The year's greatest adventure, and Jackson's limited but enthusiastic adaptation has made literature literal without killing its soul.

That's what directors do when they have nothing new to say: They go back and rewrite the past, if only to avoid facing the future

There have been other films dealing with the Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Poland -- some very good -- but The Pianist, the latest feature from Roman Polanski, may be the best.

Sling Blade is perhaps the year's most impressive debut because it is an uncompromisingly told tale with a minimum of frills.

Gleefully blurs the line between species. Vive la révolution!

An unpretentious, funky, fast-moving work every bit as enchanting as the book.

The first relevant film about rock and roll and the music industry, the first film that lets you in on the secret.

It's definitely an enchanting spectacular for Potter fans anxious to ride the Hogwarts Express toward a new year of magic and mischief.

An ethereal, creepy, almost breathtaking meditation on the life of a mind snapped in two.

Dead Man Walking drops a massive, writhing knot of sorrow in your lap and then doesn't tell you what to do with it. If that doesn't sound like entertainment to you, you're right. It does something far more profound: It finds the tragic universal core of a contentious issue.

Easily the scariest horror picture of the '90s, a movie that can take a place among the most potent and inexorable of modern shockers.

Because of the supremely artful way Shear and Reitz have pitched the story, it reaches into places few films, gay or straight, have gone.

Waking Ned Devine works up enough feel-good momentum that in the end it's irresistible.

So inventive, confident, and accomplished is the production that it's a shock to learn Sliding Doors is the work of a first-time director-screenwriter.

The film is so much like the book, it might as well come with a bookmark to hold your place when you step outside to use the restroom.

A gentle, beautifully realized tale of love and intimacy...It moved me to tears.

It was Melville's second-to-last feature, and it shows him in top form, with a more generous dose of humor than usual.

Amazingly, almost every note of every performance in Bloody Sunday rings true.

A diverting mix of insight and spectacle, human and superhuman. This machine is built for kids, but rarely do words like "noble," "Hollywood" and "rawkin'" all apply to one movie.

A fluent, intelligent piece of work whose sex and violence are anything but gratuitous, and exactly the kind of highly personal, no-holds-barred vision of life on the ragged edge that independents always aspire to but rarely have the goods to achieve.

Funny, sad, moving and, above all, astute, making I Capture the Castle a fabulous film. Even the cars are tasty.

Emotionally gripping from start to finish, the movie presents an electrifying and unforgettable look at life in a place that God has all but forgotten.

Spinal Tap is still on the right side of the fine line between stupid and clever.

Craven's other accomplishment here, besides resuscitating the genre, is the way he keeps things scary even when they're at their funniest. The grand finale, while thoroughly bloody and tense, has some genuinely hilarious shtick.

The makers of this film are clearly fans, and they've put more heart and genuine humor into this piece than Paramount has into the original franchise in years.

Part homage and part demolition job, Mars Attacks! is perhaps the funniest piece of giddy schlock heartlessness ever committed to film.

As is common in a Frankenheimer picture, the plot lines get a bit tangled in Ronin, but the atmosphere is tense, the style impeccable.

This engaging film proves a total pleasure, suitable for moviegoers who like their films a bit old-fashioned but still mainstream.