital.

Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film.

Watching De Niro take Paul through his first panic attack ("I'm crying like a woman") is an unalloyed joy.

Wilson is flat-out hilarious, playing this cowboy like a surfer dude zapped back in time.

Mamet -- crafts tangy, well-seasoned dialogue that a good cast can feast on. And this cast is prime.

Steadily engrossing and devilishly funny, and, o brother, does it look sharp.

It's a haunting, hypnotic film that exerts an escalating grip on the heart and the conscience.

Tadpole may be small, but it's something special -- a cheeky comedy knockout.

A bright burst of action and comedy with a cast that makes for rousing good company.

This hilarious and humane film nails its subject -- not just the unshaved armpits and the lack of underwear -- and marks Moodysson as a talent to watch.

Setting it against the backdrop of a wanton city under siege, Schroeder crafts a film of whiplash urgency.

A riveting and surprisingly romantic ride.

One of the best movies of the year and by far the most entertaining.

You won't forget this film -- it's devastating.

Incisively witty, provocative and acted to perfection, this sublime entertainment is a career peak for producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

A kickass documentary.

As heartfelt as it is hilarious.

Detractors will see the usual parade of repressed feelings in a Masterpiece Theatre setting. Those who look closer will find one of the best films of the year.

It's unmissable, flaws and all, because riveting suspense spiced with diabolical laughs and garnished with a sprig of kinky romance add up to the tastiest dish around.

It may sound silly, but Lord and Park conjure up a world of visual miracles.

The acting is top-notch, and LaPaglia, who makes the cop's torment palpable, gives the performance of his career.

Under the astute direction of Danny DeVito, who does a sly turn as Oliver's attorney, this acid-dipped epic of revenge is killingly funny and dramatically daring.

A maliciously funny and keenly observant movie -- director-writer Patrick Stettner makes a potent feature debut -- that serves its humor dark and without artificial sweeteners.

An uneven movie that nonetheless bristles with stinging wit and exerts a perverse fascination.

Sadly, Howard blands out in the final third, using old-age makeup and tear-jerking to turn a tough true story into something easily digestible. Until then, you'll be riveted.

If you're looking to have your nerves fried and your pulse pounded, this is your ticket to ride.

Inspired funny business that allows Martin to hilariously torpedo Hollywood's corrupt heart.

A mesmerizing film spinning from hilarity to heartbreak.

A savage comedy of sexual extremes; the barbed laughs draw blood.

A movie that advances the career of a demonstrably gifted filmmaker, a fearlessly funny movie whose laughs draw blood, a bracingly provocative movie that won't apologize for its bad temper.

Offers something magical in the haunting and hypnotic performance of Sarah Polley...(the film) cuts deep.

It's the no-bull performances that hold back the flood of banalities. Robbins and Freeman connect with the bruised souls of Andy and Red to create something undeniably powerful and moving.

A personal best for producer Jerry Bruckheimer, a triumph for Scott and a war film of prodigious power. You will be shaken.

Fierce, funny and finally devastating, Tanovic's superb film offers a timely look at the roots of civil war and acts of terrorism on both sides that can be exploited by political and media hypocrites alike.

A tornado of laughs based on the black experience as lived by these four insightful jokers, instead of as filtered through the Hollywood formula.

A world-class charmer that could even seduce the Academy when it hands out the first official animation Oscar next year.

The year's most beguilling and touching surprise. Bravo.

Green has created a work of startling originality that will haunt you for a good, long time.

Waggish fun like this is too good to miss.

The first commandment of Dogma: Thou shalt not stop laughing.

An uncommonly good movie - a thriller that transcends thrills to become a heartfelt and heart-stopping personal drama.

Like the best filmmakers at Sundance 2001, Nolan leaps into the wild blue and dares us to leap with him. Go for it.

Kingsley creates an unforgettable monster. Acting rarely gets this hypnotically explosive.

For all its fancy pedigree, the spellbinding Dancer in the Dark aims right for the heart and aces its target.

Before this trippy, mesmerizing movie swerves out of control, it delivers an exhilarating and challenging ride.

One of the best movies of the year--startling, innovative, hugely funny and powerfully, courageously moving.

The actors make it unique and unforgettable.

When it comes to rousing action, whip-smart laughs and moral uplift that doesn't pump sunshine up your ass, Three Kings rules.

Lynch takes us on a journey of shattering understatement -- a remarkable accomplishment.

Delivers frisky fun for bruised romantics regardless of age, sex or nationality.

Begins like an episode of "I Love Lucy" and ends with the impact of "Easy Rider."

A thunderous spectacle.

Irresistibly deranged.

Elegantly witty and haunting . . . McKellen gives the performance of his career . . . and Brendan Fraser excels.

The film is alive with delicacy and feeling...It's a beauty.

Pedro Almodovar's transfixing tragicomedy -- the best foreign movie of the year -- is also the best showcase for actresses in ages.

Ali is a bruiser, unwieldy in length and ambition. But Mann and Smith deliver this powerhouse with the urgency of a champ's left hook.

A dynamite bundle from British writer-director Guy Ritchie. Even when the accents are as indecipherable as the plot, Ritchie keeps the action percolating and the humor on high.

Lane is a force of nature. Her slow-burning, fiercely erotic performance charges the movie.

"Waves" is a spellbinder.

Gorgeous filmmaking that brims over with funhouse thrills and ravishing romance.

Anderson offers no phony uplift for the Tenenbaums or for audiences. But he does know how to take a sad song and make it better. In these troubled times, that's a gift.

A uniquely hypnotic and haunting love story sparked by Nicolas Cage and Elisabeth Shue at their career best.

That Linklater pulls off the innovative feat with hypnotic assurance is nothing short of amazing.

Forget Oscar, Ocean's Eleven is the coolest damned thing around.

Unforgiven is the most provocative western of Eastwood's career, and with Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris along for the ride, it's also the most potently acted.

A marvel of delicacy and humor.

Whether or not Casino meets your expectations, it delivers the rush you only get from an audacious gamble.

Cage, who gives a blazing, imposive performance, uses his haunted eyes to reveal the emotional scars that Frank can't heal.

The crazy-ass imagination at work in Being John Malkovich hits you like a blast of pure oxygen...this movie of constant astonishments will make you laugh hard and long.

Only some bumpy, arid passages in the script keep The Others out of the master class occupied by the likes of "The Sixth Sense" and, my favorite, 1961's "The Innocents."

Mitchell gives this post-punk, neo-glam rock extravaganza everything in his loaded arsenal of talents. He gets the sound right, the look right, the fun right and - this is crucial - the pain right.

Let the unsettling secrets of this outrageously funny and steadily engrossing meditation on the life of two high school misfits after graduation catch you by surprise. It's that good.

The challenge is exhilarating. You can discover a lot about yourself by getting lost in Mulholland Drive. It grips you like a dream that won't let go.

A movie heart-breaker of oddball wit and startling grace.

Maguire and Dunst keep Spider-Man on a high with their sweet-sexy yearning, spinning a web of dazzle and delicacy that might just restore the good name of movie escapism.