(Coppola) understands the crisp, oblique horror and wistfulness of Eugenides' narrative, plunking down five enchanting princesses into an environment that is anything but magical.

Good, goofy fun, but given the attendant hype, there may be a danger of excessively high expectations from horror fans.

A fresh, intimate, gloriously unpolished performance film that measures up to the classics of the genre.

If there's a flaw with the film, it's that Justman doesn't trust his narrators enough; too often he'll stage a re-enactment while someone's talking, as if he's afraid the mere tales themselves won't hold our interest. But they will, as long as there's a kid slapping a bass, a sampler swiping a groove or some middle-aged couple slow dancing to Marvin Gaye or the Miracles.

Though we know the story's final outcome, the trial scene and its aftermath are no less shocking and affecting.

Breezy and easy to swallow. Its maker, Steven Spielberg, hasn't had so much fun in two decades.

Numbs as much as it unnerves.

Just as you feel the numbing, clammy clench of paranoia on your neck, you realize, nope, the grip is just the director's attempt at tickling you to death. Demme's movie had no right to work. It does, and then some.

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.

Engaging and revelatory, turning forgotten footnotes and discarded minutiae into the stuff of riveting drama and poignant laughs.

This is probably the funniest Mamet piece to date (but not the weightiest), and it might be destined to take a seat alongside "The Player" and "Sunset Boulevard" in the front row of movieland satires.

Both actors are marvelous, and the film, low-key but heartfelt, is a gem.

Broken Wings' great strength is that it doesn't overreach. These characters undergo no enormous sea changes, no crazy upheavals. Instead, they find themselves trying to roll with the punches--trying to maintain and survive.

It can't compare to what might have been: a full-scale performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as an Irish raging bull--a rebel with a cause. There are still traces of greatness in what he attempts, and it's more than enough to make the movie worth a lingering look.

Takes roughly a third of its length to really get going, but, once it does, it's a devilishly clever, engaging piece of work that milks every cent of value from its tiny budget.

The most liberating thing about this funny, touching, heartfelt little movie is the way it defies the rules and, in the end, begins to set its heroines free. They've earned it.

Rich in story, character, and design, The Cider House Rules is obviously a collaborative effort, but above all it is a triumph for director Hallström.

This elegant vision of sexual roles is certain to make a lasting impression and is likely to provoke explosive dialogues in Denny's and sidewalk cafés from here to Monaco.

For those with a taste for epics that integrate the historical and the intimate.

A character study, the film succeeds in large measure due to the kinetically charged performance of Romain Duris.

One beautiful piece of work--as alert and aware a survey of interpersonal relations as you're likely to find at the movies this year.

Brian's brilliant, saved itself by benefactor George Harrison, who ponied up the budget of 2 million pounds...simply because he loved the script when industry bigwigs turned characteristically chicken. Its overall irreverence proves a lasting balm for the ages. Thank you, Pythons, for setting such a high and enduring standard.

This Shrek is both funnier and warmer than its predecessor; it's better-looking, too, no longer as clunky and junky as video-game graphics.

This roaring crowd-pleaser also boasts hilarious bits of business, insightful observations into the human condition, and geysers of kitschy computer-generated blood.

Provides a smart, insightful prologue to the career of the man who continues to inspire countless people around the world.

A disarmingly funny, clear-eyed, and affectionate memory piece.

Rookie writer-director Dylan Kidd, late of NYU film school, knows how to get the best out of jittery, handheld camera shots, and he knows how to go for the jugular. Roger is the bleakest comic portrait of misogynist self-delusion we've seen in a long time.

If you're in the mood for a quiet, beautifully acted little drama, liberally spiked with comedy, about the universal desires of the human heart, this may be the obscure gem you're looking for.

As frantic and frenzied as its source material.

The charismatic Jamal has the spirit of a young Antoine Doinel, and Winterbottom shoots him to evoke the memory of Truffaut's young hero.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated has a refreshingly snotty sense of humor.

This is a powerhouse of a film, but not for the obvious reasons that it's about a female serial killer, scampering lesbians and whatever. The project's strength instead emerges from a sense of nobility and purpose in honoring its characters.

Sly and corrosively funny political black comedy.

Fashion photographer David LaChapelle expands upon his award-winning short film "Krumped," introducing us to the new dance forms popular in South Central Los Angeles via the charismatic "ghetto celebrity" known as Tommy the Clown.

A flawed film worth seeing.

It's but a witty, engaging hodgepodge of archetypes and clichés; it retreads not only the TV show's story lines, but also those of every "Star Trek" and "Gunsmoke" episode. It needed the room of a big screen just to fit all of its influences into a single place.

One of the powerful things about After Innocence is that, no matter what your position on punitive justice, you can't argue with the film's position.

A vivid double portrait of the artistic sensibility in its many weathers -- expressed by two fine actors clearly engaged in a labor of love.

What the books suggest, the movie reveals and revels in--the songs, in other words, those brilliant, backbreakingly fast anthems.

It plays like a parody of suspense movies, then occasionally becomes serious, then boring, then makes a jarring 180, then frustrates, then gets vaguely interesting again.

The acting is remarkable across the board, undoubtedly a combination of a strong script, gifted actors and exceptional direction.

I wanted to be transported by this movie; I wasn't quite. But I respect it.

It's too turgid and redundant to have any real impact. As a thriller, it barely thrills; as a lecture, it has nothing new to say.

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.

A six-year-old masterpiece, never-before widely seen in the U.S., is still a masterpiece.

It's a powerfully ersatz experience, but at least it's powerful. There's a lot to like here: At three hours and 14 minutes, the film takes longer to watch than the Titanic took to sink.

Philosophy imbues this inescapably self-reflexive movie with a rare compassion.

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.

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.

This chamber drama is a deeply felt and oddly moving reverie on death and the process of taking stock of one's life.

An ideal film for movie buffs, who are bound to delight in each new misfortune even as they sympathize with the documentarians' sometimes inflated vision of a tortured genius at work.

Yu's approach to the material is brilliant.

(Washington's) performance is halfhearted, soft.

Can be as howlingly funny as it is touching.

My Kid Could Paint That's about art—and it IS art, among the best documentaries ever made about that elusive process of manufacturing something out of nothing. But it's also a must-see for every single parent who believes their children are special, when all they want to be is your children.

Rodriguez clearly assumes Sin City to be his "Pulp Fiction," his rambling portmanteau--a blending of disparate tales to form a complete, overwhelming epic.

The entire cast is right on the money, a special word must be said about Seth.

Zhang deftly and quickly draws a half-dozen supporting characters, and his pacing never flags.

That he (Hetfield), and his band, still lives is astonishing enough; that you get to see how and why in a movie so painfully intimate is nothing short of extraordinary.

The musical numbers are energetic and fun.

Mostly, Mysterious Skin creeps you out, and not in any kind of fun way. There's an artfulness to it, but it's hard to imagine many viewers actually using the term "enjoyed" or "entertained" in conjunction with it.

Finally, the man (Hanks) has delivered a moving, slightly unhappy, and ultimately hopeful story in which squishy love takes a backseat to the wondrous whirlwind of life. The season's most delightful surprise.

With more angst than you can shake a stick at, High Art sets a new course for the indie American film. Instead of the usual Scorsese-esque buddy confab, we have something closer to the funky Fassbinder world of marginalized, pansexual depressives.

Hilary Birmingham -- makes an impressive feature directorial debut with this rural drama. She gets first-rate performances.

Bigger, Longer & Uncut delivers: It's never less than funny, and at its best, it's truly hysterical.

The deep thematic concerns are never fully developed, but the characters are, and the story compels. Also, the movie's pretty scary.

Pretentious yet devoid of poetry, left-of-center yet artless, this well-intentioned trudge does not exist to be enjoyed or appreciated so much as to be coddled and patronized as one would a retarded child.

Director Barry Levinson has given this swift, sure-footed film a matter-of-fact, improvisational look and feel. To appreciate its brisk, confident, wild comedy, all you need is a funny bone and a BS meter.

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.)

More involving and intriguing than any by-the-numbers studio thriller. In large part, it holds our interest because of its stylistic boldness, not despite it.

Tokyo Godfathers just might be the equivalent of "It's a Wonderful Life" or, to be hip and new-millennium about it, "Elf."

Mostly it's just a sweet and lightly funny piece of highbrow piffle, as enjoyable as it is forgettable. There's no harm done, but there's not much else either.

Plot matters more here than spectacle; the film's real climax involves no demolition, but rather two characters in a room quietly discussing devastating events in their past.

Conversation is as meaningless as anything else in this barbarist take on "The Searchers."

A perfectly entertaining little French comedy that doesn't quite lodge in your brain in the way you hope it would.

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

Overlong, but with moments of greatness.

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.

If you're one of those people who complained that "Memento" could just as well have been told in chronological order, The Memory of a Killer may be your cup of tea.

It has just enough "comedy" to qualify as crowd-pleaser.

The young actors, all first-timers chosen in auditions in Puglia and Basilicata, are completely natural.

As enormously entertaining as it is appalling.

In the end, what Minghella has wrought is a nearly perfect drama of love and war (still the great subjects, after all), an epic that's fluent, frightening and beautiful all at once, that lifts the heart and dashes our dreams in about equal measure.

It's hard to know just how much to trust Titanic Town.

As detached and unfocused as a college pothead. And about as much fun.

Eastwood provides more than an hour of easygoing fun, followed by 45 minutes of action and suspense.

As a clear, exhaustive and highly intelligent discussion of one of the most pressing issues of our time, it's a success. As a work of documentary, however, it's flawed by its failure to limit its scope (or at least pare down its material), by its strangely stylized narration and by its lack of a story.

What's wonderful about director Claude Miller's adaptation of Ruth Rendell's novel "The Tree of Hands" is its grand capacity for compassion and complexity.

This is a Julia Roberts Movie about only one thing: being a Julia Roberts Movie.

No character other than Antonelli is developed enough to register. Worse, the minor characters, most of whom are played by Joffrey dancers, are simply not actors.

Were it not for the performance of Foxx, the movie, which touches every base and slows to a crawl near home plate, would sink even when the score soars.

By the end, you may be exhausted by the effort of trying to unravel the thing, but you may also be taken by the power of its spell. This is a movie that compels you to watch.

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.

This full-tilt visual and aural bombardment is simply a lot of fun. It never lets up. Nor does it ever want to.

Scrupulously accurate, sometimes-tedious account of Stephen Glass' malfeasance.

The filmmaker who once aimed to enchant his audiences with cheerful stories of beatific visitors from outer space now wants only to scare the hell out of us. E.T., as it turns out, is a mass murderer after all, and we are his Reese's Pieces.

In the end, Stevie is a relentlessly messy, sometimes trying picture of family dysfunction, official neglect and personal tragedy, a disturbing redneck soap opera about real people and real consequences in which the protagonist--like the filmmaker--often proves to be as unlikable as he is sympathetic.

Pure joy to watch -- and an invaluable documentary record of a bygone era.

No matter how well you think you know this tale, you do not know it at all. It offers the oldest clichés polished up like some brand-new thing by director Greg Whiteley.

A perfect marriage of author and director.

The film's demands may be too perplexing.

Where Bowling for Columbine is at its most valuable is in its examination of America's culture of fear as a root cause of gun violence.

Two minor drawbacks: Onscreen IDs of speakers are sometimes omitted. And Kissinger's crimes seem almost paltry in comparison to current American policies.

In the end, Stone Reader gives us an old-fashioned romantic's view of writers and their craft--complete with the hint of a happy ending.

Though it's become almost redundant to say so, major kudos go to Leigh for actually casting people who look working-class; you'd be hard-pressed to get an American studio to go along with that, even though Leigh alumni often become famous.

It's beautiful to look at, and yet the story is strangely lacking; the novel's first chapter, available online at author Chevalier's Web site, tchevalier.com, seems to contain more plot points than the entire film.

That the film is good rather than great proves a disappointment, but just finding a good film these days is rare, especially a big studio picture.

3-Iron is at times deliciously sensual, creepily somnolent, whimsically spiritual and disturbingly violent. But it is never quite coherent.

Winterbottom has never before done such potent work; he's created a fiction film about the siege of Sarajevo that bristles with the raw, unnerving textures of a battlefield documentary.

The fanboy in me loves it, being wrapped in the warm projected glow of nostalgia for a movie I've memorized since age 9.

Whatever its faults -- and it has more than a few -- it is unquestionably different. It at least takes a stab at interpolating cerebral ideas into the format of a thriller.

Hellboy is as much a wreck as "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" or "The Punisher," coming and going in two weeks, and as much a bore as "The Hulk."

The zingers come so fast and furious that if you miss a few (and even the most alert viewer will the first time), there are always more.

A celebration of the naughty joke and the courage it takes to tell one.

The first exceptional drama of 2004, The Mother feels like life itself, sharpened to its finest points.

The problem here lies not in the abundance of blood--we've seen that before--but in the film's pounding insistence, which prevails for all two hours and 40 minutes, that we also absorb a rather thin and unreliable history lesson.

As far from crowd-pleasing as you're going to get these days.

John Grisham's The Rainmaker lulls you into the mindset you get while reading a bestseller at the beach. What a sad thing to say about a Francis Ford Coppola movie!

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

A sweet-natured, immensely likable family film.

For all the affection Mangold feels for Cash and Carter, the movie feels oddly dispassionate.

Match Point may well be a return to form but only for those who love "September" and "Interiors," movies populated by Bergman evacuees too inert and dreary to even crack a smile.

The movie's diplomatic breadth compromises its thematic depth -- it basically repeats that fun conquers all -- but few movies will so generously rawk a crowd this year.

It's during the shift to seriousness that The Ice Storm makes its missteps. The intrusion of tragedy, while altogether believable, still seems like a device, a calculated tug at the heart strings. It is, in short, a once-effective ploy that now feels like a cliche. A near-miss might have been more effective.

Some won't appreciate the mix of tones, but none of the humor cheapens the film's final blow, nor is it designed to condone terrorism in any way.

The film is about how much you're willing to give up for love--a tune that has been played many times before, but never with quite this much slacker brio.

If the Star Wars movies have taught us anything, it's that waiting 20 years for a new sequel by a guy named George can lead to disappointment.

An affecting piece of work.

The striking graininess of the film stock, the near-documentary style of the setups, and Michael Nyman's attentive score add up to a relatable and ultimately hopeful experience.

It's funny and exciting on enough levels that adults are likely to enjoy it just as much as the rug rats.

While it's sometimes tedious viewing, the film proves the perfect complement to this year's hyper-explained "The Day After Tomorrow;" it's utterly free of cheap melodrama and visual razzle-dazzle, concentrating instead on the souls of plausibly human sufferers.

With the exception of Murphy . . . the rest of the cast Oz has assembled acquit themselves only adequately or worse.

The first half of Intolerable Cruelty is more than tolerable; it's a dopey kick full of goofy jokes tossed off so quickly you're reminded less of bickering-bantering Grant and Rosalind Russell than Groucho and Chico Marx.

Props to translator Nigel Palmer for keeping the subtitles witty instead of blindly literal.

May not seem to be your typical Wes Craven movie. It's not really horror, there are no marketable monsters, and unlike "Cursed," "Scream 3" and other recent Craven offerings, it's actually an enjoyable time at the movies.

Once Connell finds his feet, he just may stride forth with his Important American Movie. Until then, The Opportunists is simply a whiff of great unwashedness yet to come.

Film critics are put in a difficult position when they see a movie that's well-made but features characters so unbelievably odious you wouldn't want to spend two minutes with them in real life.

It's nothing more than pleasant matinee fodder with some jarring tones and clunky stretches.

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.

For all of its turgid self-importance, its anthropocentric theater of classical music and sound effects, Deep Blue is a gorgeous film with scene after scene of incredible footage.

It's not hard to see why actors love working with Penn, even in the smallest roles; he lets them speak monologues even when they're saying nothing at all.

In her first major role, Ferrera is amazing -- It is a wonderfully natural performance. To top it all off, she and Ontiveros are completely believable as mother and daughter.

If you're after some family-friendly classic lit at the multiplex, here 'tis.

Wildly enjoyable look at the fifth-grade ballroom dance competition held annually in New York City.

That Thing You Do threatens the shameless stereotypes it constructs with cats' claws, but when the deserving targets present themselves at their most vulnerable, the movie rolls over and expects audiences to stroke its tummy.

O'Connor as Fanny is irresistibly appealing.

While too many things about the story don't ring true for the film as a whole to work, there is enough in Next Stop Wonderland to keep the viewer wide awake and entertained.

When all is said and done, you'll likely find you have nowhere to place your sympathy, no character worth rooting for.

Without question, Shadow of the Vampire is a stately and elegant horror film, interwoven with delicious strands of black comedy.

Such a funny mess that it keeps you laughing even when you realize it's not much better directed than a cable-access talk show.

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

This uncommonly clever, surprisingly poignant fairy tale packs a social wallop that we're not quite prepared for.

The film splits the difference between the brutal reality of the cable-TV prison series "Oz" and the romanticized fantasy of "The Shawshank Redemption" and provides a vivid, well-rounded gallery of inmate portraits.

Suffice it to say that Cruise never seems right in this part--never as treacherous as he should be, nor as mysteriously tortured. Foxx has his moments, but there's no room for his trademark humor, and we can never quite get our minds around the idea that the hit man has beguiled the cabbie.

This is not pleasant stuff, but it's important, and thoroughly heart-wrenching.

Fans of Arthur C. Clarke may be pleased, but fans of serious biology may bust out laughing at the goofily rendered aliens who show up.

This may sound an eensy bit hyperbolic, but dig: Mayor of the Sunset Strip is the greatest rock-and-roll movie of all time.

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

Holes is a nicely made movie for kids, as entertaining as it is thought-provoking and--thanks to director Davis--a bit harder-edged than the usual Disney fare.

That this mess should come from the hand of Istvan Szabo, the brilliant Hungarian director of "Mephisto" and "Colonel Redl," is the real shocker.

October Sky may be set around coal mines, but ultimately it's Field of Corn, Part II.

Mrs. Henderson hits all its marks, well-worn though they be, and Dench fans will once more find themselves glorying in her reckless spirit.

Since the narrative's destination is awkwardly obvious, and the tone occasionally melts into a sticky-sweet mess like cotton candy in the sun, the movie is most often saved by its generous helpings of clever dialogue.

Quills is bound to titillate some, but for most it's likely to summon little more than a few Oscars and appreciative yawns.

Damon--as actor, not as co-screenwriter--is the best thing about Good Will Hunting.

Klein's the perfect actor to play Howard--a man so actory he probably signs his checks in that thin movie-poster type.

Despite the few good performances, this Hamlet is not a keeper.

Even if there were a great movie here, it would have been undermined by two lead actors who are barely even there, asked to deliver lines they can't handle: Bale, playing the Batman with clipped wings, and Katie Holmes as an assistant district attorney who doesn't have the gravitas to pass as an intern. Come back, Alicia Silverstone; all is forgiven.

A good-hearted movie aimed at Orthodox Jews who don't normally go to the movies.

Arcand loyalists are bound to miss Rémy, but at least he goes out in style. Even the antagonists will have to admit that.

The movie works because Berg never forgets to keep his heart in the game and not just his head.

This sweet little movie is a mild comedy, a much calmer cousin to "Sister Act," with men in robes rather than women in habits.

Despite moments of gritty greatness that rival Scorsese's best, the movie is severely hampered by please-everyone syndrome, especially in the editing and choice of music.

It's a strange, entertaining little film that derives its weird tension from a blend of comic and serious tones.

Authenticity and plausibility get gunned down from the get-go, but if explosive shaky-cam ultraviolence and frequent extreme close-ups of greasy whiskers are your bag, this hyperactive wannabe may count as something of a score.

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.

A delicious little thriller about an uptight, ill-humored English mystery writer who becomes enmeshed in murder, Swimming Pool is at once comical, contrary, resourceful and ambiguous.

It is engaging, touching, and frequently funny. Maybe because his hero is inarticulate and his heroine is mute, Allen relies far more than usual on physical comedy than on the verbal jokes that are his strongest comic suit.

Packs an unexpected emotional wallop. Gavin Hood's film tells a story of violence and redemption that's even more remarkable when you consider that neither of the lead performers had ever acted in a movie previously.

We're in for a long, unpleasant, reactionary ride.

There could have been life in the material, but no one involved save Hurt and Collins seems to have taken the time to find it.

A film built upon transitions so weak and obvious it's astonishing the entire thing doesn't collapse on itself.

Too much attention to art-deco detail, a meandering story that hesitates whenever it wants to touch an emotional chord, then squanders the opportunity with an eccentric line-reading or an extravagant camera angle.

What could have become a heinous TV movie instead delivers the moving and relatable experience of being an emotionally overburdened person stuck in a world that mostly sucks.

Most of it--ranges from very funny to hilarious.

Moviegoers bewailing the absence of literacy and shallowness of character they usually get for their seven bucks need look no further than this fluent and satisfying triptych for a source of hope.

There's so much EFFORT here to convince us of the switcheroo (already one of Hollywood's oldest ploys) that we soon weary of it.

But except for a few missteps, the movie is so beautifully and sensitively rendered in its particulars, in its characterizations of soldiers and officers, and in its dramatization of a nearly miraculous event, that the result is an affecting piece of cinema.

Why don't we see this kind of thing on the news every night? Undoubtedly military censorship comes into play, but probably more so it's the prevailing notion that talking-head shoutfests stacked with pundits bring in the ratings, while actual field reporting costs more money.

This is a deeply disturbing (if not very satisfying) view of what happened at Columbine and in other school shootings.

It's hagiography, yes, but also powerful and poignant.

Aimed at the brain, when it should have been one for the heart.

It's arguably more "artful" to move at a snail's pace, but at the risk of tedium?

Writer-director David Mamet delights in his own supposed cleverness; he wants you to scratch your head while he manipulates your brain.

It just feels like the real thing, which is a trick few writers can muster and even fewer directors can master.

In Your Friends and Neighbors, LeBute is having a high old time giving himself the creeps. For the rest of us it's all kind of...well...nasty.

As surreal as it is obscene, as clever as it is crude. It plays like some raw offspring of underground comix and the comedies of the 1920s.

The setup's a bit reminiscent of "The English Patient" -- except that Beart's much easier on the eyes and ears than Ralph Fiennes is -- but Strayed is even slower moving, if you can believe it.

Supremely enjoyable.

What makes Crash so gripping--so terrifying in spots, so moving in others, and even a little funny at times--is how nothing happens as we think it will.

Slither is what it is, unapologetically, and unlike Gunn's work on "Dawn of the Dead," it's probably too weird to be a crossover hit. Either you've got worms in your heart or you don't.

As another exposé of stubbornness, petty opportunism, and greed, there's some residual value in the story of two unappealing characters.

At last, his (Howard's) first great (and filling) movie--inspirational, yes, but far from hokey; moving, absolutely, but never saccharine; and gripping, despite its being a fixed fight.

Even in Las Vegas, which is possibly the most irrational place on earth, drama demands a bit of dramatic logic. Romantic fairy tales just don't play well on The Strip, despite its fake Eiffel Towers, bogus Italian palazzos and strike-it-rich fantasies.

The movies' time-honored old-man-and-boy theme has rarely been used to such great advantage.

In this, Lee's most ambitious and successful work yet, his celebrated gift for psychological shading and complexity is on proud display.

Keeping the mood dry, Ozpetek and his very resourceful leading lady keep the proceedings from turning into an Almodóvar version of Mary Worth.

Allen produces a lovable, relaxed--although not uproarious--comedy.