This curious documentary is something rare, evincing opposites: It's both delightful and powerful.

A greatly ambitious undertaking, but from the commercial point of view quite insane. The movie is ridiculously fragile: It's like a Faberge egg, and even a twitch of foreknowledge will destroy the magic of the movie utterly.

This is a movie that understands the larger-than-life appeal of the old-fashioned movie star and one of the movies' most primal appeals: beautiful people doing amusing things while talking about it cleverly.

It's not a great movie, but Yu Nan's performance is superb without being showy or melodramatic.

Too bad the plot held no surprises and the acting no revelations. No actor could be said to stand out and the movie never acquires much tension or momentum.

As a piece of almost dadaist filmmaking, Spy Kids is great fun with its continual spirit of invention.

While it's no good time at the movies, Wonderland is an excruciatingly authentic experience.

The movie may take five extra minutes to end and could do with one less sunset but . . . other than that it's damned near perfect.

More than watchable, if less than compelling.

An enigma inside a conundrum inside an escargot shell, the French puzzler La Moustache will delight some people even as it annoys others.

It's tough, astringent, darkly funny and . . . well, it's also generic, untidy, condescending and mild of impact rather than stunning.

That's not to say it's great; it's not. Maybe it's not to say it's good, because it's only sort of good. It is to say, however, that it's nifty.

Le Petit Lieutenant shows how good French movies can be when they stay French and don't try to go international.

It isn't Austen, but it's delicious fun.

The movie is powerful, if numbing. What movie about a massacre isn't?

The best kind of genre filmmaking: It plays by the rules, obeys the traditions and is both familiar and fresh at once.

Writer-director Kirk Jones III keeps the movie resolutely brisk and light, twisting mildly this way and that but never detouring for long.

The new Dutch film Black Book manages to turn World War II into a large piece of cheese. A lurid, pulpy, slightly perverse potboiler, the movie suffers mainly from its utter lack of seriousness.

Marshall keeps the film lean and focused. He does have a nice taste for horror imagery.

It makes a great point: Love, honor and respect your father, but then get the hell out of town.

It's a brilliant, profound movie, but it's almost no fun at all.

These are great, primal stories that pull you in, make you care and put you on the edge of madness and violence.

It believes, in the end, in the decency of most people.

Profane, sacrilegious, pornographic, sadistic and Sade-istic, titillating and the most honorable movie of the year.

If the movie is meant to uncover any "big scandals," it's a disappointment. The investigator, in one surprising sequence, goes through a number of alleged "torture" photos and acknowledges that the vast majority of them represent "standard operating procedure." That is supposed to be the film's kicker: not what was illegal but how much was legal.

Seems to go sideways as often as it goes forward. Altman can't help noticing things more interesting than the story.

The tension is never crushing, as it would be in an American job. Instead, it grows by increments, until you realize the movie, in its quiet way, has you snared entirely.

It's a stunner that sadly grows tiresome at the end.