Like watching an American teen-sex comedy through a glass darkly.

As strong on action as it is weak on the interpersonal stuff. If Bond can get a new car for each episode, how about some new pickup lines?

Noir has never been this bright.

No matter which floor you're on, the huge cast is extraordinary, and Altman gives the actors free rein to bring their characters to life despite such close quarters.

The inexplicably terrifying ending is good for a month's worth of nightmares -- no small thing for a movie in such a saturated field.

If the movie doesn't ultimately transport us to places The Wizard of Oz once took us, that may be partly because "The Sorcerer's Stone" is just the first chapter, with more magic waiting to be parceled out in the coming years.

When director Stephen Frears worked with (Jack Black), he must have yelled "Let 'er rip!" instead of "Action!"

First-time filmmaker Edet Belzberg may be the first person to assign any value to the lives of the homeless Romanian youngsters featured in her harrowing documentary.

"Songs" is a delight. It's a visual feast and often hilarious.

This movie is for select tastes. It's not the fusillade of porn that wears you down, but the melancholy of watching an unremarkable man glide down the tubes as if on a water slide.

Surges forward with barely a respite. It's like watching a propane factory burn, waiting for the tanks inside to explode, and when they do, we're right in the middle of it.

Makes hoops look like the sexiest game in town.

A sublimely uplifting movie.

This extraordinary film refracts truth through the prism of memory, until what you get is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, full of sacrifice and betrayal.

A rare blend of comedy and tenderness whose point is not the horrors of war but the lengths a parent will go to protect his child's innocence.

If there's a soft spot in your heart for the sword-&-sandal epic -- and from the star rating above, I think you can guess where I stand -- then you'll swoon with giddy delight over Gladiator.

This quiet yet jolting meditation on love, obsession, loneliness, friendship and fate has the quality to entrance you through a first viewing, and compel you to take its themes and characters home with you for further consideration.

Locks in on its self-destructive subjects so precisely, it's almost unbearable to watch.

A simple story that resonates deeply, largely thanks to the actors' ability to invest it with inner life.

For Hobbitués and adventure fans of all other ages, it's the year's best thrill ride -- maybe the best film.

Hilariously inventive Hollywood satire.

A caustic, funny, low-budget treat, shot on digital video.

Dano is a real find in this daunting role about a teenager's identity crisis. The subject of the movie is dicey but ultimately deeply rewarding.

An audacious, snappy visual and emotional feast of dishes both familiar and fresh. It's the first really good movie of 2001.

Spider-Man is an almost-perfect extension of the experience of reading comic-book adventures.

A strong, gritty, powerful piece of film making, and one of the three or four best movies made about the Vietnam era.

Everything you might want in a road movie: an off-the-cuff sense of adventure, a winningly scruffy charm and a whip-smart sense of humor.

Whether Adam Sandler can actually act is not actually answered in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love. But he's great in it.

Gently hilarious comedy.

Hell has not yet frozen over, but here's something equally unexpected: David Mamet has made a G-rated movie for adults.

Clever, compelling, funny and unpredictable, and it has a lollapa-looza of an ending.

There are so many balls in the air in the cheerfully violent Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, you'll want to wear a helmet for fear they'll all come crashing down.

Funny, insightful, unpredictable and blessed with pitch-perfect performances, Ghost World is one of the year's best movies.

The effects in "T3" are spectacular, and the action sequences -- particularly the fights between the good and bad terminators -- are exhilarating.

Giddily inventive.

May be the year's most derivative film, but it's also the most original.

This stirring children's movie about separation anxiety is swimming with comic references only adults will catch, thus greatly expanding the potential audience.

Breathtaking.

A smartly written, confidently directed film that delivers big laughs while developing two of the year's most earnest characters and some of its most rewarding sentiments.

Exhibiting the same sort of patience as his sensible hero, Philibert has created an extraordinarily humane portrait of a partnership between one adult and his very fortunate charges.

School of Rock may be to Black what "The Nutty Professor" was to Jerry Lewis, or "Groundhog Day" was to Bill Murray - that rare, perfectly tailored opportunity to play against one's broadest impulses. Not to neutralize them, necessarily, but to tame them and turn them into something very human and charming.

Everyone involved can claim credit, but it's Dinklage, in an understated, outstanding performance, who turns this unlikely tale into art that will strike a chord with any open-minded audience.

The white-knuckle center of the movie is Sean Penn, who gives an utterly raw performance as Jimmy, father of the dead girl. It's one of the few times that a parent's grief has felt real on the screen through all its ugly permutations.

It is to Padilha's enormous credit that he steadfastly kicks aside our own culturally imposed frames of reference, insisting that we see the truth, and the humanity, within this very real story.

As gorgeous and gripping as it is faithful to the spirit of Patrick O'Brian's celebrated series of historical novels.

Susan Tom has her hands full in Jonathan Karsh's documentary My Flesh and Blood -- she's dealing with her 13 children, most adopted, some with serious maladies. Rarely does one encounter such capable hands.

Gripping documentary.

A two-hour, one-joke comedy that never gets old, Stuck on You is the most mature, consistently funny and satisfyingly sweet movie in the rollicking careers of brother filmmakers Bobby and Peter Farrelly.

A brilliantly spare and poignant tragicomedy that projects such savage self-criticism of China's "economic miracle" that the film has been banned at home.

We're treated to two smashing performances from Morel and Blanc, and all of the mysteries raised before are satisfyingly resolved.

As tawdry as this may seem, Bertolucci is not trying to one-up himself. He was 27 when the student riots occurred and very much a participant in a revolution that was both complex in its implications and naive in much of the behavior. He has caught that perfectly

A haunting, melancholy work.

A bug-eyed marvel. [2 October 1998, p. 56]

Features an absurdist sensibility that ultimately melts your heart. It's certainly one of the stranger movies you'll see.

If you're at all curious about what it feels like to be inside a race car going 200 miles per hour at Daytona International Speedway, I don't think there's a better, quicker or safer way to find out than Simon Wincer's documentary.

Offers a brilliant raw look at sexual heeling. [19 August 1998, p. 35]

Man on Fire, with a best-ever Denzel Washington, is the first (nonreligious) sure thing to hit the multiplex this year.

If only there were a surefire way to describe Guy Maddin's films without scaring off viewers. The quirky Canadian is a genius who produces haunting, exquisitely droll movies that defy explanation.

Director Lee Chang-Dong has boldly crafted a challenge rarely found on film. But if you choose to meet it, you'll be rewarded with one of the most original, indelible romances in recent memory.

Shrek 2 delivers more fun than there is slime in a green ogre's swamp. Much of that is thanks to Antonio ­Banderas, who runs away with Shrek 2 on little cat feet.

An entrancing experience for Potter fans. It's a carefully crafted, dreamy immersion in a world that feels snugly familiar even when evil intrudes.

A sensational oddity. It sheds light on the creative process, on filmmaking and on the durability of friendship and professional respect despite the odds.

Even the hardest heart must melt in the face of The Story of the Weeping Camel.

The strength of McKay's film is not in identifying a cultural period, but in giving voice to so many great theater people. Their passion is infectious, their stories are priceless and their humor is boundless.

A perfect blend of summer action, a big movie with a deeply personal story.

The naturalistic dialogue is a masterful bit of writing, credited to Linklater and his "Sunrise" co-writer Kim Krizan, as well as to the two stars.

A beautifully rich performance by Meryl Streep, [18 September 1998, p. 57]

The perfect sci-fi movie for a post-9/11 world, in that it tells us we're afraid of threats hiding in plain sight.

The performance of the movie is Liev Schreiber as Shaw, a man howlingly uncomfortable in his own skin.

A raucous, riveting account of the greatest party you were never invited to.

This is a wickedly funny skewering of a prewar London society gone mad with frivolity.

If you're in the mood for a horror movie, this ought to do you.

Bernie Mac gives surprising wisdom and heart - along with the laughs - to what could have been just another generic baseball comedy.

The love and attention Oshii poured into animating Batou's pet basset hound proves that the human instinct dominates even in a movie dependent on technology.

A droll gem that celebrates movie love with feeling and deadpan humor.

The plot is intricate and tight. The preamble is a bit challenging to sort out. But the movie's engine is the relationships and the characters' inner lives, all of it boiling with emotional intensity.

A riveting rock documentary.

Tarnation represents a breakthrough in the possibilities of the personal film as a mix of poetry and journalism. It's also harrowing as hell.

It's not as clever, or as consistently funny, or as well-cast as "Shakespeare in Love," but Richard Eyre's Stage Beauty is the most fun I've had with the Bard since that 1998 Oscar winner.

It turns out that puppets can tell us more about who we are as a nation than the most meticulous documentary. In Team America: World Police, the potty-mouthed, crazily brilliant musical from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the result is hilarious, shocking and bound to offend nearly everyone.

It's a deceptively simple tale that tackles, serenely and with surprising humor, issues of gender, power, custom and change.

Every once in a while, a performance pops out of a Hollywood movie that is so brilliant and unique to the matching of actor to role that it's impossible to imagine anyone else achieving it.

Does a meticulous job of summarizing these notorious events, but it is the stories of Liuzzo's five children that gives it fresh emotional power.

It's a sensation - both a milestone in computer-animation and a likely Christmas classic.

The combination of old-time Hollywood valor and ahead-of-its-time surprises makes this restoration a big event.

The face-to-face interviews laced throughout the movie are fascinating and often laugh-out-loud funny. Ask people to talk dirty and you don't know what they'll say.

In this cross between film noir and melodrama, there's lust, need, camp and betrayal.

Clever, buoyant and surprisingly human.

Million Dollar Baby is a knockout. It is Clint Eastwood's baby in every respect — a movie that approaches the level of great boxing films, like "Raging Bull," by using sport as a metaphor for human nature.

No picnic to watch -- Leigh's camera is unsentimental and unsparing.

Yet another film from Iran that has the leisurely pace, sly humor and incontrovertible wisdom of a Sufi parable.

But there were few, if any, better performances in 2000 than the one Blanchett gives here, and Raimi's crafty blend of dramatic realism and supernatural knowledge is one of the year's best directing con jobs.

A movie-movie about the movies.

When boy meets girl in Steven Soderbergh's jaunty, sexy Out of Sight, it happens with a bang.

An astonishingly intimate and painful coming-of-age story.

A masterful collection of cinematic essays.

After all the observations on heartache, politics, art, commerce, passion, identity, mortality, even mental health, six hours begin to seem downright compact.

In making such an appealing movie about characters who are usually swept under the Hollywood rug, Binder does us all a service.

This hunt for revenge is really a quest for self-discovery. The story, acting and brilliant directing elevate Oldboy into a human struggle to know yourself and your place in the universe, and to live with that sometimes terrible knowledge.

Gives moviegoers a funny, observant, evanescent approach to the mysteries of human desire.

Is a movie worthwhile if it makes you sick? Absolutely, in the case of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

Bujalski celebrates the awkwardness of twentysomething life, allowing Dollenmayer to create a beautifully authentic portrait.

This winning documentary about fifth-graders who learn ballroom dancing is one of those movies that make the world a brighter place.

When it comes to sports movies, there's nothing like the real thing, and there's never been anything quite as real as the documentary Murderball.

The feel-good movie of the summer. And the song this pimp works up, about how hard it is to manage a stable of ho's, is catchy and moving.

What keeps the film from becoming obnoxiously redundant is the conviviality of the comedians. These are funny people even when they're not telling the joke.

Happily, Morrison's actors grasp his intentions perfectly, shading their roles so well that we never quite get a handle on anyone. Each player is outstanding, but the highest praise must go to Weston.

The same audience that loves "March of the Penguins" will eat up this beautifully told, gorgeously shot story of a grieving boy trying to return his pet cheetah to the wilds of South Africa.

Works on every level. The humor and language are as crude as an R rating allows, but Carell and Apatow's script is so hip, funny and - yes - innocent that it's never offensive.

It is a devastating indictment of the ruling class of Money, Miss.

You can't look away, not only because the carnage is so masterfully photographed, but because the director sucks you into his bleak, poetic, even sensible vision of cosmic brutality. Not for the faint-hearted!

A slick, fast-paced production with first-rate performances and an emotional punch you won't soon forget.

The story itself is a smooth little gem.

Straightforward and immensely powerful, the movie offers a blunt assessment of the war from soldiers currently fighting it, and their perspective is not pretty.

A great divorce movie. It's also one of the canniest comedies ever made about a certain kind of literary pretension.

Goldfine discover so many fascinating themes within their seemingly narrow subject that anyone with the slightest interest in history or human nature will find it absorbing.

Seeing the splendid new version of Pride & Prejudice can be hazardous to your health: There's a very real danger of swooning.

The darkest, most thrilling entry yet in the movie franchise.

Rarely do adaptations of stage plays work on screen, and almost never do they work as well as this one does. Most remarkably, the dryly comic "Moon" is virtually a one-man show.

What fans want are good movies. This one isn't particularly funny or romantic, but it's gripping and tragic. It asks some nasty, yet profound, questions about human desire and behavior.

Caché seems at first glance like a straightforward thriller - about a talk-show host being stalked by a technologically savvy blackmailer. But it's really a sly, subversive commentary on conscience, race, class and inequity.

More fun than a company picnic - and a lot more fun than the classic 18th century novel that inspired it - Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story is the first good comedy of 2006.

The pleasure of Ever After is that it never takes itself seriously. [31Jul1998, Pg. 47]

Directed with great skill and intelligence by Joseph Ruben, Return to Paradise, is a rare thing among today's movies a drama of conscience. [14 Aug1 998, Pg.51]

It's more fun than a turkey shoot. It's also one of the most entertaining riffs on American culture in years.

I wouldn't recommend the movie to anyone, but if the families of the victims take something positive from it, as their cooperation with Greengrass suggests they do, that's justification enough.

Less bloody than its predecessors, Lady Vengeance wraps up with a killer (literally) finale that calls into question the killer instinct. It's one of the reasons Park's brutal films are so emotionally rewarding.

The stories are eye-opening and heartwarming at the same time, but you'll be moved less by empathy for the characters than by the summoning of your own emotional memories. This movie is personal.

Though made 31 years after D-Day, the dramatic scenes have the period look of a '40s movie, which links them perfectly with the stunning archival footage.

It's as harrowing as moviegoing gets.

This brilliant documentary, which shows not only how Belgian King Leopold II made the huge and resource-rich central African Congo his own private reserve, but how his legacy of exploiting the land and brutalizing its people continues in modern times.

Fascinating, amusing and ultimately disturbing.

In some ways, The Queen is a comedy of manners - bad, good and archaic. The formal bowing and scraping surrounding Her Majesty is as hilarious as it is (apparently) accurate.

Built from a perfect story-telling collaboration.

One of the best things about Michael Apted's uniquely ambitious and continuing documentary series on the lives of a group of British schoolchildren is that you don't have to have seen the last one to enjoy the next.

Amy Berg's riveting documentary, tracks O'Grady's predatory trail from San Andreas, Calif., to Ireland, where he is now living on a church pension that was apparently meant to buy his silence.

Eastwood's sepia-toned combat scenes are as graphic, if not quite as jolting, as those in "Ryan." And without a Tom Hanks-size star in the cast, "Flags" is not likely to do "Ryan's" blockbuster business. But "Flags," a true story directed by someone with far more faith in the audience's ability to empathize, is the better movie.

A powerful movie that should win all the year's ensemble acting awards. Pitt has never done better dramatic work, Blanchett is as convincing as always, and - in introducing themselves to American audiences - veteran Mexican actress Barraza and Japan's Kikuchi are revelations.

If "The Godfather" movies were based on real gangsters and some of them were still around to talk about the good old days, they might be as fascinating as the characters in Billy Corben's documentary about the cocaine import business in 1970s Miami.

For a black comedy whose tangled sequence of events is completely improbable, Pedro Almodóvar's Volver feels absolutely authentic. So, think of everything as metaphor and enjoy one of the year's most delectably twisted treats.

Fans of anyone other than Sean Connery who has played James Bond may want to look away, because admirers of Ian Fleming's 007 novels are almost bound to agree that Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Sean.

This is Guest's fourth ensemble parody of showbiz subjects, and though his sketch-comedy style and acting troupe are now familiar, this is his most accomplished movie.

Except for Hempf, every character is under incredible duress, and the performances are exceptional. With his first feature, an Oscar nominee for foreign-language film, von Donnersmarck has certainly left his mark.

Peter O'Toole, looking frail beyond his 74 years, gives what may be his farewell performance as a leading movie actor in Roger Michell's Venus. It's one for the books - and maybe the Oscars, too.

As the relationship between the two British schoolteachers begins (quietly), builds (deceptively) and dissolves (spectacularly), Dench and Blanchett give a master class in acting. Pick your own sports metaphor, but watching them go at each other is the match of the year.

Beautifully shot, both in darkened homes and on the misty green Irish landscape by Loach's frequent cinematographer Barry Aykroyd, "Wind" has a you-are-there intensity and intimacy about it that make it nearly overwhelming. But for all its violence and subsequent sadness, it's a movie of extraordinary importance.

Director Jafar Panahi has long been an eloquent and passionate representative for Iranian women. But judging by this deeply poignant comedy, they may not need a mouthpiece much longer.

Riveting update of George Bizet's "Carmen."

Critics are already comparing the two movies and largely agreeing that Tarantino?s story about a psychopathic stuntman who targets women for highway carnage is the best. I disagree.

Pegg and Wright are armed with an endlessly impressive arsenal of attention grabbers, from witty editing tricks to a wry soundtrack and a joke-packed script that demands multiple viewings.

Even those who've long noted Polley's intelligence on screen will be amazed by the perception she displays as a filmmaker.

With nifty new villains, a revived Green Goblin, plus $300 million worth of aerial special effects, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 is definitely good to go.

28 Weeks Later has a stronger story line, equally fine performances, greater tension, enough gore to satisfy the most hard-core zombie fan, and a narrative pace that flings us from the opening scenes to the very last image.

What stands out, not surprisingly, is the work and passion that goes into the shows. But seeing all this from the inside creates an extraordinary level of empathy for those involved.

Michael Corrente's Brooklyn Rules takes him to the mean streets of Gotti country, circa 1985, and it's another gem.

Whatever it is you're looking for - comedy, horror, parades of singing frogs and dancing kitchen appliances - you'll find it in Satoshi Kon's anime adventure, a jaw-dropping feat of imagination.

What follows is an extreme case of reverse courtship, which begins at conception and works backward toward getting to know each other, and then moves forward to one of the funniest birthing scenes ever filmed.

Moore's most assured, least antagonistic and potentially most important film.

The most compelling and least partisan of all the Iraq documentaries.

Bursting with so much amped-up energy, you may need to rest once it's finally done.

While it won't rival the Harry Potter movies as a cultural milestone, the luminous, irresistible Stardust is no less industrious at scavenging myths and legends and making something altogether new from the familiar pickings.

Heartbreaking and hilarious.

Unlike Glenn Ford, a soft-spoken studio star who was cast against type as Wade 50 years ago, Crowe is a perfect fit. Not because of his bad boy behavior offscreen, but because he can blend charm and menace better than anyone.

This is likely the fastest-moving intentionally funny action movie ever made. It's as if the 21 Bond movies and four "Die Hards" had been distilled to remove their body fat (that is, character development, buildup, rest stops, etc.) and left us with only the killing and the punch lines.

Tony Gilroy, co-author of the superb Jason Bourne film trilogy, makes a stunning directorial debut with Michael Clayton, an out-of-courtroom drama that helps solidify George Clooney's acting bona fides.

Berry gives a riveting performance, but as a deeply decent man trapped in a hell of his own making, Del Toro gives the kind of career performance Berry gave in "Monster's Ball."

Arguably Lumet's best film in 20 years.

If the structure is a tad out of whack, "No Country" does not lack for action or suspense. Some of the scenes of Chigurh's stalking of Moss are nearly unbearably tense. Bring your worry beads.

Whether this reserved, hypercautious widower can deal with the arousal she creates in him - let alone be physically able to act on it - is one of the many layers of tension that drive this unusual and absolutely riveting dance.

Represents the year's biggest gamble - and it delivers the year's biggest and most ambitious fantasy.

The Manhattan movie of the year, Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend, offers a stunning glimpse into how the city - as we know it today - might look in 2012 if it were abandoned in 2009.

The black-and-white animation won't dazzle your eyes, but everything else about Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's adaptation of Satrapi's graphic comic book series Persepolis will hold you in its thrall.

With a grating symphonic score by ­Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and the constant sense of danger following Plainview, "Blood" does not release its grip on the audience until its last, bizarrely crazy minutes.

Ale's community is like a band of pirates - collegial, bickering, larcenous and supportive - and his life within it is both heartening and heartbreaking.

Hou intends to celebrate the classic 1956 children's film "The Red Balloon," and he has done a beautiful job. In fact, he may well have created a future classic of his own.

After its clichéd first scene - a solo LAPD officer battling a well-armed gang of thugs - Street Kings becomes an enjoyably tough, blood-splattered action drama that revolves around the one good cop at its center.

The result is the first comic-book movie in a while that actually feels like a classic comic book: fast, furious and flip. Forget about superheroes with love problems and tortured souls.

Even with all the CGI effects, this darkly emotional movie feels like the anti-"Speed Racer." Sure, it's a big-budget spectacle. But it's also the kind of grandly old-fashioned entertainment we don't get enough of anymore.

Entertaining, inventive and old-fashioned in the best way.

Entertaining, smart and snappy, this terrific doc, a Sundance favorite, digs into the country's use of steroids and how it affects sports, pop culture and the self-image of young men.

The movie's beating heart is the friendship between the women, who had found some sort of happiness by the show's 2004 finale. Now they're all at a personal crossroads and need one another more than ever.

Rotates around a rusty little robotic hero who's built, as the movie is, with such emotion, brains and humor that whole universes exist in his whirring tones and binocular eyes.

The endlessly inventive del Toro creates visual fantasies unlike any other, and the creatures on display here are truly extraordinary. But amid all the costumes, all the action, and all the special effects, it's the humanity that makes his work so memorable. Yes, the monsters are amazing. But the moment when a heartsick Hellboy discovers Barry Manilow? Priceless.

The sort of discovery meant to be savored by the few who find it, The Go-Getter was made for anyone who ever felt stuck, or alone, or desperate to find their place in the world.

It was a true media circus, and despite Polanski's work before and since, the film shows how it will forever be his first association in the public consciousness. In the U.S., at least.

Charismatic and complicated, Noonan tries to run the movie the way he runs his town. But while the director sometimes appears to be glorifying Noonan's choices, reminders of uncomfortable reality intrude regularly.

History has made his midair stroll meaningful, but the film shows how even then, everyone - from Petit to his accomplices to the cops who were waiting for him atop the North Tower - recognized the stunt's crazy poetry.

As for the ever-impressive supporting cast, neither a delightfully befuddled Jim Broadbent nor a wild-eyed Helena Bonham Carter can upstage Alan Rickman, who again proves invaluable as the slithery Prof. Snape.

What he does do finally in this funny, refreshing movie is assert how unrestrained religiosity could guarantee the "end days" many of his subjects admit to looking forward to.

A fast-moving, rock 'em-sock 'em movie that continues the man-vs.-machines series begun 25 years ago.

A measured and thoughtful meditation on a leader who, this terrific movie believes, inadvertently made the world as roiling as his soul.

Leoni and Kinnear are charming, and Koepp keeps the mood appropriately light. But really, this would be just another disposable comedy if it weren't for our unassuming star.

A little miracle, Azazel Jacobs' lovely story of a life lost and found tackles big issues -love, maturity, fulfillment - in deceptively modest fashion.

A film as unique as this is a gift that shouldn't be ignored.

Cheshire refuses to look away, no matter how complicated things get. In fact, it's the tangled, tortured roots that most inspire him, turning this deeply personal film into a potent meditation on our nation's past.

Alfredson makes the most of every detail, carefully crafting an atmosphere of haunting alienation. These two lost souls may come together under unusual circumstances, but their connection feels universally human.

It's a stunner.

Though overly self-conscious, this "Tale" is nonetheless wry, observant and frequently heartbreaking. It's also bound to make you feel better about your own holiday plans.

The movie loses its way toward the end, shifting from wry black comedy to slightly overdone pathos. But there's plenty here to appreciate, making the title perfectly apt.

As a whole, Sam Mendes' film of Revolutionary Road comes close but falls short of capturing Richard Yates' terrific novel.

Benjamin never questions his fate and ­never actually gets to enjoy being a kid. At least there's a thoughtful middle part, where the enigmatic Blanchett comes alive and Benjamin seems haunted by life -- someone we recognize, and not just a vessel tossed about by time.

Both Rourke and Tomei bring a tender, lived-in honesty to their sad roles.

Kechiche takes his time, allowing us to know the characters as if we live next door. But be warned: for those who come to feel like a member of the family, the unexpected end may seem strikingly unfair.

This animated documentary, from former Israeli soldier Ari Folman, blends both tactics to devastating effect. Perhaps only animation could give us the distance that makes his subject bearable: the personal cost of his own participation in the 1982 Lebanon War.

Layering his film with the songs that made his subject an icon, Tillman is aware that Biggie connected with his audience because he told stories others instantly understood. Notorious does that, too.

This is a role that the Julia Roberts of 1999 couldn't have played, and that's fine. The one we have here is much better.

While their latest achievement can't quite one-up "WALL-E," it offers soaring highs that are bound to enchant viewers of any age.

Intensely compelling documentary.