With it's dynamite performances, strafing wit and dramatic provocation, The Insider offers Mann at his best -- blood up, unsanitized and unbowed.

A hugely entertaining blend of music, fun and eye-popping thrills, though it doesn't lack for heart.

If you haven't already sold your soul to rock & roll, Almost Famous should seal the deal.

Unique and unforgettable.

The superbly crafted suspense thriller…slams you like a sudden blast of bone-chilling, pulse-pounding terror.

Cuaron's hot-blooded, haunting and wildly erotic film revels in the pleasures of the flesh without losing touch with thought and feeling.

It is also Nicholson at his bravest and riskiest. By banking his fires and staying alert to the smallest details, he delivers a monumental performance that blasts your expectations and batters your heart.

As ever, Freeman delivers miracles; he's as good as it gets.

One terrific movie... Pacino and Depp are a match made in acting heaven, riffing off each other with astonishing subtlety and wit.

Rea and Davidson are incomparably good in an exceptional film that is by turns darkly funny and deeply affecting. Though Jordan's control sometimes falters, it's a small price to pay for his daring.

Gosford Park abounds in scenes to savor. It's a feast, and one of Altman's best.

Stimulating entertainment, as rigorously challenging and painfully funny as anything the Coens have done. But it's necessary to meet the Coens halfway. If you don't, Barton Fink is an empty exercise that will bore you breathless. If you do, it's a comic nightmare that will stir your imagination like no film in years.

Michael Gerbosi's script might have reduced Crane to a clueless cliche were it not for the bruised humanity that Greg Kinnear brings to the role. Kinnear is dynamite.

Linklater is a sly and formidable talent, bringing an anthropologist's eye to this spectacularly funny celebration of the rites of stupidity. His shitfaced "American Graffiti" is the ultimate party movie -- loud, crude, socially irresponsible and totally irresistible.

What makes The Player the best and boldest American comedy in years is Altman's wizardry at leavening anger with cathartic wit. He sticks it to every target, himself and us included, with a wicked zest that hurts only when you laugh -- and The Player keeps you laughing constantly.

The actors are outstanding, illuminating four different views of loneliness. But it's Camara's tour-de-force performance that anchors the film, that shocks and unnerves us.

The new King Kong of crime movies...Ferocious fun without a trace of caution, complacency or political correctness to inhibit its 154 deliciously lurid minutes.

No one interested in the power and magic of movies should miss it.

Fellowship is the real deal, a movie epic that pops your eyes out, piles on thrills and fun, and yet stays intimately attuned to character.

It's taut, tense and terrific.

A triumph of acting, writing and directing that defies glib description...the kind of artful defiance that Hollywood is usually too timid to deliver: a jolting comedy that makes you laugh till it hurts.

Clooney brings raw intensity to his role; his scenes with McElhone are rooted in a fierce romantic yearning.

Ang Lee, a world-class director working at the top of his elegant form, has done something thrilling. For all the leaping action, it's the film's spirit that soars.

Anderson orchestrates a comic romance like no other. The effect is intoxicating. Sandler and the movie will knock you for a loop.

Miyazaki is the Pied Piper -- see Spirited Away and you'll follow him anywhere.

You may want to revisit this profanely hilarious Hollywood satire. . .just to catch the zingers the audience often drowns out with laughter. Hollywood corrupts absolutely, and Mamet turns the toxic process into the year's best and smartest comedy.

Screenwriting this smart, inventive, passionate and rip-roaringly funny is a rare species. It's magic.

Pulls you in, challenges your prejudices, rocks your world and leaves you laughing in the face of an abyss. It's alive, all right. It's also an uncompromising American classic.