The opening half-hour may prove to be a disreputable classic of pedal-to-the-metal filmmaking.

Who Killed the Electric Car? makes you feel that no good idea, let alone good deed, goes unpunished. Only the exuberance of the moviemaking keeps your spirits high.

Will Ferrell does chicken-fried comedy right: with crackpot discipline and stripped-to-the-beer-belly courage.

The film marks Braff as a talent to watch, blessed with the sort of natural, everyman appeal that audiences eat up.

This team has succeeded at making a film that opens a subculture without programming our responses to it.

The triumph of American Hardcore is that it convinces general audiences that there were vast underground reservoirs of angst and anguish to be tapped.

The Guardian is that rarest of cinematic commodities: an action movie displaying brains and heart and the opportunity for its stars to do something more than keep the narrative flowing between explosions.

Shortbus is nothing if not over-the-top, replete with consummated sex acts, both gay and straight.

Both a condemnation of torture as a political tool and a tribute to the bravery that exists within everyone.

Penelope Cruz is sensational in Volver - she's its lifeblood, its raison d'etre and its meaning.

Fast Food Nation offers no easy answers, but plenty of food for thought.

The film's impact and poignancy are undeniable.

There are times when his message threatens to overwhelm his story line, and the last 15 minutes or so of Blood Diamond demonstrate what happens when sentimentality wins out over style and grit.

Only David Lynch could make the incomprehensible so compelling.

No one has caught the pride, remorse and pain of an unloved and possibly unlovable husband better than Edward Norton in The Painted Veil.

Vanya's journey to find his mom is not easy or picturesque or heartwarming. But it's also never without hope.

In every important way, Breach isn't just a solid thriller; it's also an ambitious and engrossing piece of narrative journalism.

Like Brian De Palma's 1981 masterpiece "Blow-Out," this movie contains cutting perceptions of obsession, institutional and professional myopia, misplaced loyalty in experts, misreadings of evidence and the kind of confusion that leads to conspiracy theories. But Fincher's movie falls short of masterpiece status.

The Breakfast Club meets Rear Window. The result should satisfy dating crowds from high school to night school.

A quiet, heartfelt story of love and loss.

Best of all is Jeff Bridges as the voice of Geek, a laid-back philosopher-penguin who becomes Cody's low-key guru, mentoring him in the ways of the wave.

Cotillard brings honesty to histrionics. She makes Piaf - "the little sparrow" - soar.

Bright semi-adult entertainment.

The scenes between Dengler and Duane, between a force of nature and a force of reason, are the real heart of the film.

The whole film is about innocence and experience, and if it isn't a Blakean song, it is a sturdy and vibrant piece of prose.

Kasi Lemmons' movie is called Talk to Me, but what it really does is sing to you, in the argot and cadences of soul, jazz, rock and rhythm and blues.

Live-In Maid is a lived-in movie. Its cataclysms may be small in scale, but the movie brings us so far into these women's lives that a shattered cup creates an earthquake.

If you have an ounce of romance in you, you'll sense your own inner Captain Blood emerge when Captain Shakespeare turns him into a dashing figure with a dangerous sword.

With Joan Allen bringing a crisp intelligence to the sharp, unsentimental narration, it's both awful and fascinating to follow Hitler's warped growth from frustrated painter to self-appointed arbiter of Germanic art.

Berg doesn't let up on the tension, even when the action is bloodless.

In the strongest scenes, Ben Affleck gets his lead actors to extract the bitter juice from Lehane's wood-alcohol prose. The movie has its horrifying Gothic twists and turns, but it's never better than when it takes these two into places where the underclass goes to forget or be forgotten or get lost.

This Christmas is the rare movie about a cozy household at holiday time that's as funny and dramatic and poignant as any seasonal family get-together should be.

The stripped-down filmmaking preserves the abruptness and surprise of the happy (and unhappy) accidents Reverend Billy finds at every stop along the way, from Manhattan to Anaheim.

Philip Seymour Hoffman steals the movie.

Tightly scripted and intricately plotted, the buddy film manages the neat two-step of being simultaneously profane and engaging.

The Duchess of Langeais is a romantic dance of death.

It's like a New York City equivalent of a Third World bazaar: It hums with nerviness and cunning. And this movie presents a tingling vision of a working neighborhood after hours. Night falls in Chop Shop like a comfort, a cloak or a shroud.

It's an unusual and engaging romantic comedy because it's mostly about how these women ready each other for real love.

The shows themselves are extraordinary, especially Japan's Ichigei group, which has the all-out fun and athleticism of a vitaminized Twyla Tharp troupe.

There's little time for nuance in Stop-Loss, and it doesn't deny any of the film's power to wish Peirce would occasionally slow things down enough to let her audience ponder what they're seeing.

What gives the film a haunting and sometimes droll poetic unity is the way co-directors Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen trace all their characters moving in a jellyfish-like fashion.

Kung fu purists may scoff, but escapists with a sense of humor should romp through The Forbidden Kingdom.

By far the most purely entertaining of all his films to reach these shores, Roman de Gare is the rare trick film in which all the tricks reveal something amusing, involving or poignant about its characters.

Despite the merry duo of Ford and Connery, The Last Crusade offered a familiar pursuit of the Holy Grail. The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull makes a better move: It goes back to the future. Once again, the Indiana Jones series is the rare franchise that treasures knowledge and embraces the unknown.

What's bleakly hilarious about the whole movie is that Bekmambetov directs the nonaction scenes just as hyperbolically.

The Last Mistress turns the melodramatic pieties of films like Fatal Attraction inside out. The anti-heroine acts like a vampire in reverse: Even when she drinks the anti-hero's blood, she makes him feel more alive.

Breaks no new ground in romantic comedy. But it finds ways to make the tried and true scenes -- a hilarious break-up in a restaurant, a nearly disrupted wedding -- new and funny.

The cast of Rain is first-rate, especially Wierzbicki and Peirse, whose tense relationship is as loving as it is competitive.

OK, so some of the scenes are a sham, but the mountain of suspense and adventure is enough to keep you captivated.

This is Forster's show, and he doesn't disappoint.

Nicholson is terrific here, in a role that demands he act, rather than just be Jack.

There's good trash: throwaway, intellectually undemanding action movies that, despite their heavy body counts and hard edges, are executed with a touch of class and a sunny disposition.

The film has a lot of right in it, including an ending that's suitably uncertain, but fraught with possibilities.

It was a time in history eminently worth celebrating on film.

For movie fans who despair of the state of American cinema, the in-jokes are hilarious.

A kinetically charged gridiron drama that is enormous fun to watch.

The martial arts wizard shows a nice feel for the Butch and Sundance thing.

Zellweger has a ticklish furriness reminiscent of Jean Arthur in her screwball comic prime.

Keeps its eye on the big picture even when focusing on the small scene.

Grisly, stylish and often weirdly funny, Blood Simple is a reminder of how rarely an original artistic sensibility is announced to the world and how much better movies are when that sensibility is allowed to keep going its own way.

A welcome anomaly - a shallow hero you root for.

Suffused with a sophomoric sensibility that belies its more serious underpinnings.

It has enough humanity to let the humor tickle, and a subject that will evoke memories for anyone who has ever smoked a joint or just said no.

If The Eyes of Tammy Faye is skimpy, it's still an important correction to the record about this fascinating and misunderstood woman, who turns out to be much more than just her makeup.

A quietly resonant movie about the painful alliance between single mothers and their daughters, and the complicated drama of separation.

Jewison's focus on the Canadians' dogged do-gooderism might have actually prevented a good movie from being a great one.

One of the unique virtues of the cinema is its ability to bring history to life with engrossing detail and gripping immediacy; East-West does this.

An enjoyably complex sci-fi suspense thriller.

Cheerful and unpretentious.

There's a moving, complicated love story at the center of Angel Eyes. It's too bad a peripheral plot line draws attention away from it.

Will remind filmgoers that one of the chief pleasures of going to the movies is a good old-fashioned swoon

Elmo graciously shares the stage with a cast of players who will not only delight youngsters but will come as sweet relief to grown-ups.

Gordon deserves credit for at least attempting to deal with political themes, and the tension isn't bad either.

There's a lot of talk about sex in Sidewalks of New York, but precious little of it. And that's part of the point.

Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow are so immensely appealing, and their chemistry together is so unforced, that their presence alone makes a movie worth seeing. Thankfully, Bounce has even more going for it.

Much of Light It Up has a familiar feel. But there are enough redeeming insights to make the time you spend at this school worthwhile.

Unpretentious and brashly exploitative.

It's plenty thrilling, and it appeals to the flag-waving patriot in all of us.

A slice-of-life where being gay is a fact of daily existence, not an excuse for existential dilemmas or grand tragedies.

It's a clear-eyed, unsentimental portrait and indelible for that very reason.

Love, however implausible, is simply beautiful in Venus.

Playing a perpetual victim like Victor (Walken) might be easy, but making audiences want to watch him for 97 minutes isn't.

So understatedly good.

A cautionary tale that's harrowing, heartbreaking and -- especially given the times, when Americans seem all-too-ready to once again judge people as a threat solely by their appearance -- disturbingly resonant.

The giddy excitement of Startup.com comes from feeling as if you're inside the bubble as it soars into the stratosphere - and pops.

The real hero here is Ghobadi, whose love and respect for the culture in which he was raised shines through every frame.

Romance, intrigue and old-fashioned movie glamour make a dazzling return in Girl on the Bridge, Patrice Leconte's sumptuous love story with a razor-sharp edge.

Winterbottom ("Welcome to Sarajevo," "Go Now") has filmed Wonderland with a hand-held 16 millimeter camera, lending the production an air of scrappy immediacy that is often arrestingly at odds with Michael Nyman's overheated musical score.

A film of so much daring, a film that takes so many chances, it's impossible not to be impressed.

A glamorous, alluring entertainment that revels in the artifice of Hollywood while exposing its corrupt heart, L.A. Confidential pays stylish homage to some of the great film noirs of the distant and recent past.

The film is a thoughtful, but by no means somber, look at an issue that might strike a particular chord with Jews.

But there's a discomfiting side to her comic riffs, because in our all-too-concerned-with-image society, they ring far too true.

Say 'I do' to Best Man.

Like "Anais," the only surprises Breillat has in store for us are bad ones. In the willfully perverse final act, she delivers a sadistic blow to the audience -- with a sledgehammer.

Possesses memorable portrayals of thoroughly original characters and draws a beguilingly bleak portrait of its Rhode Island settings.

Anderson brings real gravitas to the unfortunate Lily Bart, in an Oscar-caliber performance that makes one wonder what Academy voters are looking for.

May be thin, but it's also sharp, like a stiletto.

The Son's Room is the anti-"In the Bedroom." I mean that as a compliment.

An absorbing glimpse not only at the phenomenon of punk rock but also at British social history and the rock star mystique.

Like "Tango," Wang's film also seeks to uncover whether sex without emotion is really possible, or worth the effort.

This is a video stroll through a family scrapbook.

A gritty, profane and profoundly disturbing look at the American drug culture.

A wonderfully complex character at the center of a gratifyingly satisfying yarn.

Soldini's consistently understated touch, and a poignant turn by Licia Maglietta as the confused and bemused main character, turns Bread and Tulips into a character study worth studying.

Fortunately, this film doesn't have to depend on off-screen dalliances to prove its worth.

A film that immerses its audience in the Indian culture while telling a universally appealing story of grace under pressure.

A wonderfully understated work offering insights to a world where no emotion is simple.

Shower makes for a lovely and poignant journey.

A bawdy, brainy sex comedy geared toward smart people with a sophomoric streak.

It's the talk...and the extraordinarily expressive faces of those who do the talking, that accounts for its engrossing, enchanting powers.

Ultimately, the film can't help but disappoint. Movies where you're continually waiting for the other shoe to drop are never as much fun as those where you never expected the first one to fall.

With a wistful look at the wages of ambition and the failure of promise, Wonder Boys finally celebrates self-awareness, ending on a muted, quietly moving note of triumph.

John Turturro's farce about life and theater that is by turns elegant and bawdy, but always transfixing.

Filled with so much heartbreaking beauty, Bringing Out the Dead might be best described as an artist's sketchbook, a series of tableaux and ideas that provide a telling glimpse of a director whose work is always evolving.

A terrific social drama, the work of an artist, not a pleader.

Arrives as a balm to seared adult psyches that have endured all manner of assaults at the multiplex this season.

Ceaselessly amiable, moving whimsically toward an ending that, while predictable, is a rousing, unfettered joy.

Jet Li and Bridget Fonda form a terrific bond in this action film. And the choreography adds a nice kick, too.

These guys are funny.

Connery and Brown absolutely shine in their roles.

Smith shows the grasp of character and offbeat humor that really registered in "Clerks," and a subtler mastery of film fluidity and professionalism than anything in the cheesy, amateurish "Mallrats."

Romantically nostalgic, a love letter to growing up in simpler times.

By all means, buy a ticket to The Fast Runner, but don't go expecting a masterpiece; actually, in its first hour, the dramaturgy and staging of scenes set in igloos are cramped and amateurish.

A delightful and exuberant bit of romantic comedy and, as a bonus, it breathes new life into a pair of '70s musical chestnuts long off our culture's radar screens.

Performances by Jim Caviezel and Richard Harris make this a great adventure.

At times, Sex and Lucia is too precious for its own good; a movie that demands its own flow chart isn't always a good thing. And events turn on one coincidence too many. But Medem's exquisite craftsmanship and full-throttle eroticism make his film a morass worth the attempt to unravel.

Barrymore gives a performance that's nuanced, assured and captivating.

Delivers deliciously low blows at corporate America, office politics and the lengths people will go to avoid work.

Foster is strident, Vincent D'Onofrio has little to do but chain-smoke thoughtfully as an accessible priest, and the physical atmosphere is hazy.

A more honest version of "Summer of '42."

Campbell Scott creates a new movie anti-hero -- the weak silent type -- and goes all the way with it in The Secret Lives of Dentists.

The performers are tremendous, particularly Deschanel, who can travel to the end of an emotional tether and then suggest the mysteries of change and growth that lie beyond.

Black Hawk Down, in the end, is a docudrama. But it's sensationally well done, and it opens up a battlefield that needed to be documented.

Whenever the movie threatens to become just another visit to hillbilly-land, the music starts up and the film's gentle, irresistible wonder takes hold. Songcatcher is a film very much worth catching.

Sets up a mood of tensile suspense from the beginning and never lets it go.

Isn't nearly the landmark comedy it thinks it is, but its quirkiness should appeal to the highbrow funny bone in all of us.

Clearly a spiritual descendant of the old Looney Toons cartoons; it's not hard to imagine Daffy, Bugs, Porky and their pals in the starring roles here. And that's a cinematic pedigree worth cherishing.

In an age when light-and-easy racial farces have become mainstream hits, he remains a tough-love comedian.

Fantasy, not honesty, is the point of The Kid Stays in the Picture.

Malibu's Most Wanted mines a well-worn comedic vein, but does so with a consistent good humor and surprisingly deft touch.

Like its predecessor, Jeepers Creepers 2 is that rare modern horror film that remembers audiences are scared far more by what they don't see than by what they do. For that alone, horror fans should be thankful.

A murder caper that could have been written by Agatha Christie during a pub-crawl.

It's a soaper with a high grade of imported soap.

The Disney cartoon feature Treasure Planet is shot through with ingenuity. It outlandishly, cleverly moves Robert Louis Stevenson's seminal swashbuckler Treasure Island to outer space. The movie's affection for its source may be enough to get youngsters to crack open the original.

Charming has devolved into almost a pejorative these days, but Tuck Everlasting is the sort of film that could change that.

Avoids pretension by never trying to be more than it is -- an acknowledgment that things frequently are not as bad as they seem. That's a concept that deserves a little spreading.

Crammed, cheek to jowl, with bleak moments, high hopes, sweetness and naked emotion.

A quirky and satisfying love story.

Whenever its noble aims miss, Bruce Willis saves it.

Reaches the highest comic heights when the show itself starts.

Builds slowly but passionately, not dancing to some Hollywood tune, but finding its characters where they are and letting them be who they are.

Tells an important story about a story that might never have been told at all.

It's the performances of Ulrich and Gooding, in particular, that lift Chill Factor out of the derivative. Gooding possesses so much boundless energy that he practically dares you not to care, not to get involved, not to root for his success.

That rare kids' movie that may be even more entertaining for its intended audience's adult companions.

You may find Va Savoir pleasant to sit through, but will it stay with you the next morning? Who knows?

A comic-book rock band starring in a film that actually makes a point? Now that's something worth singing about.

American movies are generally so skittish about sexuality that Adrian Lyne's appetite --and aptitude -- for exploring it in Unfaithful is a relief.

Lively and inspirational, with terrific performances from a big star and a host of supporting players.

Seinfeld is the perfect figure to center a documentary called, generically, Comedian.

What proves the validity of Kandahar is that, by the end, all these scenes are human ruins of the same nightmare world.

The results are sometimes too frenetic, the laughs too obvious and predictable. But director Joel Zwick paces things well, and leavens the lunacy with enough seriousness (including a wonderfully poignant exchange between Toula and her brother) to keep the film grounded in the real.

A withering condemnation of a culture where greed is a virtue, a culture that you don't have to feel guilty for laughing at.

A lively, compulsively watchable but ultimately sobering film about the men who make their living off prostitution.

The result is suitably upsetting and intriguing, despite a simultaneously tacky and too-neat climax.

Modest, tasty, and it goes down easy, like home cooking.

Swimming is perceptive and, ultimately, embraceable. Like the adolescent it so lovingly depicts, this is a movie you want only the best for.

"Happy Accidents" should retire Tomei's status as part of a show-biz urban legend and establish her once and for all as one of our most versatile and engaging performers.

It has a premise that never stops percolating.

Not everyone is going to appreciate the politics of Barbershop, but you've got to admire it for having a political view at all.

An engaging yarn and a moving character study, but it's also a sweet, sad glimpse of everyone's future.

Almodovar has created an ecstatic homage to the women who have inspired him all his life.

The story seems fresh and alive. They also had the good sense to cast Dunst, at 19 already one of Hollywood's finest and most consistent actresses.

A good film that, with a little extra care, could have been great.

Wildly entertaining.

X-Men flies to the rescue with superheroes who have real substance.

Irresistible, campy fun.

As they've proven before and doubtless will prove again, Soderbergh and his cast are capable of better, weightier, more substantial stuff. But for now, slumming has rarely seemed more appealing.

It's a blast!

It's deliciously warped, deceptively smart and undeniably funny. Isn't that enough?

This may be the quietest addict ever to hit movie screens, as well the most disturbing.

Overall, you're left wondering why every big novel needs to be a movie. White Oleander would work better as a four-part miniseries -- or at least as a less conventional screenplay.

Nobody does this stuff better than Disney, and there's plenty here to like.

Fairly bursts with the exuberance and youthful energy that must have attended its creation.

Its effects don't linger long enough to seriously detract from the raunchy good time had by all.

Isn't a noble story, or even a cautionary one: It just feels pretty painfully real.

Rampling's authority over splintered emotions has the force of revelation.

The heartbreak comes not from watching her fail, but from realizing how easy it would be for her to succeed. If only she knew better how to try.

Veggie Tales is one amusing salad.

Buy your ticket, sit yourself down, and let ol' John take you for a ride. You'll have a blast.

The Bread, My Sweet is not for the cynical, who will doubtlessly find themselves gasping for air before the film's over and demanding a reality check of anyone who actually likes it. Their loss.

Once you get the hang of Figgis' own brand of coercion -- one based on an intricate sound design and musical score -- you find yourself happily going along for the ride.

You won't want to miss it if you care about movies that dare to chart intimacies in our age of spectacle, or about up-and-coming female performers and underused male veterans finding roles worthy of their gifts.

Romanek does such a nice job of calibrating his film's squirm factor, it's possible to overlook some flaws that would sink a lesser film.

The bulk of the film merely yearns for lucidity and magic. At its worst, Respiro resembles My Big Fat Italian Nervous Breakdown.

The Bourne Identity keeps you in a state of nervous excitation from the opening shot to the fade-out and has a thread of deadpan humor that vibrates alongside the main action like a third rail quivering next to a hurtling train.

It's the ideal capper for a cop comedy with a refreshingly wry, adult and humane attitude.

There is undeniable power in Magnolia, in which small moments of truth are given epic gravitas, not just by Anderson's adroit cinematic style (no one's camera is more restless or inquisitive), but by the wisdom and compassion of the characters he creates.

The film's strengths can't be separated from its shortcomings. Despite its heavyweight supporting cast, Stone Reader mostly pays tribute to the enthusiasm and purity of the amateur.

Fits squarely into the "exciting" category; it's a white-knuckler of the first order.

This picture is absorbing -- and eye-filling -- whether the prose and the passion are connecting or running on parallel tracks.

Chaos, in miring itself in the inequities (not to mention obscenities) of male-dominated culture, is after greater truths.

Rocky and Bullwinkle have not only returned, but they've been placed in the hands of filmmakers who know what they're doing.

The movie dazzles with its slick lines, but there's a situational intelligence at play too -- little vignettes involving minor characters are begun at one wedding and then evolve into major events at the next.

There's pleasure to be had in a film that suggests teen life can be hard without necessarily being tragic.

Enough flair and conviction to keep the movie buoyant even when its plot is abrupt and its emotionality conventional.

The Man Without a Past has the slenderness of a folk-tale -- also the clarity and charm.

Steadily, stealthily, The Eye works its way into your psyche, playing with your mind and always keeping a surprise or two up its sleeve.

The beauty, vibrancy and complexity of Indian culture is on addictive display in Monsoon Wedding. If only there were more to the film.