Baby may not be quite as compelling as Mystic River or Unforgiven, but there's something so stirring, and disquieting, too, in his quest that we cannot help but pay close attention to him. In the middle of his long career's third act, he's still searching for the secrets in things with striking resolve. You certainly can't ask more than that of any 75-year-old ex-gunslinger.

Yu's approach to the material is brilliant.

So thoughtful and provocative that we cannot help but become engrossed.

Radford has made a gripping, highly cinematic adaptation of a gorgeous work of theater.

There is some meandering, episodic raggedness to the plotting, but Khan-Din's dialogue has a fine, naturalistic flow, and the young, debuting director O'Donnell, who's neither English nor Pakistani but Irish, skillfully keeps the material from showing too clearly its theatrical origins.

Seductive from the start, the film grows more stimulating and involving as it goes along because these three are original people who mate and recombine unpredictably.

The documentary is, in essence, not much more than a record of what happened in Zaire, but it has been assembled with a real feeling for the historical moment. It's literally a blast from the past.

Mostly, Wild Parrots is a great, important, and unforgettable movie.

Ought to gain some viewers here with its dark sense of humor and stylish cinematography by Jan Malir. Director Jan Hrebejk names Mike Leigh as an influence, but frankly he's way cooler.

The first great film of 2005.

It's vibrant and verdant and heartbreakingly inviting, begging you to escape into a lovely tale in which children, through a simple act of faith, find their own heaven on earth.

It's a work of art for sure, but a sadistic one. Oldboy is one of the year's best; it just isn't for everyone. If you're still interested, go for it.

A thoroughly professional, frequently spectacular piece of muckraking.

The result is a mood movie that sweeps you into its infatuation and holds you there.

One of the most remarkable things about Murderball, which is easily among the year's best movies, is how little of its time is filled with the playing of the game.

It's the best thing Wong has done in years--perhaps ever.

Virgin is astoundingly astute but also wondrously clever, written with more care and joy than any hundred comedies to come out of Hollywood in years.

Not just great fun but high art.

Singleton may spend the rest of his career chasing the kind of critical and commercial success he won at an early age with "Boyz N the Hood". But even if Rosewood fails to meet that standard, it is a film that reaffirms that depth of his talents.

Happily, North Country is not all social-realist grit or straight sermonizing. Not only is Theron achingly real, the fine supporting performances here lend even more dramatic reach and human scale.

The writing-directing team of brothers Larry and Andi Wachowski has chosen as its filmmaking debut a tightly constructed, stylishly (but rarely self-consciously) executed, gripping little noir parable that couldn't be more firmly grounded in American movie tradition if the filmmakers created a wacky romantic farce about mismatched paramours.

There's something more REAL about this version, more human, more lived-in; though their words may have been penned 200 years ago, when Austen was a young woman writing about her idealized self, this cast and crew nudge the material into the now.

If, in its groundbreaking assault on the mythology of the American West, Brokeback Mountain gets a lot of people into a furious lather, so be it.

If you're a fan of C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, all you need to know is this: Disney has done right by The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It's impossible to imagine it done much better, in fact.

Bubble is a strong film with a gorgeously minimal script by Coleman Hough. Soderbergh has directed his actors to perfection, rendering them indistinguishable from their roles. And, though the story resorts to sensationalism for its conflict, the film is eloquent in its portrayal of silence, depression, repression, denial and the woes of the Midwestern white working class.

The film, from its deadpan start to its languorous finish, provides the most joyous moviegoing experience in years.

Deeply engrossing and deep in numerous other ways that one scarcely encounters at the movies anymore.

What a breath of fresh air this stifling, claustrophobic, boldly uningratiating vision of an American subculture's last gasp imparts to its contrarian core audience. (Call me a hopeless addict: I've seen it three times.)