The Fall is a movie whose every frame pulsates with the desire to be a transportive, transcendent work of cinema. And each one of said frames is full of visual bedazzlement and wonder. So full that one is loathe to sum up with the phrase "Close, but no cigar." But there is something, finally, kind of pushy about the film's desire to be a masterpiece.

From Downey Jr.'s purposely racist embodiment of African-American anachronisms to Black's scatological humor, everything in Tropic Thunder qualifies as satire, not spoof. It's an important distinction. Pauline Kael once noted that "unlike satire, spoofing has no serious objectives; it doesn't attack anything that anyone could take seriously; it has no cleansing power."

This is one train that you shouldn't miss.

The perfect antidote to the post-holiday blues. It's exciting, well-acted, touching, and genuine.

A remarkable and disturbing look at the personal stories glossed over by the headlines.

Sally Hawkins offers an Oscar-worthy performance as Poppy, the funny, kind-hearted, and mischievous protagonist.

At turns as neurotic and nebbishy as any Woody Allen flick, as creepy and disorienting as your favorite "Twilight Zone" episode, and as steeped in magical realism as the most moving Márquez novel, Synecdoche may not be the feel-good date movie of the year. But for viewers up for the challenge, it may be the film most likely to stick with you.

Sometimes the only funny stuff is in the trailers, but not so here. Kristen Johnson was especially adept at stealing some scenes.

The beginning is a little slow, but after Neeson starts his hunt and does his best wrath-of-God impression, it doesn’t skip a beat.

The story is creepy fun and 100-percent different than whatever other crap is flooding the February market.

Ginnifer Goodwin gives a standout performance--and that’s saying a lot considering the large cast--as the insecure, neurotic female looking for love.

This movie was absolutely hilarious, and proved that dating might be easy, but making friends is much harder.

Each character has their own story, and Pixar never sacrifices their development just for a happy ending.

We actually had the urge to dodge the sea snakes swimming right at us.

You might not bust a gut laughing, but Malkovich’s performance alone is worth the 90-minutes required to watch it.

On the surface, this might look like a typical teen movie, but Adventureland’s talented cast perfectly portrays the self-loathing and strong-minded characters in that transient post-college stage of life.

A great-looking and smart film. It has enough action, wonder, depth, and action to keep any fan of the genre happy. The sociological undertones here are fascinating as well.

The credits may be silly, but the last scene is a definite tear-jerker.

Why John Cusack stopped doing this kind of movie remains one of the late-20th century’s great mysteries. Teaming him with contemporary comic vanguards Corrdry and Robinson is equal parts welcome and unexpected as the three relive the social, sexual, and Soviet fears of the era.

We were also glad to see they didn't ignore the humorous elements that made the original so great. Plus, the casting is spot on.

Inception is one of the best sci-fi movies of the new century, a mind-bender about dreams as public spaces.

It's the kind of smart, stylish, entertaining and grown-up movie that the studios are making less and less of these days.

The film is beautifully acted by all, but Nora-Jane Noone, as the sloe-eyed orphan Bernadette, is first among equals here, and a genuine find.

The actors and acting are so attractive--as is, per usual in a Merchant Ivory production, the scenery--that the movie’s less deft handling of the scenario’s various themes, not to mention some stumbling in the final quarter, when the story’s tone grows a little darker, doesn’t stand out as much as it might have.

Intelligently written and beautifully acted throughout, it’s a good, and rare, example of what we used to refer to as a movie for adults. Adults, be advised.

If you dissect Masked line by line, it would be, like a Dylan song, indecipherable. But if you take the allegory as a whole, by simply asking the questions, it somehow makes a statement. Is it muddled? Yes. Imperfect? Sure. Impenetrable? Well, that's open to interpretation.

The film has its charm, mostly found in its lead characters, who engage in harmless hijinks due to their language and cultural differences.

Malkovich is more interested in hitting notes of elegiac lyricism than delivering socko action; this is a thriller that means to get under your skin rather than make you leap from your seat.

At its best, Mahowny is intricate, engrossing, wryly funny, and strangely poetic.

What isn't fair is the film's R rating, which makes this charming coming-of-age tale virtually inaccessible to the audience sure to cherish it most.

Duff is a charming heroine who carries the movie cheerfully, if not gracefully--the pratfalls come early and often.

Surely it’s a credit to this luminous cast that the characters can behave in such despicable ways yet still command one’s sympathy.

The true sensory delight is when the two men share screen time, and the palette is bombarded with their contrasting hues, the score (by Pascal Esteve) even meticulously interlacing their two musical personalities.

Lee’s use of split-screens and dynamic transitions makes the process of actively interpreting his monstrous vision a fresh and unrivaled experience.

Moncrieff’s overriding theme here isn’t empowerment but survival. The movie crams a hell of a lot of dysfunction into its 88 minutes.

Until the point that changes everything, Manito is more a portrait of a neighborhood and its various characters--and this is the even more impressive part of the film. Once the disasters start to domino, the story becomes a bit familiar, a bit manipulative.

It’s worth seeing twice just for the privilege of watching Rampling and Sagnier match each other stroke for stroke.

It puts almost everything it has into its explosive set pieces, but manages to instill the audience with just enough emotional involvement. If, Ah-nold decides to come bach again, this installment should ensure he has an audience.

Comedy-action lunacy of a truly high, and endlessly bizarre, order.

Understated, quietly amusing, and steadily paced.

It's churlish, especially these days, to try to split the difference between an immortal comedy classic and a mere laugh riot.

So tasteless, so fiendishly puerile that it’s hilarious.

It plays on your knowledge of/expectations about generic horror movies and then either delivers the goods from an unexpected angle or pulls the rug out from under you.

It's the details that make Dummy such a winner. By way of comparison, consider last summer's "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," in which each actor put a heartfelt spin on his or her one-joke character (the father who believes that Windex cures everything). Well, here's an entire movie built on nuggets like that.

A wildly creative amusement, thanks mostly to Campbell, whose weathered yet still-taking-care-of-business Elvis is alone worth the price of admission.

Surprisingly clever, high-energy adventure (director Peter Berg should be proud).

Although director Eytan Fox focuses on Yossi and Jagger's specific situation, he also casts a critical eye on the responsibility military service puts on all young people who are still in the process of discovering themselves.

Though the movie is predictable, it's also honest; Fin emerges from his struggles a better person but not A Better Person, if you catch my drift. And in any case all of the actors are a great pleasure to watch.

While it's not nearly as beguiling as the Coen's last pic, the uncanny "The Man Who Wasn't There," Cruelty is still a brisk hoot.

While not a masterpiece along the lines of "The Lion King," and not a super-smart witticism-fest like "Lilo and Stitch," Brother Bear is deeply heartfelt, touching, and beautiful.

Howard’s inclination toward graphic, gruesome violence, reminiscent of Ransom’s grisly denouement, The Missing is, at its core, a story well-told and built upon the solid foundation of Blanchett’s supremely capable performance.

Driving the plot, Baldwin gives an inexorable, career-marking performance.

With the careful timing and nuance of a master actor, Sharif turns a two-dimensional sketch into the film's most absorbing character.

The film is well-paced and surprisingly suspenseful.

Director Mike Newell strips away facades and keeps this movie singing to the feel-good ending where everyone learns a life lesson by graduation time, whatever their choice may be.

Cheaper entertains a broad audience by recalling an age of family filmmaking when that term wasn’t synonymous with crap.

What On the Run has going for it: solid acting, taut editing, smartly economical dialogue, an elevatingly reverberant score, and a rousing vitality that left me salivating for The Trilogy in full.

Miracle is definitely exciting, and it’s family-family to boot. Take the kids. They may not buy the "any dream is possible" stuff, but if nothing else, the story might pique their interest in American history.

Given that the B-to-Z movies parodied in Cadavra were funny to begin with, it begs the question as to why writer-director-star Larry Blamire and company bothered. I think they’re not so much nostalgic for this type of movie as they are for the kind of laughter it provoked.

The Broken Lizard guys don't so much send up a genre as inhabit it, and subvert it from the inside.

Bergman wants the viewer to empathize more with the characters’ perseverance than their pain, and he pulls it off, thanks to his sharp eye, compassion, and humor, and of course to the performances. [March 2004, p. 26]

An amply entertaining tale of survival terror, fully realizing the epicness of Romero's vision by infecting every wide-angled overhead shot with as many computer-generated cadavers as possible, and bridging tense moments with a laugh-aloud, plucky wit.

It’s tempting to summarize this Irish picture as a working-class version of "Love Actually," and indeed, the hardscrabble lives of most of its amorously unfulfilled characters go a long way in making it a whole lot less emetic than Richard Curtis’s hugfest.

If the film's love triangle feels a little silly and the arch-villains a little over the top, it's all secondary to del Toro's passionate immersion in Hellboy.

Films like this have a way of finding their own devoted fan base, and Gypsy 83 deserves to be discovered not only by Goth and gay crowds, but by anyone who runs screaming from all things average.

It’s rich enough in atmosphere to make you almost buy the quasi-allegorical absurdities.

A subtly hilarious supporting performance from Frances Fisher, as Moore's mother, and a latter-day Sid and Nancy (Michael Sheen and Parker Posey, seeming deliriously inebriated the entire time) round out the thoroughly diverting cast.

Mean Girls depicts the kind of traumatic high school experience that might await spoiled rich girls who grow up in two-parent households with designer clothes and Escalades.

Wolfgang Petersen's Troy recalls an age when Hollywood not only gambled on but flourished with grandiose epics and casts of thousands, and brings megawatt star power to what is, at root, a brilliantly told story.

The humor is so satisfying in its moment-to-moment pleasures that it's almost unsportsmanlike to criticize the bigger picture.

Kids deserve an adventure movie like this, one that might inspire them to become junior inventors and ignite their interest in the world's many wonders.

While Solondz's world is a hell hole and Anderson's "Rushmore" is a place of high-toned and often poignant whimsy, Napoleon Dynamite's unceasing burlesque creates a world that is pretty much a cartoon--and it's a damn funny cartoon to boot.

There are more than a couple of moments in this film, adapted by writer-director Tod Williams from a big swatch of Irving’s multigenerational quilt "A Widow for One Year," that get Irving’s sense of grotesque tragedy and tragic grotesquerie just right

Anchorman is the kind of wonderful, cotton-candy escapism that should leave you with the right kind of stomachache.

Home is a difficult film for its viewer, because none of the leads fall into the comfortable categories of film characters played by movie stars.

The action is great, the story line unpredictable, the ending satisfying. Stander is crackling. Really.

Exceptionally strong performances from the entire cast draw you into the movie's deliberately provocative world, a "Lord of the Flies"–like realm where parents are noticeably absent.

It's capable and strong direction that hold the audience through the final match, but in the end, it's Paul Bettany's world, and the rest of us are just happy to visit for an hour and a half.

This is a real grabber.

Some might not even notice what's going on when director Walter Salles finally shows his hand, and ends the film with documentary footage of the real-life Granado, now aged 81, romping in the earthly paradise that is present-day Cuba.

Shame is a welcome reminder that sex is sometimes too ridiculous to take so seriously.

Imelda Staunton is absolutely astonishing.

This is Gere’s movie, and Sarandon and Lopez graciously let him dance away with it.

Director Dylan Kidd sneaks some pretty profound observations about love and life by us.

In equal parts powerful and peculiar, the film is not my favorite of Green’s, but it helps solidify his position as one of the most visionary young directors around.

Delivers platinum performances, especially Sharon Warren as Ray's tough-lovin' mother, Kerry Washington as his lily-tempered wife, and Regina King as his spitfire mistress.

Most of the dialogue is pretty fresh, and it’s delivered with great brio, particularly by Owen. Roberts, alas, is not at her best here, but she has almost nothing to work with.

All told, while the goods that Daggers offers are choice, the movie ultimately demonstrates that too much can be, well, more than enough.

Soderberg provides a cornucopia of fizzy, post–New Wave imagery, fitting for a picture that’s pretty much all about surfaces.

An astounding achievement in production design, an original creation so completely in tune with the books' macabre sensibilities that even the movie's (arguably) happy ending can't diminish its satisfying sense of schadenfreude.

Doesn't always work -- like its title, the movie straddles two separate worlds, landing squarely in the dreaded realm of "dramedy" -- but it's a noble effort.

A sports flick that’s a worthy addition to the genre.

Strikingly shot with some wicked hand-held virtuousity, Assault is rivetingly suspenseful in how it toys with the morals of good guys flip-flopping to the dark side (and vice versa).

As science gives way to science fiction, the movie loses its way, squandering time that might better be spent exploring the ocean's floor, where these alien life forms already among us must be seen to be believed.

Listen up, fanboys and enthusaiasts of sophisticated visual wizardry: this theological noir-horror actioner-a stand-alone, rapturous good time-craftily and accurately captures the straight-faced camp, wry wit and episodic structure of its source material.

Though Melinda is no masterpiece, it’s also an Allen film that requires almost zero special pleading.

Though Steamboy could have been smarter and more dramatically engineered, this razzle-dazzle ride won't disappoint if you just need to blow off a little you-know-what.

The film's ambitiously eye-opening hypothesis, colorful characters, genuine compassion, and unexpected humor will make for a great vintage in years to come.

For the most part, what it aims to do-amuse and uplift-it does wonderfully.

Slick, well-acted, and smarter than it has to be.

What could have been Solondz's most complex and challenging film winds up being a bit on the flat side. Still, the life-forms skittering over its surface are fascinating to behold.

It’s hilarious, and genuinely cool.

It's a brisk and lively getaway with genuine personality.

Features some of the best fight and chase footage you'll see all summer.

If anything, it's the degree to which the animals differ from us that makes March of the Penguins so fascinating.

Even as Dark Water's horror-movie component flounders, a different, arguably better kind of thriller emerges.

A definite crowd-pleaser, Hustle & Flow has all the makings of a massive cultural phenomenon - if only audiences can get past the whole pimp thing.

Stick it out through the first ten incoherent minutes or so, and Stealth is an invigorating reward, especially the tense final half-hour.

Red Eye packs only about 15 minutes of solid scary, but really, that’s about all the time a human heart can spend lodged in one’s throat.

Perhaps with an open and willing mind, you'll also see the vast difference between this wily consciousness experiment and, say, Rob Zombie's new box of schlocks.

In the end it's still Gilliam Lite, but Gilliam Lite is better than no Gilliam at all.

With almost palpable anger, Meirelles hammers home the point that crushing poverty is only one problem for Africa that the West needs to do something about.

As exciting and involving as it is brainy.

You can't help but see this movie being crafted out of shards of movies past, seemingly in a cut and paste method. In the hands of a less skillful director, the film could very easily flop, but it doesn't.

Plays like a modern-day inversion of "Inherit the Wind," highlighting an astonishing shift in the American legal system over the last 80 years.

I have misgivings about Schreiber's use of the well-worn "I'll make you empathize with these Others, but first let's have laughs at their expense" approach, but eventually I was won over by his humane, moving road trip.

The Poe-esque story, the wonderfully twisted physical geometry of the characters, and the director’s signature sense of humor, combine to make Corpse Bride a fun movie, and one that breathes life not only into stop motion, but into animation as a whole.

The movie has a lot of good bits and terrific performances, including a too-perfect Keanu Reeves as a mystic orthodontist.

It touches deftly on class and race and sexual dissatisfaction and never lets up once it has put its characters under a microscope. Beautifully acted throughout, it showcases Watson's most complex performance in years.

A sweet, sunny, cinematic song of praise to simple '70s pleasures, Roll Bounce isn't any kind of life-changing picture, but it's breezy, good-hearted fun.

It's worth noting that Oliver Twist will likely be no Harry Potter at the box office, due in no small part to a lack of bombastic special effects and supernatural subplots, yet it's nearly as entertaining, even without the wizardry.

Serenity may not be the next "Star Wars," but it's the best we've seen since the original trilogy, and if Wheedon is planning Serenity trilogy (the door is left open), it would certainly be welcome.

Overall, a modest but lovely achievement for Anderson, Moore, and Harrelson, and a family entertainment in the best senses of the words.

Simply clicks on every level. From the surprising depth of the story, to the smooth and sometimes brilliant performances, to Hanson’s clear mastery of form.

There is something almost reverential about the way director Niki Caro shoots the winding roads leading into Minnesota's North Country mining community, just before dismantling all of it piece by piece.

Where "Elizabethtown" pretends to have the meaning of life, Shopgirl hones in on a few telling details, then allows audiences to fill in the rest.

The picture’s great, fast-moving fun for the most part, and Kilmer gives his most appealing, relaxed, and amusing performance since "Real Genius."

Thanks to the movie's very clear respect for Cash and his music, and thanks mostly to the two superb, heartfelt performances by Reese Witherspoon as Carter and Joaquin Phoenix as Cash, Walk the Line eventually earned my sympathy.

Syriana depicts a system so thoroughly and intractably rotten that the standard liberal how-you-can-make-a-difference solutions--being more conscientious about using electricity, getting a hybrid car, and so on--only look like so much spit in the face of an atomic fireball.

The Descent is bloody, disturbing, and genuinely frightening--you'll be very happy to leave that dark theater.

Marshall's Memoirs achieves something few other high-profile literary adaptations do: Rather than simply inspiring us to hunt down the source material, it actually stands alone as a film, rich in drama and star-crossed romance.

It's a slight story to be sure, but the pleasures of Mrs. Henderson Presents lie less with the narrative and more with the film's tone and the dynamic duo of Dench and Hoskins.

I say this as someone for whom the very idea of a Kong remake is sacrilege, Jackson's straitened conception yields up a pretty damn good popcorn movie.

A sweet, watchable little film.

Once you drink The Producers' Kool-Aid, it's a thoroughly enjoyable descent into madness.

The entertainingly unhinged Hostel reeks of kneeling reverence to the grisliest of psychotronica while simultaneously striving to out-gore and out-shock its predecessors.

Tristan & Isolde isn't a ground-breaking film in any way, but even though the story is familiar and even if you don't like romances, good casting, an able director, and notable cinematography draw you in to the fairy tale feeling of long ago and far away. Pass the popcorn.

Anybody can make a movie that's anti-slavery. But to make a movie that's explicitly anti-democracy-that's something.

This one will make you laugh early and often, and send you out of the theater in a cheerful mood.

The dogs are such charismatic performers it's almost a shame that there have to be humans in this story at all. Still, the Antarctica sequences alone make Eight Below one of the better family films out there right now.

Hood's film, with its bold, beautiful cinematography and hard-thumping kwaito music, brings us into a different world, and then helps us to understand it.

This unlikely pairing of relentless U.S. pollsters and a Bolivian election is a fascinating glimpse of the Americanized marketing of international politics (and vice versa).

Some viewers will wonder what exactly it is they are supposed to be laughing at, but those that do find themselves on the movie's wavelength will enjoy its observational approach to comedy.

This is the kind of comedy that gives you two meaty underhanded jokes for every big obvious guffaw. It doesn't add up to much more than that, but there's no earthly reason why it ought to.

The script's flaws are most keenly felt in the Jodie Foster storyline, to the point where her character seems more like a bumbling screw-up than a supposedly sought-after facilitator. Whenever Lee turns the camera back to Denzel and Clive though, the movie works.

With a cast of well-chosen actors, a good script, and an eye for making ordinary suburban scenes visually heartbreaking, director Steve Buscemi's small story of failure, depression-and ultimately, love-in one Indiana town rings painfully true-to-life.

It takes a good fifteen minutes to fully adjust to the screenplay's rhythms, but once you do, the dialogue is a lot of fun to listen to.

Obviously, if you don't like the Beasties or live music, arena-style, it's unlikely that you'll like their movie. But if you've ever even privately caught yourself nodding your head to "Brass Monkey," or you have a soft spot for the big-venue concert experience, Awesome rocks.

One thing not open to question is that the real heroes of this movie are Johnston's family, particularly his aging parents, who for all their heartbreak are palpably full of love and forbearance for their disturbed and, yes, talented boy.

With the almost half-decade spaces between Holofcener's three features, one might (rather unreasonably, I admit) expect her to have sought to break wholly new ground in the interim. So she hasn't; nevertheless, Friends is well-crafted, intelligent, genuinely adult fare.

The result is a film that's almost unremittingly bleak, but also consistently compelling.

The climactic spelling bee sequence is as tautly written and edited as any gridiron drama, and Palmer's performance here is truly gripping.

Those last thirty minutes are worth the price of admission.

As long as Guggenheim keeps his cameras trained on Gore's presentation, An Inconvenient Truth is an engaging film. Less successful are the scenes where Gore is seen off-stage, traveling around the world and visiting his childhood home.

If you've been disappointed by the recent rash of mediocre blockbusters, District B13 may provide some of the mindless fun you're looking for.

Ultimately, Wordplay is best enjoyed as an engaging look at a little-known subculture.

This Superman is like nothing you've ever seen before, but it tickles something primitive and comforting at the back of the mind. Gorgeously detailed and meticulously realized, it's a homecoming of a movie. Just wait for the theme; you'll understand.

This is one unmarked van you just might want to take a ride with.

By the end of the film, you actually come to mourn the passing of the EV1, a well-intentioned soul that was in the right place at the right time, but was surrounded by the wrong people.

Nelson works largely because Gosling and Epps work flawlessly together.

A visual delight as well as an satisfying period drama.

Hollywoodland is one of the nicest surprises of the late summer lull between blockbuster seasons, a smart period mystery--cum--character study--cum--bitter parable on the lures and liabilities of life in its titular locale.

Can he (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson ) act? Surprisingly, for the most part, the answer is yes, and the film is a success for it.

Despite some amusing jabs at America's influence on traditional China, this film leaves even this American viewer feeling oddly patriotic (or maybe just wishing she lived in China.)

Doesn't function particularly well as a documentary; it lacks a strong editorial point of view and doesn't really comment on the evangelical movement so much as it just portrays a selection of people and their views.

Whitaker's Amin is the kind of raging lunatic that only an actor who has made a specialty of quiet caginess could pull off so convincingly. It's great, and scary, to see Whitaker turn it up to 11 for once.

Mitchell's energy and occasional ingenuity make Shortbus an engaging viewing experience, provided you can stomach it.

Marie Antoinette churns a symphony out of a single note, too light and hermetically sealed in the minds of Coppola and her queen to transcend its artfully cared-for fluffiness.

In the end, it's not Amy's secret that's the most shocking thing about Sleeping Dogs, it's Hamilton's fearless commitment to making what could have been just a cheap punch line into something warmer, richer, and far better.

Borat is, in many ways, an heir to the same kind of subversion of American norms that the transvestite Divine perfected in John Waters’ early films.

Right off the bat, Catch a Fire distinguishes itself from other recent international productions about Africa (including The Constant Gardener and The Last King of Scotland) in that it is actually told from an African perspective.

While you can never completely put the fact that you are watching Pitt and Blanchett out of your mind, they both give charged, emotional performances.

This is one movie that's guaranteed to linger in your mind after you leave the theater, whether you want it to or not.

Surprisingly light on fab gadgets, there are, of course, double crosses, fast cars, and lots of gunplay.

It's a movie that keeps flirting with greatness, but settles for being above average.

What sets Fast Food Nation apart from other recent multi-character studies like "Crash," "Bobby," and "Babel" is that Linklater doesn't set up a single incident that ties all the story strands together.

Alll in all, however, Estevez has pulled together the best political drama, fiction or otherwise, in recent memory.

There's no one today writing English dialogue as sharp as Bennett's, and hearing it delivered expertly is a pleasure worth sitting through some dodgy montages for.

Although the science fiction element had the potential to drag the story down, it's kept to a minimum and left somewhat buried in techno jargon.

A riveting urban drama that tackles a myriad of sociopolitical issues -- conflicts of race, sex, class, marriage and politics -- without spreading itself thin.

It's not often that Hollywood is willing, or even able, to accurately dramatize what it's really like to be poor in America -- to evoke not only the circumstances, but also the sense humiliation and failure. That a European director like Gabriele Muccino, helming his first English-language film, is able to capture the essence of that experience is a testament to his skill as a filmmaker.

After the widely reviled "Rocky V," it was just as unlikely for there to be a satisfying conclusion to the Rocky saga, but Rocky Balboa fits the bill.

Action fans might find the film's first half somewhat of a slog to sit through because of its carefully honed exposition, while those used to Zhang's dialogue-heavy dramas are sure to be surprised by the film's brutal second half where blood spurts more than the words.

Perfume is sure to annoy as many moviegoers as it entertains, but at least even the naysayers would find it difficult to argue that film is nothing if not a departure from the ordinary.

If nothing else, this doc, which one the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at last year's Sundance Film Festival, will leave you feeling that the American dream is still alive and well.

Through a haze of opium smoke and Molotov cocktails igniting, Regular Lovers plays out like the heavier politicized and unsentimentalized counterpoint to Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Dreamers."

Neeson and Brosnan, along with the beautiful location photography from DP John Toll, keeps you involved even when Von Ancken's heavy-handed direction threatens to bog the proceedings down.

It may most aptly sum up the who the hell Ralph Nader is and why he insists on creating such a ruckus.

The procedural aspects of the story are briskly done, and Chris Cooper's portrayal of the traitor Hanssen is a typically Cooperesque marvel.

All of the actors are on point (Dupontel and Morante are particularly good), the individual story arcs are involving, if not exactly complex, and Thompson keeps the proceedings moving along at a comfortable clip.

Still, the film actually earns the description of being inspirational, not only to those of us with a dream, but to those who thought the quality family film had died long ago.

Perpetually wide-eyed and mega-snarly bedraggled, Christina Ricci prowls through Black Snake Moan looking like something the cat dragged in. If you're anything like me, you'll be very grateful to the cat.

It's a film that approaches greatness and then fumbles.

A thoughtful, involving and sometimes moving film that almost (and I do mean almost) justifies its use of 9/11 as a dramatic device.

It is trim, fast-moving and often quite funny, particularly in the exchanges between Ferrell and Heder -- the former's trademark clueless oafishness meshes nicely with the latter's alternating current of petulance and sweetness.

With his directorial debut, screenwriting stalwart Scott Frank concocts a compelling variation on a reliable film noir convention.

Wheeler's script is a buzzing contrivance, and Hallström's direction is brisker than almost anything he's ever done. So by all means enjoy The Hoax -- it's smart fun. Just don't buy it.

Year of the Dog would have benefited from a stronger hand behind the camera (White's general aesthetic basically involves cribbing heavily from Wes Anderson and Jared Hess), but as a showcase for Shannon, it ends up being strangely moving.

Deeply nuts and exhaustingly hilarious.

It's an awful shame that Shelly will not be making any more films, but all the more reason to celebrate Waitress now.

A gruelingly tense, deftly plotted, and slyly intelligent piece of work. And also it's really really disgusting.

More often than not laugh-out-loud hilarious.

As the caper reaches its conclusion in a swirl of turnabouts and twists -- you'll never guess in whose favor all of them go -- Thirteen delivers more than enough gaming satisfaction for one such picture.

The crazy fantasy world of this saga is plenty compelling and quirky.

Up will still make you feel like you've caught a big wave.

The film is punctuated by a literal knock down, drag out affair that has all the perverse curiosity of watching a "late career" Mike Tyson bout. But by the end, the real knockout is the discovery of this comic gem.

Sandy, Danny, and their sexier counterparts Rizzo and Kenickie are spectacular fun to watch, especially in their non-TV-edited glory. Though it's virtually impossible to forget, and stay quiet during, the film's many songs, it's also surprising to remember all of the racy dialogue and double entendres in the original. Or maybe it's just that we never got them when we were ten.

What does not work, in a movie where almost everything, including dramatic rhetoric, has been kept on a modest scale up to this point, is the heavy-handed way Winterbottom (and Jolie) contrast the pain of loss with the pain of begetting toward the end.