Spirited, quintessential, and often hilarious.

The result is a blend of kitchen-sink and magical realism: sentimental, but well acted and freshly observed.

Roy's story is fascinating in its own right, exploring the hero's mingled shame over his class background and homosexuality, and painting a vicious portrait of Britain's coke-snorting upper crust in the late 70s.

Kidman and Zellweger are uncommonly good, and I especially liked the timely treatment of war as universally brutalizing: even the outcomes of battles are ignored, as are the motives behind the conflict.

The first half involves some dully familiar cross-cultural comedy, as the two grate on each other's nerves. But the descending action veers into unexpected emotional territory, deftly handled by screenwriter Alison Tilson.

Although Broomfield's grandstanding has provoked charges of hypocrisy, this is a genuinely moral work that raises unsettling questions about the haphazard application of the death penalty, and it's certainly more complex and affecting than the fictionalized portrait of Wuornos in "Monster."

Gary Baseman's Emmy-winning cartoon series arrives on the big screen in a delightful blast of bold drawing, brainy humor, and hard-charging songs.

Behind the camera Belvaux builds suspense with an austere tone and clever false alarms; in front of it he plays Bruno as chivalrous yet ruthless.

Beautifully shot in black and white by Pawel Edelman (The Pianist), this 2000 feature is both funny and unexpectedly touching.

Its particularities are the best thing about it.

Wonderful first feature.

As usual, Lee tries many kinds of stylistic effects and uses wall-to-wall music (by Aaron Copland and Public Enemy); what’s different this time is how personally driven the story feels.

This low-key romantic comedy proves that destiny-powered love stories can be formulaic without being predictable.

Irish playwright Mark O'Rowe, who wrote the script, has an admirable sense of dramatic proportion that suits his intertwining stories; theater director John Crowley, making his film debut, has a sure hand with his actors; and an excellent cast enlivens this web of romantic and criminal intrigue, set in a gray suburb of Dublin. R.

Kari combines Kaurismaki's deadpan minimalism and Truffaut's sensitivity toward adolescent yearning with a hefty dose of gallows humor, and tops it all off with an apocalyptic ending.

Played by Ron Perlman, he's the most magnetic action hero I've come across in a long while.

Wise, gentle, and simply constructed.

This extraordinary Italian thriller is a study in contrasts: light versus dark, youth versus maturity, the playful versus the lethal.

Despite the flashback structure, this is a film in which mood matters more than plot, while the hero's heroic stature steadily shrinks.

Fascinating and instructive throughout.

The contrast between Cadigan in recovery and at his most disturbed provides an excellent antidote to romanticized and sensationalized portrayals of mental illness in Hollywood films and on TV talk shows.

Demme's moving documentary turns the story of his dead friend into the story of Haiti.

Evoking Curtis's mystique and eccentric personality, filmmaker Craig Highberger also delivers an invaluable chronicle of New York's barrier-smashing underground arts scene circa 1968-'74.

It's a fascinating cultural artifact and a stomping good time.

It's a haunting portrait of a young man who, while genuinely gifted and loved by friends and family, couldn't cope with the world.

Long, grim, but utterly engrossing.

This documentary profile of poet and novelist Charles Bukowski exploits the writer's counterculture persona but also works to dispel it, revealing a gifted and extremely complicated man.

It's been a long time since I've seen a teen movie as lively, as unpredictable, as generous, and as tough-minded as this one.

Kar Kar's singing is wonderfully expressive, and an improvised song to his wife at her grave site demonstrates the emotional wellspring of his music.

Upon closer inspection its story and characters grow more mysterious, ultimately bordering on the unfathomable.

While Cazeneuve's story is about gay love, it also charts universal truths about adolescent romance and high school politics with great aplomb.

The result is that virtual oxymoron, an intelligent family film.

Haneke is still a masterful director, and his authority carries this well-acted and attractively shot account of a family from an unnamed city trying to survive in the sticks after an unspecified catastrophe.

The voice-over narration by Bill Kurtis is a stroke of genius.

Goldblum and Murphy outdo each other in their odd roles, each minimizing his tendency toward shtick and giving a convincing dramatic performance.

The blend of animation techniques somehow demonstrates mastery modestly, while the special effects are nothing short of magnificent.

The depiction of her risky voyage and what happens afterward is highly suspenseful and entirely believable.

The action sequences are expert studies in controlled chaos.

Eastwood essentially uses the Lady Chablis the same way he did a few extended Charlie Parker solos in Bird--as unbridled, inventive improvisations that challenge the well-rehearsed "head" arrangements of everyone else.

The movie's no roller-coaster ride, but there isn't a boring moment either.

Director John Madden calmly dissects the emotions of a woman whose personal life is effectively nonexistent.

The movie never finds a consistent tone -- the humor is dynamically offbeat, the dramatic moments a bit canned -- but Braff's affection for his misfit characters and skeptical take on how people sell themselves short in America make this the truest generational statement I've seen since "Donnie Darko."

Superlative chiller.

Genuinely sad: few bands have burst onto the scene with such a perfectly realized look, sound, and philosophy or been more trapped by their own meatheaded genius.

This surreal, subversive teen drama tanked at the box office but has since become a cult favorite, prompting this new release with 20 minutes of additional footage.

Director Simon West hits just the right note between self-conscious silliness and real dramatic intensity in this 1997 action thriller, which uses typecast actors to make the characters' one-liners and predictable behavior resonate.

I was haunted afterward by its seething rage at the malicious paternalism and sexual hypocrisy of fundamentalist Christians.

The master principle of film noir -- that everyone is corruptible -- turns a pinwheel of plot complications in this fleet, stylish little crime drama from Mexico.

On paper the story may seem hopelessly contrived -- another nostalgia piece for art-house liberals -- but on-screen it's presented in purely emotional terms, which allows Duigan and his excellent leads to inhabit and ultimately transcend the period.

Turns out to be surprisingly layered.

A runaway hit in Hong Kong, this 2002 crime thriller reinvigorated the genre with its airtight script, taut editing, and sleek cinematography.

Pegg and Wright are out of their depth in the second half, when they try to engage the more disturbing elements of Romero's movies, but their disaffected slacker take on the genre is a welcome alternative to the usual bloodbaths.

Writer-director Pupi Avati has a such a fine sense of narrative proportion that this Italian feature unspools like silk.

More good-natured than Michael Moore, these guys score by raising the issue of just how much their amateur antics exaggerate the neocon principles of the WTO.

The video is narrated by Taylor, who magnanimously presents Newcombe as a Byronic hero, but ultimately proves that the pursuit of success and the pursuit of cool can be equally pointless.

The most powerful and telling image is a black-and-white still of Kerry burying his face in his arms after he threw his ribbons onto the Capitol steps; it's a moment true enough to cost him the presidency.

Captures all the action of a tumultuous season while showing the emotional toll on the players.

A highly entertaining form of ecological agitprop--radical but accessible.

The obviously authentic love these couples shared should settle the question for all but bigots.

Witty, satisfying, and a terrific showcase for the radiant Bening.

A consistently light yet derisive tone, modest production values, and masterful comic timing allow writer-director-star Trey Parker to expose cultural hypocrisies with precision. His performance--in both the movie and the movie within the movie--is dramatic and poker-faced, seamless and hilarious.

So perversely enjoyable it gives the lie to her (Breillat's) image as a serious, politically incorrect purveyor of pornographic instincts.

This moving story is full of breathtaking compositions, gorgeous spectacle, and inspiring philosophies articulated by sympathetic figures.

This is hilarious, deadly stuff, sparked by the cynical gusto of the two leads as well as the fascinating technical display of how TV "documentary evidence" can be digitally manufactured inside a studio.

The story offers lessons in faith and self-esteem; the darker passages of the child's journey are countered by shimmering, cascading beacons of light; and fine period detail adds to the nostalgic glow.

Bear Cub casually pulls off an amazing feat--combining innocent childhood nostalgia and graphic sexuality.

It's hard to deny that Marlon Brando's performance as a dock worker and ex-fighter who finally decides to rat on his gangster brother (Rod Steiger) is pretty terrific.

If you're a fan of professional bad boy and Spanish gender bender Pedro Almodovar, far be it from me to dissuade you from enjoying this elaborate Chinese-box narrative, which boasts an especially resourceful performance by Gael Garcia Bernal.

Fascinating oddity.

Overstays its welcome, but for mindless thrills you could do worse.

For one of the first times in his career Jean-Luc Godard has elected not to hector and harass his audience, and it seems to have paid off.

Dark and challenging.

The players deftly balance flip caricature with a surprisingly moving depiction of those trapped in the celluloid closet.

An engrossing tale of ego, strategy, and the limits of human intelligence.

Combining the gentle with the vulgar as only the English can, this lively comedy is bursting with character and energy.

Carrey's attempted self-immolation in a men's room, which weirdly recalls certain Fred Astaire routines, may be a small classic.

Initially this seems naive and archaic, but it conceals a Buñuelian stinger in its tail.

A comprehensive and devastating critique of the TV news networks' complacency and complicity in the war on Iraq.

As long as Spacey is singing, the movie soars.

A film about freedom as well as death, this won't suit every taste, but it rewards close attention and has moments of saving humor.

Cheadle's quiet, superbly modulated performance as an ordinary man driven to heroism by hellish events reminds us that the slogan "no justice, no peace" has a private as well as a public dimension.

Doesn't try too hard to be anything other than a vicarious experience that makes you crave the satisfaction you know you'll get when the hero gets his revenge.

A comic and moving examination of life in an impoverished South London housing complex, features marvelous performances, especially from Leigh stalwart Timothy Spall.

One thing I especially like about it, apart from the flavorsome 40s decor in color, is that it's silly in much the same way that many small 40s comedies were.

Still about as good as Allen gets, a persuasive, nuanced, and relatively graceful portrait of an egotistical yet talented jazz guitarist of the swing era, astutely played by Sean Penn.

Almereyda's respect for his audience and his queasiness about the present register with equal weight, reinventing the poetry in the most relevant ways possible.

Just about everyone in this sharp, passionate feature is chillingly good.

The 3-D effect is fun: during a thrilling launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, hurtling debris cracks the camera lens, and I found myself checking my goggles for damage.

Charting the ruthlessness of an ambitious bimbo telecaster in Little Hope, New Hampshire, this staccato black comedy sustains its brilliant exposition and narration until the plot turns to premeditated murder, complete with hapless and semicoherent teenage accomplices.

The film tends to groan under the weight of his obsessions -- and his sister's fixation on circumcising her son -- yet for much of the 95-minute running time the chemistry between Attal's vulnerable husband and Gainsbourg's sweet, beguiling wife is irresistible. The terrific score is by jazz pianist Brad Mehldau.

Don't expect any psychological depth here, but the cool wit and fun... are deftly maintained, and Sonnenfeld provides a bountiful supply of both fanciful beasties and ingenious visuals.

A nicely shaped script by Chicagoans Rick Shaughnessy and Brian Kalata makes this independent comedy drama a pleasure to watch.

This is a good, solid, intelligent drama about the ambiguities of what does and doesn't constitute courage under fire

This isn't the supreme masterpiece it might have been, but Nichols's direction is very polished and some of the lines and details are awfully funny.

If you want to know what the Warhol scene was all about, this is even better than the documentaries.

Friendship is portrayed here in its finest form.

In his best film in years, Marco Bellocchio crafts a stringently moral tale that carries a hint of horror.

Under the harsh lights of the meticulously re-created, claustrophobic bunker, that scrutiny is relentless.

There's no denying his (Ghobadi's) talent for suspense or his ability to get riveting performances from nonprofessionals.

Over too soon.

Provocative and entertaining.

Subtle and graceful directorial debut.

Fox keeps the suspense story at a low boil throughout, allowing the politics to emerge as the characters deepen.

Patton's personality--conveyed with pointed theatrical flair by George C. Scott--is registered in rich tones of grandeur and megalomania, genius and petty sadism.

The net effect of which is like a prolonged visit to an amusement park--kids will love it.

The most gleeful movie about a single-minded kid since "A Christmas Story."

The detail captured by Kraus's scrupulously neutral camera adds up to a fascinating, fully realized portrait of the man and the job.

Nevertheless, the cast of mainly unknowns is so good, and Linklater is so adept at playing them off one another, that the two-hour running time never seems overextended.

This cagey and compelling 2004 documentary looks at the world of wine, but it's actually a nuanced, provocative piece of journalism about globalization and its discontents.

Doesn't succeed in everything it sets out to do, which is a lot. But as a statement about the death rattle of 60s counterculture it's both thoughtful and affecting, and Daniel Day-Lewis is mesmerizing.

Darkly funny and metaphorically potent.

Beautifully unemphatic small-town drama.

To my taste the only serious distraction and ethical lapse is Gibney's sarcastic, cheap-shot use of popular songs like "That Old Black Magic," "Love for Sale," and "God Bless the Child" to underscore certain points; it seems almost to celebrate the shamelessness of the creeps being exposed.

The illicit lovers in this eerie South Korean drama communicate whole worlds without ever speaking.

Absorbing thriller.

It's a terrific story -- part mystery, part farce, part legal nail-biter -- with a last-minute reversal so bitterly ironic it could have been scripted by Billy Wilder.

Pierre Morel's diving, spiraling camera keeps pace with Yuen Wo-ping's rapid-fire fight choreography, all smartly directed by Louis Leterrier.

A colorful cast whose combined energy lifts the story off the ground.

The elder Wexler keeps insisting that he won't sign a release for the film unless he approves of the finished product, so he must have been pleased with its brutally honest assessment of him as a gifted filmmaker who never realized his true potential.

This is a deeply engaging portrait of a remarkable man and a brutally frank indictment of the West's moral cowardice in the face of a tragedy it could have prevented.

Engrossing and frequently hilarious.

Both lead actors are wonderful, and director Ziad Doueiri (West Beirut) artfully addresses the cultural and even spiritual dimensions of the story without losing sight of the lovers' tenderness and confusion.

It's more than a simple improvement, inverting some of the original's qualities so that the impersonal, well-crafted filmmaking remains lucid throughout.

The script, by newcomer Sabina Murray, is occasionally cloying as the naive hero falls for a bitter prostitute (Bai Ling), but its epic tale of two cultures tragically entwined is anchored by deep and elemental emotions.

The ironic twist at the conclusion of this chilling drama underscores the vagaries of human nature--and of the media.

Tim Burton finally fulfills the promise of "Beetlejuice" with this imaginative masterpiece.

Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are enormously funny in this farce.

The sadism of "1,000 Corpses" is ameliorated here by the addition of an action plot and open spaces, and the comedy is more skillfully played, mingling agreeably with Zombie's ardor for southern trash culture (the final showdown plays out to the strains of "Freebird," for heaven's sake)

Written by Angus MacLachlan, this indie drama explores the lingering tension between north and south with vinegar and precision.

This is superior family entertainment--warm, thoughtful, and connected to the landscape.

David Mackenzie, who directed the remarkable Scottish drama "Young Adam" (2003), delivers another masterful, disturbing tale of illicit passion, erotic obsession, and sudden death set in the 1950s.

This is an engrossing look at obsessive behavior gone terribly awry.

Superior in every respect to the PBS documentary "The Murder of Emmett Till."

This brisk, free-falling fantasy about the famous collators of German fairy tales, played here as a kind of comedy act by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger, is Terry Gilliam's most entertaining work since the glory days of "Time Bandits," "Brazil," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," and "The Fisher King."

Fernando Meirelles stresses old-fashioned storytelling and takes full advantage of his cast, including Danny Huston.

Director Erik Van Looy skillfully profiles both the assassin (Jan Decleir, suggesting a tougher, over-the-hill version of Michel Piccoli) and the Antwerp detectives investigating his crimes.

This smart and rocking video documentary by Tim Irwin follows the trio from its origins in suburban San Pedro, California, in 1979 to the death of singer-guitarist D. Boon in a 1985 car crash, which ended his deep and creatively fruitful friendship with bassist Mike Watt.

This corny and manipulative movie taxes your ability to suspend disbelief and predictably punishes characters for their hubris--earmarks of a great disaster flick, if the tone is just right.

As a well-directed star vehicle with a couple of good action sequences, this is good, effective filmmaking, but I was periodically bored; when Ford and Pitt aren't lighting up the screen nothing much happens.

Duke is a superb director of actors, and, as in "Deep Cover", Fishburne manages to suggest a lot with a deft economy of means.

Kerrigan returns with his best work to date, at least in terms of narrative drive and suspense.

This may be light family entertainment, but it's also a pleasingly perverse celebration of Victorian morbidity.

Starting with its romantic and inappropriate title, this is an old-fashioned melodrama, the same movie about police corruption and a cultural crisis of morality that Lumet has been making since the 70s, starting with "Serpico".

Absorbing and intelligent.

A few plot details strain credibility, but the characters (particularly the friend's sister and little boy) are persuasively depicted.

The implied critique of progressive, bohemian parenting is devastating--wise and nuanced, with the painful hilarity of truth.

The Warners-style slapstick and gentle Anglophilia charms children and adults alike, but what kills me are the fingerprint ridges that fade in and out of the characters' mugging faces, a reassuring reminder that handmade art can still captivate.

There's something a mite pathetic about our culture still clinging to 007, but it's hard to deny that this is one of the most entertaining entries in the Bond cycle, which started with "Dr. No" (1962).

Charlize Theron, in nonglam mode, dominates this powerful drama about sexual harassment at a Minnesota iron ore mine in the early 90s.

Muddled on the issues, but it earned its Oscar as a dramatic, involving story, full of tough and appealing characters. (Review of Original Release)

It's also quite energetic -- there isn't a boring shot anywhere, and writer-director Schnabel is clearly enjoying himself as he plays with expressionist sound, neo-Eisensteinian edits, and all sorts of other filmic ideas.

The script by Brannon Braga and Ronald Moore provides all the background necessary for viewers unfamiliar with the characters' previous movie and TV-series exploits, but not so much as to annoy fans.

Though the film tapers off a little toward the end, there's a climactic scene of recognition between the heroine and her father that was one of the most exquisite pieces of acting I'd seen in ages.

Written by Steve Conrad, this is the smartest script director Gore Verbinski has ever had, and he makes the most of it, aided by a strong cast.

The performances are strong (my favorite is Deborah Harry as an older waitress) and the sense of eroded as well as barely articulated lives is palpable.

As the star-crossed couple, Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon contribute all their own vocals, and their soapier scenes together reminded me of no less than the 1954 "A Star Is Born."

Cillian Murphy gives a tour de force performance.

While the outcome is never really in doubt, director Frederic Fonteyne illuminates the wife's inner world with a rich sense of atmosphere, and Emmanuelle Devos' riveting performance manages to convey every shift in her character's suppressed emotional life with the subtlest of gestures and expressions.

A funny but genuinely dark story.

But aside from a few overblown production numbers, Columbus respects the show's smaller scale, and the property itself is a knockout, with great tunes and engaging portraits of East Village bohemians in the AIDS-ravaged late 80s.

As the imperious actress (and whore) Elizabeth Barry, the unlikely object of Wilmot's affection, Samantha Morton finds the soul in a woman who's hard as nails, and Tom Hollander and Rosamund Pike also provide excellent support. The haunting score is by Michael Nyman.

Sensitive, intelligent, enlightening, and sometimes surprising.

It clocks in at over three hours, but Peter Jackson's remake of the 1933 classic is gripping. The film rethinks the characters, turning the original's stark Jungian fantasy into a soulless but skillful set of kinetic and emotional effects.

This brilliant if unpleasant puzzle without a solution about surveillance and various kinds of denial finds writer-director Michael Haneke near the top of his game, though it's not a game everyone will want to play.

But if you can get swept up in the story, the movie is imaginative and compelling.

Holiday counterprogramming at its finest. This gut-churning horror indie is based on true stories of tourists disappearing in the vast Australian outback... This scared the hell out of me.

Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat) directs a sparking screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher (Stage Beauty) and Kimberly Simi; it starts as a frothy boudoir comedy but evolves into a masquerade by turns sweetly meditative and sharply satirical.

But the acting's so good it frequently transcends the simplicities of the script, and whenever Day-Lewis or Postlethwaite is on-screen the movie crackles.

Starting off as a low-key psychological drama, this suddenly turns into a murder mystery that's resolved awkwardly and ambiguously, but the fascination of the characters and milieu remains.

What promises to be a standard postmortem on 60s ideology becomes a thoughtful essay on the choices we all make between work, family, and personal freedom.

The extraordinary child actress Ana Torrent (Cria) made her debut here at the age of five. Much in the film is derivative, but Erice excels in precise evocations of childhood feelings.

Given what Young charges for concert tickets, all his organs could be gold. So I was even more grateful for this documentary of his August 2005 shows at the fabled Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, expertly directed by Jonathan Demme.

Def and Willis are both good, but Donner's lethal weapon here is Morse, a chronically overlooked character actor whose combined tenderness and ruthlessness make him the most fascinating heavy since Robert Ryan.

The immersive quality of 3-D is particularly well suited to undersea documentaries, and this one, directed by Howard Hall ("Into the Deep"), offers a close-up look at such fantastic creatures as the fried egg jellyfish, the mantis shrimp, the sand tiger shark, and the thuggish wolf eel.

This suspenseful, beautifully acted Dickensian drama forces us to confront our own bloodlust: do we root for the teen to win a moral victory or to beat the bad guy to a pulp?

None of the moral ramifications of this dilemma is avoided, and to the film’s credit the behavior of the American press seems more questionable than the machinations of third-world justice.

Equally impressive is Duncan's stylish handling of decor, dialogue, narrative ellipsis, and pacing, all of which call to mind the Hollywood master Ernst Lubitsch.

There isn't an ounce of flab or hype, and the story it tells is profoundly affecting.

Though Hanks keeps the satirical and critical aspects of this look at show biz fairly light, there's a lot of conviction and savvy behind the steadiness of his gaze, and his economy in evoking the flavor of the period at the beginning of the picture is priceless.

A powerful indictment of the horrendous treatment of children who toil in hellish Bolivian silver mines. The filmmakers are better at fashioning haunting images than offering hard-nosed analysis, yet they never sentimentalize their young protagonists' plight.

Puzzling, intriguing, and often compelling, apparently set in the present but magical and futuristic in tone.

This beautifully understated feature (2004) revolves around sex, but it's neither erotic nor puritanical; its young characters are governed by their urges, but the experience itself seems as neutral and mysterious as sleep.

Roman Polanski's first film in English (1965, 105 min.) is still his scariest and most disturbing--not only for its evocations of sexual panic, but also because his masterful employment of sound puts the audience's imagination to work in numerous ways...As narrative this works only part of the time, and as case study it may occasionally seem too pat, but as subjective nightmare it's a stunning piece of filmmaking.

Greengrass takes pains to keep events believable and relatively unrhetorical, rejecting entertainment for the sake of sober reflection, though one has to ask how edifying this is apart from its reduction of the standard myths.

This small gem about a South Central LA girl with a gift for spelling restores luster to the family genre.

Chan-wook Park completes his "revenge trilogy" with this ravishing black comedy about a notorious child killer.

Critics, clients, and colleagues all weigh in on the architect, but Pollack is more interested in the mysteries of the creative process, and his studies of Gehry's buildings, deftly edited by Karen Schmeer, capture their dramatic sense of movement and resolution.

Brilliantly conceived and competently executed.

Cuesta directs the lead actors with such feeling that their misery seems authentic.

Directed by George Bamber from a witty screenplay by David Vernon, it veers between screwball farce and feel-good sitcom.

This comic fantasy is the best vehicle he's (Sandler) ever had, a high-concept goof that gradually darkens into an emotional nightmare reminiscent of Capra.

Volatile and sometimes daring performances by Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Gilbert Melki, Malik Zidi, and Lubna Azabal (as twins) contribute to the highly charged and novelistic experience.

As scripted by Michael Arndt, this isn't much more than a glorified sitcom, but it deftly dramatizes our conflicting desires for individuality and an audience to applaud it.

One of Bujalski's gifts is his ability to give every part, no matter how big or small, a sense of intelligence and life that extends beyond the frame and running time, and in this his work recalls the best of both Mike Leigh and Richard Linklater.

Screenwriter Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) has turned the Italian romantic comedy "L'Ultimo Bacio" (2001) into something smarter, funnier, and more penetrating.

Just when I'm ready to write off the mockumentary as an exhausted form, along comes this delightful and hilarious improv comedy from the UK in which a bridal magazine sets up a promotional contest for the best offbeat wedding.

It's become a critical cliche to say that everyone in the U.S. should see a particular war documentary, but even the most selfish citizen might want to check out The Ground Truth, because unlike the Iraqi victims of the war, the American ones are all around us.

Gondry is a soft surrealist without much of a sociopolitical agenda, closer to Dr. Seuss than Luis Buñuel,

The characters are drawn with such compassion their follies become our own and their desires seem as vast as the night sky.

Writer-director Deepa Mehta fuses the soap-opera elements of her plot -- which reveals one sexual secret after another of the variously betrayed, selfish, and self-actualizing members of the two couples' New Delhi household--into profound drama.

What's most memorable about it is the period flavor, including a detailed and precise account of the jim crow complications blacks had to contend with.

Although most of the elements are familiar and virtually all of the characters are unpleasant, this is a better than average melodrama--mainly because of the volcanic power of Kathy Bates in the title role.

The movie endorses the liberal conception of the Chicks as free-speech heroes, which doesn't quite wash: Maines shot her mouth off to a receptive overseas crowd, then issued an apology as soon as the backlash began back home.

Many reviews have suggested that this is as politically mild as a John Sayles movie, but Linklater clearly agrees with the frustrated kid who says, "Right now, I can't think of anything more patriotic than violating the Patriot Act."

An amiable demonstration of how two charismatic actors and a relaxed writer-director (Brad Silberling) can squeeze an enjoyable movie out of practically nothing.

This comedy drama is an exercise in self-indulgence for O'Toole, but an enjoyable and touching one.

I can't think of a better portrait of contemporary Paris or the zeitgeist of 2001-'04 than Chris Marker's wise and whimsical 58-minute 2004 video...no one can film people in the street better than Marker or combine images with more grace and finesse.

A more visually conscious stylist than most Italian commercial directors of the period, Lattuada remains largely unknown in the U.S., though in Europe he's been touted as the great eclectic talent of the postwar Italian cinema.