This is independent acting (and movie-making) at its best -- true, tight, anything but trite.

Strangely enough, this movie provides a lot of the James Bond veneer that has been missing from recent James Bond movies.

A Melancholy Delight. Its pacing will undoubtedly seem too deliberate to some, but I found first-time director Deborah Warner's The Last September a delight from beginning to end.

Part of the appeal of John Irving's writing is its sense of bounty, the way the world is offered up as a horn of plenty. The Cider House Rules movie, by contrast, feels narrowed down to small slices of experience.

A deliciously romantic story, in all senses of the word.

The dialogue is sparkingly witty, and Phoenix and Winslet are excellent in what are, after all, meant to be fairly one-dimensional roles.

You'll feel moved and uplifted after watching this well-written, funny movie.

Has the edge of black comedy that defines Maclean's sensibility, but it also has a mature new sweetness. And it's certainly one of the best films about the life of an addict since "Drugstore Cowboy."

An insistent, insinuating film -- both in terms of its plot and characters, and in its impact on the viewer -- Harry's effects are small-scale but so perfectly pitched that they never seem small.

Mehta's latest release, combines a similarly intoxicating visual immediacy and delight with a sobering outsider's long view.

A very small film, as they say in the movie business, but its stylish suspensefulness is nicely leavened by Connell's obvious, and welcome, love for his hapless characters.

Fascinating noir, which will long be remembered for its extraordinary lead performance by Catherine Deneuve.

By turns amusing, touching and horrifying, A Room For Romeo Brass is a film that defies expectation at every turn.

Authentic contemporary heroine.

A wry, rambling, smart comedy.

This kind of film, in its various manifestations recurring through the decades, gives us confidence that cinema can ultimately get to the heart of things.

The result is a movie that turns the financial phenomenon of Web startups -- the crazy kids with ideas, and the crazier bankers with more money than sense -- into a moving human drama.

A quiet film, certainly, but it's filled with small touches that manage to get deeply under your skin by the time the final credits roll.

A gorgeous and enduring piece of work.

Human Resources resonates because it restores the humanity to that dehumanizing title phrase.

Undiluted Jackie Chan, not the watered-down stuff he's been doing stateside.

I'm not sure how elaborately I could defend Pola X, but I loved watching it.

It's witty, entertaining, often funny as hell and even, at times, surprisingly wise about the human condition.

An unusually clear, compassionate, and grownup satire about a rare subject: the true psychological underpinnings of young manhood.

Most important, the film is suffused with a light touch and a kind of begrudged humor that feels perfectly natural and unforced and that keeps you involved in the characters' plight.

This is a film like no other this year, and on that grounds alone you should see it.

A heartfelt documentary.

What director Aviva Kempner has done is shine a light into the past and recover a classic American hero, one with all the integrity, decency and largeness of spirit that we have been taught makes up the American character.

Stick with the film, accept the rules of the time and the meditative rhythm of the language that Davies has woven into his story, and you won't be disappointed. Then read the novel. It's even better.

A careful, intelligent, and seamless design that makes room for a couple of unexpected twists.

It's swell when a film really does capture a book in some exactitude.

Stays with you, though, not because of its political content, but because of the unexpected emotional punch that's thrown near the end.

Drama, swift action, and low-key, character-driven comedy.

It's a pleasant surprise to note how good Scream 3 really is.

Has moments that are haunting, and it stays with you long after the lights have come back up.

Don't be misled by claims that you've seen this one already. You haven't, and you should.

It's provocative and very moving, filled with some of the strongest performances of the year.

Simple but charming.

A fitting tribute to an era, a writer, and an unapologetic eccentric.

Morris seduces us into stepping into Leuchter's world of delusion and ego.

A wonderfully witty homage to the very king of disco movies -- "Saturday Night Fever."

Every bit as reverent as "Schindler's List," and no less successful.

Rohmer's trademark dialogue...is as poetic in its plainness as ever.

There are some cheap shots, and there's an argument to be made about whether the film is sending up stereotypes or simply perpetuating them. But for every dubious moment, there are plenty that connect.

A hilariously entertaining movie.

What makes A Simple Plan an exciting, thoughtful thriller isn't the plot twists, but the twists and turns of Hank's tortured conscience as one lie leads to bigger and deadlier deceits.

Unbreakable shows Shyamalan as a rapidly maturing filmmaker, taking risks and making them pay off.

Hanks gives possibly the most compelling performance of his career.

The risk pays off for Clooney and the Coens, as O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a nicely off-kilter exploration of American gumption.

A very funny film that never sacrifices the lives of its characters to the needs of its story.

Don't be fooled by the WB appeal; if you've ever been in high school, Cruel Intentions has the wiles to seduce.

Script, setting, attitude, and especially casting add up to a smart exercise in dark comedy that's never over-the-top funny, but always engaging for its clever details.

It's a very funny film, one of the most enjoyable of the summer.

Armitage, Cusack and his Evanston chums have their work cut out for them to turn a stone killer into a sympathetic romantic character. That they succeed in such a shrewdly funny way is downright amazing.

The engine that drives Jerry Maguire is Cruise, giving the kind of performance that all but deconstructs his recent series of glib leading-man roles.

It's old-fashioned filmmaking, and more people should do it.

This long, sometimes hard-to-watch movie is a challenge, but it has authority and raw power.

It's so good, so jam-packed with delights, that it leaves you gorged -- and bemoaning the fatty glop that passes for moviemaking these days.

Works so beautifully because Davis doesn't try to turn Eads and his friends into walking soapboxes for transgendered people.

A completely different order of cinematic existence than any other film you're likely to see in the near or distant future.

Egoyan's films have always been about the intricacies and basic strangeness of human relationships, rather than about plot or snappy one-liners, but a new moral urgency seems to invigorate this film.

Altman lucked out when he cast a singer, Ronee Blakley, in a major role in "Nashville," but he has not been as fortunate here with Annie Ross and Lyle Lovett, who lack Blakley's soulful dramatic presence.

Like other aspects of this film, the image may be a little too perfect, a little too careful.

An imaginative and disturbing work; well worth a look.

Highly enjoyable.

Definitely worth a chance: although everyone in this fog-shrouded setting makes grand sacrifices, all you'll lose are a few tears.

If Unforgiven occasionally overstates its case, this is the best work Eastwood has done as a director since The Outlaw Josey Wales 16 years ago.

So meticulously acted that you feel you're reading the characters' minds.

To watch Sevigny's Lana slowly thaw to Brandon is to see the transformative, heartbreaking power of romance in a way that Hollywood is rarely able to capture anymore.

It is thrilling to look at, and that's more than one can say for the majority of pictures out there.

(Thornton) does a remarkable job in all three categories, but what you're likely to remember most clearly is his performance.

It's great that this movie exists.

Darabont follows King's book fairly closely, allowing the audience to steep itself in the setting and characters slowly, like reading a good novel.

Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, the film not only gets up on wobbly legs but learns to dance by the closing credits.

A terrific feature-length cartoon.

A huge surprise: a startlingly resonant yet unabashedly entertaining slice of American history, a popcorn movie with complex observations about, of all things, racism.

I was so taken by the film's sublime visual poetry, its telling silences, its finely orchestrated editing rhythms.

Runs on wit and creativity.

It's epic in every sense of the word, and like most of Chen's historical dramas, not easy to follow.

Hilarious and often moving.

Bateman could have been much more interesting if he'd been played by someone who wouldn't need to work quite so hard (Charlie Sheen or Rob Lowe might have been fascinating here).

This mordant, macabre look at the American obsession with fast food, television and murder is icily funny.

It's very funny and - at times - even witty in a crude, drunken frat-boy-with-an-epiphany kind of way.

Richard Farnsworth shines as Alvin Straight, a role, one gets the feeling, that he has been preparing for all his life.

Accomplished, ambitious, and great-looking.

As a writer, LaBute is capable of creating long dialogue scenes that never seem stagey or artificial. As a director, he has the confidence to stay with those words.

A highly recommended treat.

It gives the audience something serious to ponder. That's rare these days.

(Cusack)'s genius, however, is in his continual ability to be the most likeable of everymen.

Despite a cheap, Hollywood ending and despite Kaye's kooky campaign, X is a killer.

The design of the film is wonderful, the animation everything one comes to expect from a Disney picture, and the jokes fly by so fast.

It's got both the sweeping spectacle and the keen, tactile sense of human intimacy.

The script also happens to be quite literate and laceratingly funny, and Damon -- no big surprise here -- turns out to be the perfect actor to deliver Will's zingers.

A surprisingly vital film.

The film is very theatrical and admittedly "staged," but always purposefully.

A smart, engaging movie.

A startling debut full of emotional depth and political punch.

A very moving and surprisingly funny experience.

A breathless, exciting family movie with a couple of truly memorable sequences, and just enough in the way of story and character to keep the franchise going for another 20 years.

May be Hitchcock on holiday, but that's a perfectly enjoyable vacation.

It's a high-wire act without a net, and Benigni pulls it off with astounding grace and sensitivity.

An exhilarating piece of popular entertainment.

A pulsing, wooshing, visceral experience that amounts to great fun and an entirely disposable movie.

Abittersweet fable about the raw joys of human revival.

What makes Hit and Runway uniquely fun, however, is the unapologetic extent to which Livingston and Cohen turn it into an index of beloved Woody-isms.

Battling back with droll seriousness, Murray imbues his sad-sack loner with a touching, funny dignity, and comes up with his best work in a very long time.

Opinionated magic and mayhem

Craven creates his savviest and most frightening movie since the original "A Nightmare on Elm Street" by spoofing the horror cliches and simultaneously reinventing them to scare you all over again.

The textures are detailed, the movements are realistic and the three-dimensional feel even improves on the humor -- you may think you've seen every good "Matrix" parody, but you haven't until you see this.

An exceptionally intense movie whose sheer filmmaking power ultimately transcends all its (many) limitations.

The kind of college movie people will be quoting for years.

The boy (Osment) has an uncanny ability to suggest Cole's secretive, haunted soul, and he seems to have inspired Willis to give perhaps his most self-effacing performance.

It certainly has a place among the year's more accomplished productions.

Surreal to the point of poeticism, amusing and tragic by turns.

I liked this film better the second time around.

Never less than dazzling to look at, and the scorching humor keeps it alive from scene to scene.

Unlikely to draw the audience it deserves, but those who do see it will have a hard time shaking its gentle, ghostly echoes.

[Ritchie] cranks up the laughs and tension with equal aplomb, throwing wrenches in the plot so that the audience has no idea what to expect next -- and that's part of the film's thrill.

Its series of quiet but moving realizations of the utter ubiquity of the Nazi horror in every single aspect of life, even something as hidden as a sexual sub-culture, is powerful indeed.

The bleakness of the material ought to make Ratcatcher a depressing experience, yet Ramsay's power as an image-crafter transforms this grim universe.

Charming and imaginative.

Despite the first-rate acting, the narrative is the star of this show, so much so that you feel yourself occasionally losing interest in the travails of the characters. Instead, you hang on every word and every tiny object, every cut and bruise in the frame, looking for clues that will help you make sense of what's going on.

Kate Hudson's accent is spot-on, and she brings her megawattage to good use on the Gershwin standard, "The Man I Love."

A kicky little comedy that shows Quentin Tarantino's influence is alive and well in Japan.

Stars the cult celebrity Om Puri, widely considered by cinephiles to be one of the best actors in the world.

What ensues is never exactly unpredictable, but always witty, fresh and fun.

Grass is often closer to the sobering tone of the PBS show than it is to the silly "Weed," with its stoned, barely literate potheads discussing the quality of their dope.

It still sounds pretty fresh: politicians scratching backs, loose ladies threatening to talk, careers balanced tremulously on the line

If McCulloch can draw this much humanity out of his actors, and do it in comedies with a deceptively easygoing poignancy, he's definitely a director to watch.

A satisfying love story about two very different people with a common cause, people who endure trials of trust and faith in each other.

Quite a spicy brew.

An energetic mix of Scream-like dark comedy, senseless violence, satisfying surprises, and good old-fashioned mayhem

Simply put, Sightseers is a deliciously inappropriate and hilariously weird comedy.

Like the political turmoil which inspired it, Shadow Dancer is fueled by the fire to do the right thing and the sacrifice that must follow, and for 100 minutes, it’s a crackerjack ordeal to behold.

In a film about how hard it is to know what you want, and then to express it, Swanberg gets to the heart of the matters of the heart with disarming doses of both charm and wisdom.

This is a movie that proposes a genuine, intelligent solution, both for the main character and for us. It comes at you kinda quickly (and economically, in about three wordless shots), but it hit me like a bag of dumpster-dived apples to the gut.

This is a franchise entirely comfortable with what it is, what it’s not, and what it has to offer. It has a whole mess of “Fast” for us all, and woe be the souls who enter this film hoping to go slow.

In the House is crafty and juicy and ought to delight anyone whose ever thumped their chest about being a storyteller. I must confess, however, that somewhere in the third act the air started to leak from the balloon.

Irresistibly entertaining and beautiful to look at it, the film is pleasant at worst, and – at best – wisely defies its slapped-on American title, a warm reminder that love isn’t a solution so much as it’s a brilliant way of embracing life’s problems.

Not as touching or boldly transgressive as its ultra-violent peers.

Despite its apparent compromises to noble finger-wagging (initially) and requisite fist-pumping (eventually), Waugh has fashioned a sturdy character-first entertainment out of Snitch at a time of year when those are all too rare to behold.

This film could have gone horribly wrong, but the characters and chemistry are strong, and as such Beautiful Creatures should be lauded for elegantly delivering a tale that at least feels fresh and vibrant.

Faxon and Rush’s screenplay doesn’t deviate too far from formula, but their sturdy direction, bolstered by handsome production values, evokes a wistful sense of carefree summers and conjures up a potent amount of simmering teenage angst beneath the frequent chuckles.

John Dies at the End is easily funnier than it is scary, and much like the drug at the center of the story, it offers one hell of a trip.

There is true beauty in the despair that pervades The Place Beyond the Pines, a film plotted out in triptych, a treatise on the moral compromises we all make to protect and provide for our loved ones.

Raimi manages to keep things engaging, which is a very real act of wizardry in and of itself.

This funny and touching film could do with a bit of editing. It tends to drag a bit, especially near the end, and though we’re privy to the thoughts and feelings of Polley’s family, we’re given scant verbalized insight into her own thinking.

This tiny friends-and-family production has the vibe of a project done on weekends and after school. That’s no knock. It is vibrant and bubbly and just clever enough to engage people who wouldn’t normally watch a black-and-white micro-budget Shakespeare adaptation without any big movie stars.

The downright gnarliest mainstream horror release in recent memory, Evil Dead is certainly a considerable and occasionally commendable dose of the ol’ ultra-violence, but Fede Alvarez’ Raimi-sanctioned update of 1981’s cult favorite only really has that demented determination going for it.

The remarkable storytelling that eventually emerges in Eden is something you should see, providing you feel that you can stomach it.

This Chris Sanders fellow knows how to craft a heart-warming animation, and if not for a few minor problems this would have had a legitimate shot at the best animated movie of 2013.

Wrong is more absurd and more laugh-out-loud silly than “Rubber;” it’s also less focused and more pointless.

A funny, sly directorial debut

A kind and decent film, but doesn't add to Robinson's legacy.

The beats and trappings are all standard-issue, but the gags are funny enough, often enough, to offset such routine proceedings.

S-VHS isn’t as pants-pooping scary as the first, but it is funnier, tighter and slicker.

Two Buckleys for the price of one, but the real star here is Penn Badgley.

Isn't quite enough to save the Bond franchise -- but it does prove that 007 is Y2K-compliant.

As he did in "Run Lola Run," he has clearly patented an original combination of cinematic eye and ear candy and a profound, irresistible fascination for the role of chance in this world.

The film's bemused but genuine respect for the ingenious obviousness of a bygone cinematic language is quite moving.

The gravity-defying harness maneuvers popularized in the U.S. with "The Matrix" -- ... look really cool, but seem out of place in a realistic gang-style action movie.

(Owen's) existential angst and the interesting layers of character and setting give Croupier a sharp, engaging edge.

Sometimes feels like an acting class gone berserk, with Penn indulging his high-powered cast

It's smart, funny and insightful and it's quite easy to see what attracted the stars to it.

Quite smart, sensitive, and relatively sophisticated.

It's very effective.

Before it finally twists itself into a pretzel in the third act, this paranoid thriller creates a scary mood and allows its leading actors to go all the way with it.

Retains enough of Soderbergh's usual indie sensibility to make some sly but contentious points.

More whimsical than gloomy, for all the horrors it alludes to or depicts.

A piece of fluff that can be enjoyed without guilt.

A small, scruffy, but agreeably energized comedy.

The kind of minor work that may very well speak greater volumes about (Stone's) thoughts and feelings right now than another masterpiece would.

Funny, immediately and consistently engaging, and -- well done on almost every level.

All these years later, the film is far more infuriating than it is exciting.

Nothing less than stunning: a slapstick ballet of choreographed buffoonery.

A crowd pleaser, but there's something a bit prim and pre-determined about its conclusions.

Smith has crammed the film with enough genuinely funny moments and insightful bits to make it well worth seeing.

Expertly done, and a real joy to watch.