The most impressive thing about the film's technical wizardry is, finally, how unimpressive it is. One doesn't leave the movie with a mind blown by visual bedazzlement but with a soul shattered by the profound sense of tragedy Linklater and company so beautifully put across.

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

Time is more than reasonably diverting.

Haynes's picture may not be perfect -- hell, I'm not even sure that perfection is a state it even aspires to -- but it's bold and individualistic and accomplished. A reason to take heart for the state of current American moviemaking.

What’s missing here is the amnesiac hook that made "The Bourne Identity" such a sleeper hit.

The Proposition can be appreciated as a strong technical exercise, but it fails to resonate on any deeper level.

Director Shortland frames the story against the apt grey, off-season ski town, but her attempt to match it with deliberate pacing just makes the film feel chilly and too long, just like Heidi's depressing routine.

But after surveying pop and rock hybrids, Akin and Hacke go deeper. You will be very happy indeed to make the acquaintance of such Turkish music luminaries as Orhan Gencebay and Sezen Aksu, whose stories and personalities are as fascinating as their music.

As exciting and involving as it is brainy.

Think of how M. Night Shyamalan redefined the ghost story (The Sixth Sense), the superhero creation myth (Unbreakable), and the alien-invasion epic (Signs)--and you may get a sense of the genius behind this fascinating new horror film.

Made with obvious passion and humor (and a side of fries), Super Size Me is a mostly entertaining look at fast food, the billion-dollar businesses behind it, and its warped effect on our culture.

Exiled brings To back to lighter ground, and it’s one of his most assured, enjoyable pictures, refreshing fun that’s sure to satisfy anyone’s action jones.

It was definitely a great idea to give Kung Fu Panda the IMAX treatment. The fight scenes, quivering whiskers and moist noses, foggy mountaintops, and fluttering peach blossoms are equally impressive on the huge, curved screen.

A lightweight but sincere coming-of-age story.

As fate would have it, Rocket Science might prove to be the handiwork of a burgeoning cinematic genius.

Over the course of almost two and a half fascinating hours, they make a cogent, compelling, powerful argument, and they also make a terrific movie.

What the film lacks in freshness, it makes up for in great characters, fun vocal performances, and a script with some genuine emotional heft.

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

This is a movie where you WANT to stick around for the credits. The beauty is that you are totally set up for it, and you don't mind one bit. That final sequence ties the movie together in an awesome fashion.

Ramshackle one minute, pointlessly deliberate the next.

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.

It’s hilarious, and genuinely cool.

Even in the service of silliness, no one plays tragic, desperate, and beautiful better than Keener, who together with Carell, makes this film both laugh out loud funny and humane.

Against very steep odds, writer-director Billy Ray and company have, in telling the real-life story of fictionalizing "New Republic" writer Stephen Glass and his downfall, produced the most entertaining inside-journalism movie since "All the President's Men."

Has masterfully polished mechanics, some of the most seamless CGI effects in recent memory, and the Wells veneration is admirable. However, the film takes far too many creative shortcuts, like bookended narration and aliens that make strategically humanlike mistakes, completely incongruous to their technological superiority.

If the resultant wreckage is a little underwhelming, and the film's coda useless and trite, the getting there is pretty absorbing.

Technically, it rewards with nothing less than painterly cinematography and a seamless surge of organic soundscapes, but the story is entirely predicated on a weather metaphor so obvious that even an unplugged Doppler radar could detect it.

It's been well-publicized that Affleck, going for as authentic a feel as possible, cast many genuine South Bostoners in both extra and speaking roles, and, while that's salutary, in some scenes his strategy backfires, yielding caricatures that are merely more vivid than the ones turned out by Central Casting Hollywood productions.

Aesthetically wild and otherwise mild.

On the surface, each of these characters fits a familiar Latino stereotype--teen harlot, "el bandido" and male buffoon--yet the movie insists on giving each person dimension.

The film is well-paced and surprisingly suspenseful.

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.

For such a pedestrian exercise in Spielbergian sentiment, the somewhat stale Seabiscuit dunks into some gravy moments; the always dependable William H. Macy is three honks and six rattles of comic relief as the sound effects–happy, kooky radio reporter Tick Tock McGlaughlin, and the racing scenes themselves are spectacular.

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.

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.

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

The Aristocrats lies halfway between two potentially great films: it's neither a smartly austere succession of jokesmiths with all the critique left to the audience, nor a deconstructionist essay on "crossing the line" and the language of comedy itself.

It does deserve points for casting and some clever humor, but falls short of the classic high school movie canon.

This is one train that you shouldn't miss.

Inland Empire is interchangably terrifying, maddening, shockingly hilarious and perversely exciting, and that's just to those who end up disliking it.

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

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.

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.

Woody's a master wordsmith, and here he's crafted a bit of audience-friendly fare that's smart without feeling exclusionary. It's a portrait of elite society--and the hangers-on who wish to penetrate it--made in an surprisingly accessible way.

Pheonix is smartly-constructed enough that non-acolytes interested in checking out Harry's world won't need too long to catch up.

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.

Land of the Dead is Romero's long-awaited masterpiece, a slyly suspenseful and droll thrill-ride that expounds on both the highbrow and the chewed-off-brow concepts of his previous trilogy, then flippantly dismisses the cheap scare tactics of the control-pad generation's gimmicky genre knockoffs.

The result is a kind of very faux documentary style, which, along with the subject matter, has suggested to some the influence of the BBC television series "The Office." Von Trier says he's never seen an episode, and I believe him.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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 truly remarkable and compassionate debut from a savvy, self-confident filmmaker. No bull.

Stylistically, Carandiru is definitely less monochromatic than an "Oz" rerun.

If there was ever an example of a movie's visual language leaving its verbal and narrative components in the dust, this, unfortunately, is it.

Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly create characters that live and seethe with absolute credibility, and Ron Eldard’s Lester is a subtle portrait of a good man who lets himself go bad, first out of boredom, then out of erotic fixation.

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.

I wonder if there was a point in the making of this film at which Hickenlooper might have realized he picked the wrong subject. [May 2004, p. 18]

Black Book is Verhoeven's best film since "RoboCop": audacious, smart, shamelessly entertaining.

As forceful as its title suggests, and sometimes unbelievably ballsy.

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

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.

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.

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.

Not bad for summer jollies, au contraire, but -- "Holy Raised Bar, Batman!" -- let's pray that the next installment measures up to the sequel summits of "Spider-Man 2" and "X2."

It's distinctly Morrisean, as it were, and seeing his style applied to subject matter with which one is already somewhat familiar makes one... well, question the style a bit.

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

Girard gives feisty life to the battle-weary professor, but Rousseau just follows the drill--he is glass-eyed to the point of distraction. And for all its intellectual maneuvering, the film never regains the simple power of its opening salvo.

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

Allen does craft a fairly observant account of human behavior, so that the solemn aspects don't put a damper on the humor, or vice versa.

This is better than your average bio-pic. The dynamic established between the motivation of Bale’s and Depp’s characters is really what makes this film. Kudos also go out to Channing Tatum as Pretty Boy Floyd.

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.

Naturally, Pitt and Blanchett are outstanding. Fincher's meticulous attention to detail is unerring, down to the light fixtures.

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

There are some very funny parts but this isn’t a typical sports comedy.

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.

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.)

The result is a disturbing look into the so-called Wonder Years of adolescence, with convincing, award-worthy performances from each of its key players: Hunter, Wood, and Reed.

Joyeux Noel is no gritty war film; this is more of a Christmas miracle movie, full of melodrama. Carion juggles a large, multicultural cast, and few of the characters stand out; most are there to represent the types who pop up in your standard war-movie battalions.

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.

Rock the Bells doesn't just delve behind the scenes; it makes a showstopping guest-MC out of each crazy new obstacle.

I haven't been crazy about a lot of Van Sant's recent work, but what he does here is simply astonishing. [November 2003, p. 25]

It's not likely you'll see a film more visually exhilarating until, well, Gondry's next.

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.

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.

Too-laborious meditation on life and death.

The penetrating musical score, with its memorable shadings of emotional danger, the snappy and confident pacing and the emergence of 33-year-old Labaki as an international talent to watch all combine to make the film satisfying confection.

With its use of aggressively cheerful hues that are equal parts Technicolor and Tim Burton Candyland, Fido is a "boy and his dog" movie thrown into a horror movie blender. This is perfectly realized in a jaw-droppingly funny "Timmy's trapped in the well" sequence that almost seems like it could have been made in the 50s had George Romero ever worked on "Lassie."

A modestly scaled film on every level, but Hedges and company manage to ring true on almost all the material's sweet and sour notes.

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.

Lars's attraction to Bianca is like an audience's to an actor onscreen -- the object is fake, an approximation, but for some that's better than flesh and blood. Bianca is a work of art. And so is Lars and the Real Girl.

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

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.

Those expecting a return to the depravity and menace of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 notorious original will be disappointed.

It's too bad that the movie induces eyeball-rolling almost as much as it does armrest-clutching.

Documentarian Liz Garbus masterfully turns her minimalist camera's eye on young girls institutionalized at the Waxter Juvenile Facility near Baltimore.

Revolutionary Road isn't emotionally engaging or moving; it's awfully similar in theme to Winslet's 2006 movie "Little Children."

An unexpectedly retro throwback to '80s actioners and '90s hacker movies, totally preposterous in both its heroic near-death escapes and abstract tech-jargon explanations for how anyone with geeky inclinations can remotely override any computer system with a few easy keystrokes.

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

Even the great cast didn’t make following the convoluted plot any easier. And all that jumping around makes the film feel a lot longer than it is.

If The Painted Veil ultimately lacks some of the novelty and ambition of the year's best pictures, it still ranks as one of 2006's quiet gems.

Scene for radiant scene, shot for nary a wasted shot, The New World is the most artfully sculpted film in American cinema this year.

One of the most diabolical things about this psychological thriller is just how open to interpretation it is.

Julia Roberts has never played a dowager before, but heaven knows she makes a good, and funny, one.

A richly drawn, ambitious character piece both socially relevant and genuinely suspenseful.

The suspense aspect works like mad, but what's also noteworthy is the character component, which at times evokes a "Smash Palace"-era Donaldson.

For whatever its flaws, Redbelt offers up a good deal of Mametian red meat while also trying to break out of some of the strictures that Mamet's erected around his own work.

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).

The courtroom scenes are the animated ones…and said animation looks rather cruder than your average PS3 game.

Although this installment is a beautiful stand-alone thang (check out how its chronology-juggling storyline creates a perfect circle, structure-wise).

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, most intriguingly, nails what makes video games so much fun.

Directed with little flair, a one-sided perspective and a questionable sense of moral responsibility by Dan Klores (his negligent lack of an editorial voice in the couple's lunacy reeks of train-wreck exploitation), Crazy Love is a disturbingly captivating tabloid horror, but that's not Klores' doing.

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

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

Understanding what McGrath is trying to pull off is not the same thing as McGrath pulling it off; as ambitious as it is, Infamous falters in execution too often to create a lasting impression.

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.

Understated, quietly amusing, and steadily paced.

A sweet, watchable little film.

Smaller kids might find the movie too intense at times, especially when DJ, Chowder, and Jenny find themselves literally in the belly of the beast. But everyone else should enjoy a good, goosebumpy scare.

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

Reveals more about the German people through sentimental comedy than such overtly political films as "The Nasty Girl" or "The Marriage of Maria Braun."

A visual delight as well as an satisfying period drama.

From the beginning, something doesn't feel quite right about their latest romp. The characters are sketchier, the situations more contrived and the laughs are fewer and far between.

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.

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.

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.

One of the things that makes this movie such a great rush is that while you’re watching it, it seems a good deal more subversive than it really is.

The movie becomes less fizzy once DeCillo decides to make A Statement (a rather incoherent one at that).

Once Palpatine's machinations set the cogs in motion for the creation of Vader, and the Clone Wars start getting bloody, Sith commences to cook in a way that no Star Wars movie has since "Empire."

Proceeds at a very stately pace, hoping the otherworldly mood of its detailed recreation of the old West might seep into the viewer's bones. This viewer did, as it happens, fall under the film's spell.

Those who still relish the sight of Anthony Hopkins portraying an evil criminal mastermind will get the most out of Fracture, which is not so much a whodunit -- we see Hopkins' character putting a bullet in his wife's head in the movie's first few minutes -- as a howdunnit.

Its punchline, imagining the worst that could happen to Auteuil's slimy exec, is weak and kind of dumb, but the rest of the film is genial, appealing, and brisk.

There are popcorn pictures and there are microwave popcorn pictures. The Italian Job is best saved for the living room.

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.

Refusing to dumb down for a mass market, Primer is "Mullholland Dr." for math geeks, "Memento" for mad geniuses, or simply one of the most inventive films ever made for pennies on the Hollywood dollar.

Yeah, it's pretty funny. And it's a pretty accurate depiction of a certain feature of male romantic humiliation. But it's also a little -- and this is one of my two misgivings about the movie -- expected.

All of these actors are incredibly fine, and as a confirmed Beckinsale non-fan, I'm obliged to say that she really knocked me out here.

This finale, which piles one bloody absurd epiphany on top of another almost ad infinitum, is where McDonagh lays all his cards on the table -- and his characters are the ones who have to pay up.

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.

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

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

Van Sant has mastered this kind of driftingly contemplative imagery and his layered soundscapes would make Sonic Youth proud (of course, Kim Gordon makes an appearance), but the introduction of other characters fracture the film's greatest asset, its lonely first-person atmosphere.

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

Depp and Winslet in particular are, as you might expect, immaculate. I don't think there's another actor alive who can convey the intermingling of gentleness and passion with as much precision as Depp.

A moderate success, if a bit clunky. Somewhere beneath the syrupy melodrama and the scenes that should have expired long ago, there is an intelligent, thoughtful western in waiting.

For my money, if I'm in the mood for the kind of aesthetic and emotional experience Saints is selling, I'll just blast Jim Carroll's more concise (and rocking!) "People Who Died" out of my iPod.

Garden State gets it. Not since "The Graduate" has a movie nailed the beautiful terror of standing on the brink of adulthood with such satisfying precision.

The dumbness doesn't kill Death at a Funeral, but it certainly weakens it.

There's nary a smidgen of adult humor, so parents might find things a bit on the dull side at times, but in the end they will likely thank Favreau in droves for making a film that is at least certain not to give them a headache.

A picture that certain Brits and connoisseurs of British colloquial English might call "a grower" … more moving and funny the more I think about it.

As a fan, it's upsetting to admit that Dumont's ideas and insights have narrowed with this picture, his relaxed pacing now lethargic, his physically and mentally thick characters too familiar, and his ice-water shocks a bit predictable. It would seem self-parodic if it weren't so damn tragic.

Resurrection is a revelation.

Underscored by the fragility of a plinking piano and well-timed flourishes to uplift, this heroic heartstring-tugger is still frequently and unexpectedly affecting, so much that it's able to hide its true face as a glorified movie-of-the-week.

The movie has some pleasures, but can be heartily recommended only to those who like their entertainments equally inoffensive and inconsequential.

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.

Frances McDormand, as Erica’s younger sister, flourishes in her few minutes of screen time. She’s flinty, ferocious, and purely hysterical.

A giddy kick-out-the-jams entertainment. Diary takes a tack that's not exactly new, but is new to Romero, and as one might expect, the director brings a sharp and uncompromising new perspective to it.

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.

A comic tour de force from Damon, who gained 30lbs and sports an unflattering moustache as the dishonest and delusional Whitacre. But it’s a performance that never loses sight of the man behind the lies.

This tale has been told so often (in fact, its roots can be traced back to Fellini's 1953 coming-of-age classic "I Vitelloni") the only way to keep it remotely fresh is to keep changing the time period and the professions of the principal characters.

A brilliant little exercise. As a horror movie, it packs one genuine scare after another, right up to the moment of its inconceivably ghastly end. As a mystery, it unfolds with an almost supernatural elegance. And as a metaphor for the movies themselves, it's truly exceptional.

Terrifically charming and energetic film.

If The Prestige is something of a let down as a magic trick, it's more successful as a tale of obsession. The rivalry between the magicians is brutal and bloody and Bale and Jackman do their best work when they're plotting each other's downfall.

Stardust is an eye-poppingly elaborate fantasy that's shot through with action-movie adrenaline and attitude.

So if you like Ferrell or Cohen, go ahead buy some popcorn, check your brain at the door, and you will laugh.

Margot is a fleet, strangely enjoyable film, animated by the acuity of Baumbach's perceptions and -- this helps a lot -- the frequent laugh-out-loud wit of his dialogue.

Irresponsible, morally murky, and batshit insane--in other words, Kick-Ass might be the most fun two hours you’ll spend in a movie theater. It delivers the darkly comic laughs (the movie is clearly not taking itself too seriously, so you should do likewise) as well as the jaw-dropping action, but Kick-Ass’s real accomplishment is bringing back the winkingly crazy Nic Cage we used to know and love.

The flick is driven not by special effects or outrageously gory acts of violence, but by its characters. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley reinvent the crazy scientists playing God, turning in performances that are charming one minute, petulant the next, and ultimately, compellingly hubristic.

Those who have never seen the series should either swim rapidly in the other direction or be willing to dive right in and suspend disbelief about the multitude of things that just don't make sense.

The film succeeds on the strength of the four actresses, first and foremost America Ferrera, who beautifully essays the role of narrator Carmen.

One of Cruise's most deeply cherished ambitions is to be a great actor, and this movie goes to great lengths to let him do that--sort of. You'll understand what I mean during the sequence in which there is more than one Philip Seymour Hoffman on the screen.

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.

Overall, I Am Legend is a wasted opportunity -- a rickety, weather-beaten framework around an otherwise strong central performance from Smith.

At best, this movie functions as a brief companion piece to Boy George's new Broadway show, “Taboo.”

By the end the movie has pretty much ceased taking itself at all seriously, devolving into a nonchalant giggliness of the stoned variety that's completely apropos.

A collection of Hitchcock character-types trample over each other to win at love in Married Life, a quirky but entertaining period murder farce.

A picture about tragedy in one American family's life, and it's a convincing and humane one.

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.

In my cut of the film, it ends after Jones opens the parcel from his son that's been sitting on his kitchen table since shortly after he left. I recommend viewers leave the theater at that point. You won't be sorry that you did.

A droll, poignant comedy enlivened by two terrific performances.

While The Great Debaters' intentions don't lead it to movie hell, this picture is far more diffuse, commonplace, and predictable than the surprisingly convincing "Fisher."

Lawrence too often errs on the side of embellishing details that didn't need to be expanded upon.

Just when the plot should start coming together, the pacing goes slack and the narrative gets bogged down in routine cop-movie clichés.

Dark little indie thriller.

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.

It's clear the creators wanted to bring our hero back but were uncertain where to put him. Sadly, Indiana Jones is not relevant amidst the atomic blasts and disillusionment of the Soviet era, and he's not even recognizable in the pixilated universe of recent cinema. To quote the great Dr. Jones, "It belongs in a museum!"

As Jolie's closest professional confidant, Liev Schreiber is his usual excellent, formidable self.

Earnest, respectful and thoroughly dull.

It's a role that essentially demystifies Brosnan's star persona, and in it he is simply sensational, funnier and more persuasively neurotic than even a devoted fan might expect.

Sure, it's a pleasure to watch Thornton stretch his legs in Matthau's role, but I miss Tatum O'Neal as his firebrand daughter.

A smart, sweet, and thoroughly disarming ensemble comedy that isn't afraid to wear its humanism on its sleeve.

If "Sarah Marshall" spawned Aldous Snow, maybe there's room for a Sergio Roma vehicle?

Part of the Clerks charm was that Kevin Smith made it for $27,000, and a bigger budget doesn't really help this kind of tale's authenticity.

In the annals of Mediterranean island love stories, Respiro reflects the effortless charm of a film like "Il Postino," rather than the untidy manufactured romance of another "Captain Corelli's Mandolin."

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.

Overall, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 is a harrowing and substantial set-up to what promises to be a climactic final chapter in one of the most popular and successful move franchises of all time.

The movie belongs to Wood, who creates a unique portrait of a girl hesitating at the threshold of womanhood; she's smarter, more attuned, and more spiritually ambitious than those around her, but also too decent and loyal to break from the world she knows-and too unformed to have a grasp of what she wants outside of that world. It's fantastic work.

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.

Conran's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a pastiche of everything from "King Kong" to "The Wizard of Oz," a movie that escalates to a breathless cliff-hanger every 20 minutes or so and reinvents itself with every reel.

The fact that Boyle and Garland have here created something close to an actual trip rather than the mere spectacle that most screen sci-fi contents itself with being nowadays is enough to recommend Sunshine.

If you're looking for memorable dialogue and gripping drama, then you better get in line for another flick. But if it's spellbinding special effects and high-wire acts you crave, Wanted should be at the top of your list for big budget thrill rides.

Northfork feels like the work of a couple of ardent art students who, for whatever reson, are very keen on pleasing their teacher. [July/August 2003, p. 23]

Olivier Assayas latest effort could be mistaken for a hipper-than-thou thriller. But it isn’t--it’s in fact a difficult, challenging, and troubling art film. [October 2003, p. 19]

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.

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.

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.

While 1408 is no classic, it is refreshing to see a horror picture that just wants to do its job rather than prove to its audience how ruthlessly nihilistic it is.