It feels wholly artificial, and your eyes never tire of drinking it all in.

The film actually improves on Cunningham's novel, thanks to gorgeous cinematography, a deft script by playwright David Hare, a mournful, melodious but never intrusive score by Philip Glass and a superb cast that brings the delicately formed characters to full, raging, sorrowful life.

Leaves you in a state of stunned, exhilarated awe, both for what it shows and how it shows it.

A fiendishly subtle horror movie, a goosebump-inducing exercise in suspense that uses your own imagination to scare you silly.

At the film's uplifting conclusion, when a stilled voice finally makes itself heard, you can unmistakably feel your heart lift, as if it had grown tiny wings. Camp reminds you that once you believed it would always soar, just like that.

More of a warm breeze than a great gust, but its simple, smart pleasures carry the force of a hurricane.

It's a sign of just how much Coppola respects her characters that she doesn't make us privy to that final line: It is only meant for them to share. But like the rest of the ethereal Lost in Translation, you don't need to have it spelled out in order to feel it.

It is pretty convincing in its argument that China has every intention of destroying the culture of Tibetans.

Deals with themes Eastwood has often explored before, but never so delicately or with as much sad wisdom: The way in which our past haunts our present, the lasting repercussions of violence and the cruel inexorability of fate.

A lot of ground for one film to cover, but this smart, absorbing movie, which has been sharply edited by Felipe Lacerda, never feels like it's spreading itself too thin.

Tupac Amaru Shakur is riveting in Tupac: Resurrection. The rapper is a compelling, charismatic hero: articulate, well-read, politically radical, and movie-star handsome to boot (he in fact starred in Poetic Justice and Juice). Make that, was riveting.

Won't appeal to everyone, of course, particularly those who blush easily. And parents who take children to see it deserve to have their heads examined. But for those who don't mind a little bile in their eggnog, it's the perfect antidote to all that prefab Christmas cheer.

The most compelling -- and horrifying -- portion of the film, which interweaves archival footage and stylish graphics with the interview segments, centers on the firebombing of Japan during World War II.

The Language of Music hews strictly to its title, however. There isn't anything about Dowd's life outside music except for details of his work as a nuclear physicist at Columbia University, where he was a key part of the Manhattan Project research team that developed the atomic bomb during World War II.

The Dreamers argues that life must be lived, not dreamt. But it also remembers the confounding pleasures of dreaming with your eyes wide open.

Many questions remain purposely unanswered: Where was the father for 12 years? Why did he want to go away with the kids? What's in a box he finds hidden in the island? Yet, in a remarkable ending, the boys discover their feelings.

This delicate, transporting movie, which keeps dialogue to a minimum to tell its story primarily through images, is also a triumph of sheer cinematic craft that mirrors its characters' contemplative natures while extolling the virtues of lives simply led.

Like the best coming-of-age stories, I'm Not Scared (Io Non Ho Paura) is, in part, a work of horror.

Bertucelli nails it.

Enlightening documentary.

Clearly an important film, if only for such disheartening reminders that a McDonald's salad with ranch dressing has more calories than a Big Mac or that Miami is the 15th fattest city in the country (Houston is No. 1).

Control Room may not seem all that compelling 10 years down the road. But right now, at this very moment, it is essential, imperative viewing.

You feel terribly sad and angry at May's foolishness. Yet with so many emotions at hand, The Mother never fails to engage.

Though all actors are up to the challenge, it is the plot that makes The Inheritance shine.

If you found "Crouching Tiger" a stunning bore, you probably won't fall under Hero's spell. But the rest of us, well, we'll be more than happy to savor every moment of its strange, ravishing beauty.

DiG! is raw, just as the band members themselves.

The movie is such an intense, disturbing and exhilarating experience, even five more minutes might have felt like too much.

A Frenchman may have thought of the story first, but this Korean film pays tribute to the original while perfectly standing on its own.