Wastes amusing beginnings.

Has a vitality and novelty rare in any youth movie, let alone one that claps fresh eyes on a cliched vision of a model minority.

The story may be about cold-blooded murder, but Bullock's pulsating performance is about the getting of wisdom.

The movie may be Nine Queens, but it slakes your thirst for surprises and thrills because of its Nine Jokers.

Possesses moments of fleeting grace, pathos and beauty, even if it ultimately doesn't amount to much.

There's no denying the raw emotional power of this heart-rending story.

In his first fiction feature, Zwigoff doesn't forget to bring the funny. But he doesn't bring enough poetry.

McConaughey and (especially) Hudson manage to make it all work, maintaining their likability even in situations where they inevitably end up acting like jerks.

It's impossible not to be exhilarated by the energy and determination that infuses every frame.

Cabin Fever may not be a horror classic, but it's definitely an ideal midnight movie.

With Anything Else, Woody Allen proves himself an old dog capable of thinking up some new tricks.

An action-adventure flick that could turn into this generation's "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

The picture captures a contemporary mood-blend of cynicism, anger and woefully disappointed idealism. Runaway Jury may be just a classy potboiler, but Fleder spices up the stock and keeps it at full boil.

The highest compliment I can pay Pieces of April is that it brings to mind a Paul Simon lyric: "the mother and child reunion is only a motion away."

Benton's version of The Human Stain feels under-energized and modest to a fault. Yet it still delivers a genuine sad sting.

Elf tries so hard to be a holiday classic, to be a sweet-natured, charming little piece of holiday gloss, it's tempting to declare it so and simply go with it.

Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton are so good in Something's Gotta Give, it's a shame writer-director Nancy Meyers couldn't rein herself in a little more.

What makes the movie potent, though, has nothing to do with metaphor or parable. It's that the story provides Connelly, Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo as Kingsley's wife with all the tools they need to resurrect, flesh out, revamp and criticize outmoded male and female roles.

Equal parts fantasy and cautionary tale, a film that manages to be uplifting and off-putting simultaneously -- fortunately, more the former than the latter.

Even at its most hyperactive, Peter Pan has a core of good and bad feeling that will hit home to kids and to adults with honest memories.

A harrowing depiction of a woman's plight under the Taliban.

Funny, sweet and only mildly offensive.

A campy riot of retro cool, a warm and fuzzy ode to the '70s buddy cops.

Don't go expecting a good time to be had. But by all means, go to revel in a movie that, for about two-thirds of its length, is Mamet at the top of his game -- intelligent, tightly crafted, densely layered.

At its best, the movie combines the musical and psychological meanings of a fugue. Sons and daughters and mother take up themes of dislocation and identity loss, and deepen them at every turn.

Dawn of the Dead may depict the end of the world as we know it, but rarely has watching doom proved such a kick.

Hellboy is, to borrow a phrase, one helluva good time.

It's all done with such good heart, and Stiles is so perfectly appealing as one of cinema's most grounded Cinderellas.

Quirky and enjoyable.

Spurlock's movie is the real-life slapstick record of a kamikaze Mac attack. Schlosser's book is the contemporary equal of Upton Sinclair's classic meatpacking muckraker "The Jungle."

Sometimes sly and witty, sometimes dull and forced, Coffee and Cigarettes is Jim Jarmusch's testimony to the difficulties and delights of communication.

Gripping footage about the controversial Qatar-based Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, which transmits news to 40 million Arabs. But the movie offers neither lucid analyses of the channel nor probing portraits of its journalists.

Better than his previous films, The Day After Tomorrow plays to Emmerich's strengths, making for a thrill ride that rarely disappoints when it matters.

Some of the most affecting moments in the film show Bukowski walking the streets of his Los Angeles, a barren suburban hell, as he reads his poems and the words appear on and then fade from the screen.

Pointed and satiric. Best of all, one must hasten to admit, it's pretty funny.

The Clearing reminds us what a riveting presence he (Redford) can be.

Schwartzberg sees the homegrown innovativeness and grit still standing beneath the glossy media version of the American personality.

You don't have to be a Metallica junkie to get this film.

Moves along with great speed and verve, and it's got just enough of a sci-fi sheen to make things interesting, if not provocative. Philosophers and true believers may be disappointed, but for movie fans, I, Robot mostly delivers the goods.

Washington is wisely cast as Marco; few actors command more instant respect, and the movie uses that to make his character both believable and sympathetic.

The year's most unsettling movie experience - and in this case, that's a very good thing.

The weirdly exhilarating thing about Wicker Park is the reckless abandon with which it embraces the convenience of coincidence, and then the extreme measures it takes to reassure the audience that it's not a movie about coincidence at all.

The performances of Luna and, especially, Reilly, make the film more enthralling than it perhaps deserves to be.

Offers a welcome riff on a well-worn horror standard.

This is a movie that earns its suspense and validates its emotions, especially its examination of the bond between mother and child.

Celebrates heroes without turning them into saints.

There's a power to Woman Thou Art Loosed that transcends its limitations, a determined, heartfelt belief in the possibility of redemption.

The movie may be too precious for mass consumption, but its filmmakers' willingness to assume the best of their audience, combined with its Everyman origins, suggest a movie that deserves a chance.

In the end, this is a movie that doesn't respect its own power. Less of a stacked deck would have left Vera Drake to play a far more effective hand.

Bening's performance makes up for a lot of deficiencies.

The only character with any personality in The Grudge is a Tokyo house, but not to worry - it's got enough mean in it to keep any horror movie afloat.

A wholesome, headlong extravaganza - a sort of North by Northeast sans high style and erotic innuendo.

An opportunity to enjoy the pure adrenaline rush that has always been the hallmark of martial-arts cinema.

The best moments in Paper Clips - and there are plenty - come when it doesn't resort to mundane cliches or calculated emotions to make its point.

A slick sci-fi thriller that comes complete with enough twists to keep audiences satisfied and enough moral quandaries to keep the thinkers happy.

There's plenty to like about Adrenaline Drive, including the appealing, sympathetic performances of its two young stars and the tongue-in-cheek humor that pervades the film.

It's just another modest, unsurprising little heist flick. So why is it so much fun? Newman.

What makes the "Dolittle" movies stand out from this menagerie is the superb casting and matching of the animals and their human voices.

Electric as Elektra, Jennifer Garner does a high-powered, blade-thrusting star turn as Marvel Comics' ninja-inspired superheroine, bringing such unbridled energy and sexuality to her performance, one barely notices the movie itself.

When Inside Deep Throat is over, it's tough to say which tragic moment lingers longer.

For anyone who has ever had to balance what the heart yearns for against what the head insists must be, this film should hit home.

The people are just a little too calculatedly quirky in Off the Map, an otherwise engaging comedy.

But the fine performances of all three leads rise above the cliches, giving the film a sense of reality that both impresses and inspires.

The movie's main strengths are its use of the real United Nations as its prime location and Pollack's ability to stud this movie (as he also did "The Firm") with players who do supporting-character equivalents of star turns.

Kung Fu Hustle is to "House of Flying Daggers" what "Blazing Saddles" is to "Unforgiven."

While it's certainly too derivative to be a great movie, it's too goodhearted and modest in its aspirations to be denied.

Cheeky, brass-knuckles British crime film.

Madagascar doesn't do much, except make you laugh. All hail such a minimalist approach.

This is not a great film by any means, too filled with stock characters in stock situations for such praise. But if offers screen time for some fine young actresses, and addresses its story to an audience of teen girls who deserve something to identify with.

It's the pushiest film around - "in your face" is still in-your-face, even if the dancers are in white-face.

Blessedly unimportant, Fantastic Four cruises along on modest yet genuine comic-book pleasures.

The Beautiful Country is not a happy film by any means, but it does offer a fragile hope, that beauty exists at the end of every journey, if only one has the strength to finish the trip.

Bergman's creation of family banter that turns irredeemably cruel remains without peer.

Wedding Crashers is unashamedly profane and, for its first two acts, very funny, a classic guilty pleasure that revels in its basest elements.

In Hustle & Flow, a star is born playing a star who's born.

For those of us who wish that John Hughes' "The Breakfast Club" had kept the cheeky tone of Hughes' "Sixteen Candles," what ensues is the best Hughes farce that Hughes never made about adolescent snobbery and heartbreak as well as adult obtuseness.

It forces you to fill in the blanks, then refuses to judge whether you're right or wrong. It's almost like the audience writes its own script, and everybody appreciates his or her own work.

Craven's films aren't showy, but that should never be held against them. In their streamlined construction and rock-solid simplicity lay their brilliance.

Your basic Lasse Hallstrom formula-film, featuring people in dire situations who are redeemed when their basic goodness comes to the fore, elevated a notch by a pair of actors displaying sides we don't often see.

A bravura, resonant performance by Nicolas Cage, combined with some hard questions raised about American responsibility for the worldwide glut of firearms, make the film close to a must-see, if not a must-love.

Pucci pulls off Justin's transformation without resorting to histrionics; it's like a radio-station signal finally coming in clearly.

Earns few points for originality, but scads for good-hearted exuberance.

Serenity may be short on exposition, but it's smart and fun.

Martin's script offers plenty of opportunities, but Martin the actor never takes advantage of them.

Prime serves as yet another showcase for Streep; to prove how expertly she plays a Jewish mother with a Ph.D. in psychology, just imagine Barbra Streisand in the role -- you'd have a farce only a step above slapstick. With Streep, you get a smartly observant comedy that never overplays its hand.

Sarah Silverman says things you wouldn't expect a nice, attractive Jewish girl to say. But that's only half her appeal.

Producers hits few wrong notes on the big screen.

It offers top actors in Fiennes and Richardson, plus a rare joint appearance by the sisters Redgrave.

Latifah's performance and the film's gentle heart should prove enough to win over even the most churlish.

True, the movie tends toward the treacly at times, and the children's mischievousness seems a bit forced. But Thompson's turn as a glammed-down Mary Poppins with an even more no-nonsense attitude is hard to resist.

Some adults may find the film unbearably simplistic, or its pace burdensomely slow. But it would be a shame if movie audiences have become so hyper-adrenalized that they can't appreciate a charmer like Curious George.

The determinedly cynical needn't bother, but just about everyone else should love Eight Below.

If you have a sneaky taste for the monstrous and a hearty appetite for the outlandish, the pulpy yet engaging Night Watch should leave you merrily sated.

There's comfort in seeing actors we know doing what we've come to expect them to do. But more important, the film surrounds them with supporting characters who are less familiar to us, who act in ways we don't expect.

In some ways, Thank You for Smoking does not bemoan smoking as much as it bemoans people's willingness to be duped by smooth-tongued orators.

Queen Latifah, the star of Barbershop 2 and Beauty Shop, and thus our reigning monarch of big-screen beauty stylists, should fund and narrate a sequel. Because The Beauty Academy of Kabul is good enough to make you want to know how they do.

This movie will be remembered not for the notorious Bettie Page but for its showcase of the burgeoning Gretchen Mol.

Intelligent and robust contempt has become so rare in movies that the first half of Art School Confidential is intermittently exhilarating.

It's easier to accept a breakup when it's clear that the two parties are mismatched, but a better, braver film would reveal what caused the initial attraction.

For better and worse, the entire film goes by like a theme-park cyclone ride. It makes as much sense as it needs to when you're on it. All it leaves in its wake is a residue of vertigo and speed.

With everything this film has going for it - humor, intelligence and a splendid ensemble - Richard Linklater's nightmare drug movie, A Scanner Darkly, should be continually compelling. But it loses its fizz after a strong series of pops.

Yes, the characters in Clerks II hardly qualify as role models, but they can be blisteringly funny in an in-your-face, to-heck-with-taste way.

What's missing is what Pixar never fails to provide: The kind of storytelling heart that is inseparable from imagination.

It may not tell us anything about terror in the new millennium, but the filmmakers' work is solid and affecting. In its own over-emphatic, sometimes clumsy way, it can move an audience to tears, cathartic laughs and cheers.

Quinceanera may be the year's most nonjudgmental film, and therein lies both its greatest strength and most naggingly troublesome weakness.

Looming large over all this is Jackson, who glowers and growls and acts the hero better than any actor out there.

This delightful, if perhaps too calculatedly winsome, comedy presents seniors who are coping with emotional and physical losses and challenges them to act like the young people they still are at heart.

This flight of fancy stays aloft on the power of its acting and its atmosphere.

The American writer and poet Charles Bukowski is certainly an acquired taste, and Factotum may be just the film for determining whether one wants to acquire it.

The result is a passionate, enthralling film that isn't afraid to take chances - even if it sometimes should be.

The movie contains few surprises but has plenty of heart.

The most refreshing thing about Man of the Year is its mingling of comedy and suspense with common decency. Levinson asks his countrymen not just to know their limits, but also to reach them.

In the end, there's enough movie magic in The Prestige to keep you guessing, even after the film's over.

Chilling doesn't begin to describe Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple...But the film never gets behind the chill.

The excitingly well-made Death of a President imagines the assassination of President Bush as a way of analyzing political violence. And Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, sight unseen, has labeled it despicable.

The best sections of Flushed Away, those featuring a nefarious French operative known as Le Frog (a hilarious Jean Reno), are also the most peculiarly British; no one lampoons the French with a better mixture of hard-earned loathing and grudging respect than the Brits.

Casino Royale marks a shrewd relaunching of a franchise. But Campbell and company show too much of their sweat. If these movies continue to follow Fleming's profane pilgrim's progress, the next Bond movies should be more emotional and funny, with a bit of brass-knuckled charm.

Darren Aronofsky labors awfully hard to get across a pretty simple message in The Fountain. But his efforts are so ethereal and extreme, it's almost impossible to turn away.

The result is a movie that inspires without pontificating and plays on the heartstrings without pounding on them incessantly.

Pearce makes you see why Edie found Warhol as irresistible as he found her. His otherworldly eyes focus on both who she is and what she represents. He sees her as a star.

A twisted little comic gem.

Freedom Writers is the rare inspirational-teacher film that is filled with genuine, jaw-dropping coups of real-life poetry.

Touching and insightful.

It's hard to figure where it's going, and when the movie's over, it's even harder figuring where it's been. But the careening roller-coaster ride calling itself Smokin' Aces is such a hoot to be on, who really cares?

This movie doesn't pretend to be anything more than a cheerful night out, and on that count it scores.

There's a persistent innocence to this movie that will work wonders on all but the most churlish.

Director Daniele Thompson gets the point across so airily and pleasantly, in a film cast to perfection, that it's no problem accepting the message with a shrug, while profoundly enjoying the messenger.

Cinema has once again proven its ability to incorporate every other mass-media art form. Director Zack Snyder and his computer wizards have made the best example yet of the movie-as-comic-book.

Making you feel the presence of absences - of the distant and the departed, of dreams that never quite come true - is the key thing that this uneven film gets exactly right.

There's enough wit to keep audiences of whatever age happy.

Those willing to overlook its emotional grandstanding will find much to admire and even more to think about in this Oscar-nominated Danish drama.

What's not to love?

Surprisingly moving and intellectually satisfying.

In a cinematic landscape where truly original ideas are rarer than floating food, recklessness like this deserves to be appreciated. Not understood, but appreciated.

Uneven and affecting movie.

The original French title is "La Doublure," but The Valet fits Veber. He has become a one-man service industry when it comes to spreading Gallic barbed humor and good cheer.

It inverts the typical Hollywood boy-meets-girl formula into something somehow menacing and yet ultimately moving. [29 Oct 1991]

The movie then becomes a story of salvation: how Murphy's Marcus, through the love of a better woman (Halle Berry) manages to rediscover both his decency and his humanity. And yet, pretty much, it stays funny. [01 Jul 1992]

The story line meanders and too many scenes drone on; Knocked Up is in serious need of a good editor. But the laughs are plentiful, and it's the rare movie these days where one doesn't feel guilty about finding the whole thing funny.

The best part of Little Women is that it tells a great big story. [24 Dec 1994]

The movie is full of macabre surprises. As good as Hoskins is as the little sweat-manufacturer caught in everybody's pliers, far better is Robin Williams in an unbilled appearance as a nihilist dynamiter. [13 Dec 1996]

The movie needs more incident and complication; it's modest to a fault.

Few films even try to render the full range of emotions and sensations in female sexuality as the aptly titled Lady Chatterley, directed and co-written by a Frenchwoman, Pascale Ferran.

You Kill Me kills you softly with its smiles.

The film's action doesn't disappoint; if anything, it ups the adrenaline ante considerably.

The whole thing is too giddy to be taken seriously and too much of a confection to leave much of a lasting impression. But for 140 minutes, at least, it should give non-fanboys at least an idea of what all the fuss is about.

The movie is full of holes - it lacks the precision and verve of a Francis Veber farce like "The Dinner Game" - but the two actors brew up a sane kind of comedy from their fractious rapport.

The movie doesn't add up to much, but it's an effervescent expression of an odd brute-hummingbird sensibility.

The movie maintains its comical, rocky equilibrium as long as the screenwriter, Dean Craig, sticks to domestic disasters and a Monty Python parody of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

The movie is best when everything is up in the air.

Because Bar-Lev fails to go the extra mile either as a filmmaker or a friend, My Kid Could Paint That is at best "documentary silver."

The whole movie swings broadly from slapstick and mock suspense to song. But the film develops a strong amorous undertow; Kelly's script neatly allows for all the potential couples to get the fate or comeuppance they deserve.

Redacted is a bristling act of protest that obliterates a target it isn't aiming for.

Kingsley dims divine Elegy.

Weitz doesn't manage Pullman's feat of being rational and magical simultaneously. But he rapidly and intelligently opens up Pullman's world.

he Kite Runner lives in the galvanic performances of two young Afghan actors, Zekeria Ebrahimi and Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada. They bring home the torment of Afghan life before and after the Taliban and, just as important, the resilience of children everywhere.

This film's playful visual language pulls you in rather than shuts you out; it isn't difficult to decipher, and it enables Coppola and his editor, Walter Murch, to navigate the story's many realms with a directness and dexterity that are refreshing.

As Laura, Rueda hits sublime notes of confusion, grief and wrath. She's sympathetic enough to make you root for her and complex enough to get you arguing afterward about whether Laura did anything to deserve all this.

Predictable but utterly engaging, 27 Dresses will likely be remembered as the film that made Katherine Heigl an A-list star.

All three actresses are appealing, but Fisher, proving her scene-stealing turn in Wedding Crashers was no fluke, shines brightest.

The movie conveys the drama of the moment but eschews context. The result is an arresting yet frustrating experience.

Semi-Pro is so shabbily staged, shot and edited that it hardly ranks as a movie, much less a sports film, but hilarious people keep turning up in it.

The filmmakers capture kids and adolescents who haven't hardened their feelings into attitudes or molded their gestures into poses.

Tautou's kind of talent: priceless.

Feisty and good-humored, and if it doesn't have deep characters, it is chock-full of personality.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall lacks snap, tension and bravura...Yet the movie is novel and big-hearted. It often succeeds at substituting a smorgasbord of psychological confusions for comic architecture.

If, like me, you're both desperate to see new public-works systems in our own country and sensitive to the possible human and ecological damage, Up the Yangtze provides a devastating view of top-down, broad-stroke social programs.

For much of its frolicsome, rambling running-time, Son of Rambow is like a guarana-spiked soft drink: It goes down easy and delivers a kick.

This movie leaves 'em laughing - and gasping.

Luckily, the new The Incredible Hulk is more like those 80-page special issues that comic-book publishers sold in the early 1960s for a quarter, packed with old, favorite story lines.

Del Toro stuffs the film with wit and wonderments. Yet, coming out this superhero summer, it plays like a lovingly crafted synthesis of every fantasy saga we've seen in the past decade.

The movie has a vibrant, sturdy pathos in the manner of Dickens.

The Summer Olympics may offer more intricate, arduous and high-stakes spectacles, but nothing will top the last half-hour of Gunnin' for That #1 Spot for adrenalized high spirits.

At its best, Tropic Thunder wrings divine madness from wretched excess.

The genius of Garfield's performance is that he fills him with equal amounts of terror and wonder.

A solid, satisfying movie.

Leonardo DiCaprio brings straight-razor reflexes and rooted emotion to the role of a deceptively rugged CIA man.

For all his excesses and wrong turns, Lee has made a grown-up movie with an adult sense of loss and an adult sense of hope. He may be addicted to broad flourishes, but he has the big emotions to back them up.

Although the movie is unabashedly alarming, it's also intelligent fun.

What makes it all work is that Frank remains a self-made hero.

This movie has its own emotional sorcery. In a raw, humorous way, it grasps how hope and desperation spur magical thinking and, sometimes, real magic.

What's surprising is that the film has genuine laughs and smart-aleck asides that will keep even nonfans happy (although it helps if you at least like the genre).

Has buoyancy to spare. It's filled with bumps and scratches. But in the manner of a nicked old LP, its gnarly surface and warps-and-all sound evokes real life.

Too often when actors portray complicated or enigmatic characters, they seem to be flirting with the audience, playing hard to get. Not Williams.

The movie is a parable of patriarchal pride as well as a paradigm of how immigrant groups can accomplish goals without any help from their host culture.

Wilson, who has never made the film in which he convincingly played sincere, turns out to be a wise choice to play John Grogan.

What gives Notorious its staying power is what happens before AND after its hero's death.

This comedy of stereotypes pokes fun at poker buddies and coffee klatches only to make room for variations on more recent stereotypes. Some of the boldest 'types provide the funniest bits, such as Jon Favreau's embodiment of an upscale Stanley Kowalski who treats all-male card games as clan rites.

It's an odd duck: a labor-intensive piece of light entertainment.

May not make adults feel as if they're 10 again, but it will awaken their memories of Saturday matinees that upped children's adrenaline without blinding them with Day-Glo colors or insulting their intelligence.

Amy Adams beguiled audiences in "Junebug" and "Enchanted" and breathed humanity into the histrionic "Doubt." In the eccentric comedy-drama Sunshine Cleaning, set in the least picturesque parts of Albuquerque, N.M., she tops her own proven talent for epiphany.

A sensational date movie.

The sensuousness of Lemon Tree is its glory.

Light, engaging documentary.

Foxx is magnificent, taking a role that could be exorbitantly showy (actors playing the mentally disabled tend to forget the word "restraint") and turning in a performance that's controlled and mesmerizing.

Takes a great idea -- what if the inhabitants of a museum came to life at night? -- and milks it for every drop of fun it's worth.

In Julie and Julia, Ephron, like her heroines, has finally found what suits her: a surprising comic and romantic realism.

The whole movie aspires to set an Annie Hall vibe, especially when Tom keeps trying to re-create, first with her and then with someone else.

A love letter to the time, and the period, and the legend that has grown around both. Maybe it's all too wonderful to be true, but that's OK. If Taking Woodstock is a fantasy, then it's a most benevolent one, and more power to it.

Quick and lowdown-delightful. It's also a graveyard or two up in class from the torture films that, in recent years, have redefined horror for the worse.

Not a perfect 10, but its imperfection is what makes it gripping and bewitching.

The fascination, humor and poignancy of Departures, this year's winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, rests in the Japanese ceremony of preparing bodies for their caskets.

Superior family fare.

This compelling account of the explosive growth of Lyme disease grows to encompass all the peculiar politics, corruption and inertia of American medicine.

It wouldn't stick in the memory were it not for Matt Damon's audacious, baggy-pants portrayal of corporate whistle-blower Mark Whitacre, the antihero of this reality-based farce.

It's affable entertainment -- a road movie with a smart map and characters who are unpredictable human beings, not just billboard attractions.

The symmetry doesn't work. Capitalism is an economic system; democracy, a political system. Perhaps Moore should have come out and said what he really wants to see us adopt: a democratic socialism.

The cascade of ideas proves to be both pleasurable and frustrating. As the movie retreats into a happy-ever-after ending, even its outrageous lies seem more like little white ones.