Its elements all come together with an unforced perfection, every scene feels real and alive in a way that many of his more surrealistic later films do not, and Leonard Maltin, for one, has argued that I Vitelloni is no less than Fellini's masterpiece.

An extraordinarily exciting, absorbing and satisfying movie. Not quite "Seabiscuit," but comfortably close.

In a disarmingly entertaining fashion, this multiaward-winning German bittersweet comedy seems to encapsulate all the emotion and drama of that profound geopolitical event.

Works best of all as an epic. It wonderfully creates a world of fractured deco elegance and endless human duplicity in which everyone is on the run -- exactly the kind of incisive, seemingly effortless historical spectacle that the French have learned to do so much better than Hollywood.

It's a well-crafted, intelligent, no-nonsense western epic that zips us through the famous siege and the birth of Texas with style, verve and impressive historical accuracy.

An exhilarating piece of epic filmmaking that it pulls you in, sweeps you up and works very much as its own thing.

Potter 3 is, in its heart of hearts, a teenage angst movie...Cuaron has done a masterful job of bringing off this shift in the Potter paradigm without disrupting any disruption in the established style of the series and without any pandering concessions to the teen-movie genre.

Tells a light-hearted fictional story and creates a maze of imaginative animation and special effects to illustrate how the heavier thoughts of the science apply to the everyday world.

Forget "Raising Helen" and "The Notebook," this is the movie summer's most touching young romance.

May well be the most thrilling and educational surfing movie ever.

Istanbul-born director Ferzan Ozpetek has outdone himself with this wise and ruminative mystery about memory, unfulfillment and yearning.

Yimou plays his images like a visual symphony, and turns a potential costume pageant into an exhilarating national myth.

It struck me as the most exciting and original Hollywood thriller, occult or otherwise, since "The Sixth Sense."

There's nothing harder for an actor to play than a thoroughly good character, and Staunton does it with a dowdy, sublime originality.

It's a real pleasure to find a movie as calm, measured and dead-on in its impact as Finding Neverland.

It's not his (Scorsese) best film, but it's his most accessible and most thoroughly entertaining.

In a movie era when brand names mean very little, it shows once again that Pixar is a stamp of quality.

The cast is good, the score is sublime, the visuals are sumptuous and it speeds along with a delirious romantic power that, if you let it, can sweep you away.

Several times, Hotel Rwanda teeters on the edge of making a unique, visionary statement about our times, but can't quite do it. Too bad. If it could have pulled itself together in one brilliant scene, this may have been a great movie, instead of just a very good one.

A clever, charming, laugh-out-loud-funny road comedy that works in almost every scene.

Played by Lucy Russell with a defiant, unapologetic embrace of aristocratic privilege, Grace is a maddening yet fascinating character.

It's a special, strangely soothing movie experience that wonderfully celebrates the intricate diversity of life on Earth and the profound emotional bond that can exist between man and beast.

It's a bracing reminder that before Hitler took power, it was handed to him. The lesson resonates long after the credits roll.

Very much a '70s-style paranoid thriller, with a mood, tone and cascade of plot twists that are highly reminiscent of his 1975 classic, "Three Days of the Condor."

It's an eye-filling, sumptuously detailed historical epic that grandly re-creates the bloody gladiatorial spectacles and smoke-filled, spit-flying, claustrophobically crowded arenas of its bygone era.

It's a big enough film to hold all the contradictions. Green has an ego and a gift for stealing the spotlight with a wink and a grin. Yet his respect for the kids is genuine.

Technically, the film is consistently impressive. It creates a grimly gothic vision of a crime-ridden and depression-ravaged Gotham City, a dandy pair of chase sequences involving the new generation Batmobile and a range of innovative visual effects.

Movie magic is only as powerful as the imagination that casts it. Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki's imagination is the most creative in animated filmmaking.

Pawlikowski has made a gorgeously ambiguous film -- based upon a novel by Helen Cross -- that is blessedly hard to tag; in fact, it's a compilation of genres and moods -- comedy, romance and diabolical thriller -- and that is its core strength and freshness.

A film more textural than narrative, it's for viewers willing to lose themselves in a truly sensual jungle experience.

A film that takes you by surprise, refusing to relinquish its grim, fascinating hold. Better yet, it has crept up on us without much advance promotional fanfare. The less known about its twists, the better.

One more good thing is that the movie doesn't overstay its welcome. At 76-minutes, it's wisely calculated to give us as much of its ghoulish whimsy as we can take in one sitting, and not a second more.

It's by far the most inspirational sports movie to come along in many a month.

A paragon of subtlety. Yet this message is exactly what we carry out of the theater, and it lingers on with a powerful resonance.

So devoid of the usual coarse Hollywood calculation that it plays like a breath of fresh air.

That rare animal, a dialogue-driven comedy -- and a good one at that. While one or two of its scenes may seem a tad too talky for today's low-attention spans, the script is mostly razor-sharp acerbic and sophisticated.

It's a volatile subject and Abu-Assad's thoughtful thriller stokes the debate.

The sum of the movie is devastating. One takes out of it a sense that the human cost of our endless adventure in Iraq is going to be incalculable, perhaps catastrophic -- a psychological time bomb that will be exploding for decades to come.

Harry IV is an intelligent, visually seductive and mostly very satisfying fantasy epic of the first order.

Columbus is a member of the '80s generation and he gives the play authenticity, the respect of a classic, an epic visual scope and a sensibility that's blissfully free of any generational self-pity. It seems to be the movie he was born to make, and he serves it well.

It's by far the most uncompromising and unapologetic gay-themed drama ever made for a wide release by a major Hollywood studio with name stars.

An unpredictable, unusual, consistently engrossing drama of a kind that has almost disappeared from Hollywood.

It's a low-key, subtly inspirational drama that builds its charm slowly but surely.

Some will find the surprise pleasant, others unpleasant. Whatever it is, it's the least commercial, most somberly heartfelt movie ever made by the cinema's most commercially successful filmmaker.

It's a richly textured, leisurely paced, visually impressionistic epic of the American past that fairly hypnotizes the viewer with its tapestry of sights, sounds and colors.

What a rare pleasure to see a classic book adapted for the screen and walk out feeling neither bored, offended nor outraged.

A respectful, accomplished, non-exploitative piece of historical filmmaking and -- for audiences -- a gripping white-knuckle ride all the way.

In the end, this is a film about retribution and justice within unjust circumstances. Each character has a personal code of honor -- Arthur, Charlie and Capt. Stanley are all given their dignity -- and it's that code that sets the film apart.

It's great to see action stars cast for their moves -- their grace in motion is thrilling -- but they also have the charisma to pull off the characters.

The film is magnificently mounted, it moves like a speeding bullet and it's so respectful of Superman traditions that even the pickiest of die-hard fans should love it. After a lapse of two decades, it revitalizes the franchise and makes it seem fresh and alive.

The most imaginative and delightful computer-animated movie of recent years outside of the Pixar brand, Monster House is a Halloween ghost story by way of monster-movie adventure.

The story plays out in the sensuous textures and hypnotic rhythms as the rebellious youth Torres embodies eases into a serenity and acceptance that Montenegro brings so gently to her performance.

It's as absorbing as a train wreck, and its brand of heavy drama is so rare in movies these days that everything about it seems amazingly fresh.

Whatever it is, the film is the first major release of the fall worth talking about: a fast-paced, visually slick, psychologically fascinating Boston-set cops-and-crooks saga.

The movie offers one authentically terrific performance: Beach as Hayes. He's so painfully sympathetic in the role that he absolutely breaks your heart, and he looks like the front-runner in the best-supporting actor Oscar race.

Flat-out one of the best Bonds ever.

For all its unevenness, Bobby is a powerful, poignant movie and its ending -- played over a long excerpt of one of RFK's most compassionate speeches, voiced with none of the cliches of political rhetoric -- was, for me, the movie year's single most devastating sequence.

For all its excesses, it's an absorbing, disturbing, savagely beautiful "trip" movie, and an extraordinary -- perhaps even outrageous -- personal vision of the one A-list filmmaker who truly deserves the adjective "maverick."

Though it seems long and its pace occasionally lags, it certainly struck me as a well-mounted, gloriously eye-filling and often exhilarating entertainment that brings back some of the delicious excitement of the great movie musicals.

Ironically, the challenge of directing a Japanese-language film with a non-English-speaking cast seems to have brought out the very best in Eastwood. His vision is alternately intimate and sweeping, his touch never seemed more light and sure, and several of his scenes are so delicate, dynamic and prototypically Japanese they could have been directed by Akira Kurosawa.

The two women -- as well as the always marvelous Bill Nighy as Blanchett's "older" husband -- run roughshod over its third act flaws and, with their exquisitely detailed performances, make it better than it is. It's an actor's triumph.

An unusually satisfying and inspiring historical epic from one of contemporary cinema's best filmmakers.

An absorbing and fulfilling experience -- even though it ends with a question mark.

The sudden turns of temperament are a treat after the smart-ass attitude of American horror flicks, and the film is full of minor surprises, squirming in unexpected directions without leaving the conventions behind.

The actors are all well-cast, thoughtful and sometimes funny. Tabu was apparently not Nair's first choice, but after watching her in the role it's hard to imagine anyone else -- she's heartbreakingly good.

Jonathan Demme's long-awaited Philadelphia is so expertly acted, well-meaning and gutsy that you find yourself constantly pulling for it to be the definitive AIDS movie. [14 Jan 1994, p.13]

A highly original and progressively riveting personal adventure.

The film is an extraordinarily complex, well-rounded and multileveled portrait of how Crumb got to be the way he is, as well as a tribute to how he was miraculously able to rise above his dysfunctional roots by putting his demons into his art. [16 Jun 1995]

The movie is basically a piece of fluff, not always coherently directed and almost too consistently somber for a movie that wants to be a romantic comedy. Still, it comes together with considerable emotional impact, mainly on the strength of the stars. [24 May 1991, p.14]

The film is a charming little romantic comedy based on a high-concept premise - one of those fraudulent marriages whereby an alien marries an American citizen to get his green card, or permanent residency. [11 Jan 1991, p. 6]

Cements director's place as mob-movie master.

Jacob's Ladder is also undeniably spooky. It creates and maintains a mood of paranoia, its special visual effects are original and nightmarish, and it has at least three sequences as haunting as anything I've seen in some time. [2 Nov 1990, p.9]

Even if you don't like the stories, the filmmakers seem incapable of finding a corner of Paris that is not photogenic.

It's a rich, engrossing ensemble drama that reveals itself very slowly, is filled with multidimensional characters and multi-layered performances, and works toward an amazingly verisimilitude. [19 Jan 1996]

Despite the jumble, Kon's eye-popping, surreal mastery of the Japanese dream is awakening.

Olivier Dahan's sprawling portrait of the life of Edith Piaf is the kind of grand, passionate historical drama that no one seems to be able to pull off any more.

Long for an animated feature and too demanding for very young children, but it's also filled with delights.

Broad and funny, its sensibility is very campy and it's out to be loved by everyone.

A bare outline of the plot reads like a space-adventure thriller with end-of-the-world stakes and a hint of celestial spirituality, and the haunted spaceship twist in the third act is pure B-movie madness.

Pitt won the Best Actor award at Venice for his Jesse...Yet it's Affleck who impresses most as the wary, skittish Bob.

Faced with an artist defined more by his lyrics than his life story, Haynes delivers a song-cycle of a movie: vivid, exaggerated, contradictory impressions of a man who confounds a culture still looking to define him.

A witty little comic gem with a heart and a soul.

Most political films involving children are vicious or sentimental. The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, set in 1970 when Brazil was under the military dictatorship of General Emilio Medici, is neither.

An exhilarating musical experience.

It works on several levels, and stands out as a wistful meditation on the psychological cost of 9/11.

Is it possible to have yet another expensive excursion into this genre that seems in any way fresh, original and alive? The answer, surprisingly, is yes.

Korine's latest film, Mister Lonely, is no different, but this film has a sweetness that has rarely, if ever, been present in his previous work.

Perhaps the most ingeniously imaginative element in Son of Rambow, a film exploding with imagination (some of it scrawled directly over the film in animated expressions of Will's private world), is its very conceit.

A deliciously vivid adventure fantasy.

The real joy here is the performance of Jean Dujardin, who, besides being very funny as the Gallic Maxwell Smart, is also enormously charismatic and is made to look uncannily (and I do mean uncannily) like the young Sean Connery of "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger."

It's crammed full of the dash, filmmaking flair, swashbuckling magic, impossible stunts and tongue-in-cheek humor that made the series such a phenomenon of its time, and -- for those versed in its traditions -- almost every frame is enjoyable on some level.

A charmer of a film and a delightful piece of storytelling.

An engrossing study in abnormal psychology, an inspirational drama that tells us a determined man really can do anything his mind can envision and is the first film that plays on what could become a phenomenon of the new millennium: World Trade Center nostalgia.

It's an exciting action spectacle and a thoughtful, cumulatively moving family drama.

An uncompromising and ultimately chilling look at individual creativity trampled by corporate greed, and its timing could not be more appropriate.

Changeling doesn't care if you love it or hate it, it makes no compromises to fashion and it's charged with that unmistakable assurance of a master filmmaker at his creative peak.

For all its moodiness, despair and disconnect, I've Loved You So Long is all about acknowledging human error and embracing ties -- to family and life -- that can't be undone.

This is Boyle's fullest, most satisfying work and an audience-pleaser that deserves to be a big hit.

Though it's unflinching in its depiction of homosexual affection, the marvel of the movie is the dexterity with which it transcends the specificity of its characters and gay theme to be a universal human statement and profound political epic.

The Reader is significant because -- like another film opening today, "Valkyrie" -- it asks us to see not just the Jews but the whole German people as victims of the Holocaust, and to view Nazism as more a product of explicable ignorance than inexplicable evil.

The results are being billed as a reunion of the "Titanic" star team, but anyone expecting a similarly gushy romantic idyll is in for a shock: it is an uncompromisingly dreary view of two self-deluded people incapable and unwilling to understand one another.

With his usual intelligence, technical virtuosity (the reverse-aging effects are astounding) and storytelling panache, director Fincher gives the film a power and unity that make nearly three hours go by in a flash and pulls its diverse elements together to be something unique for a Hollywood movie -- a true spiritual experience.

The movie works like a clock. A few minor quibbles aside (the casting of Hitler, for instance), Valkyrie is a highly intelligent and deeply engrossing historical drama and, frame for frame, the year's most suspenseful nail-biter.

Joaquin Phoenix is as good as he has ever been in James Gray's Two Lovers, a discomfortingly honest drama about the frustrations of love and desire.

Everlasting Moments both is a tribute to Larsson -- a relative of the director's wife, Jan (author of the original story) -- and a love letter to the art of photography.

An inspirational documentary that treats thinkers (so often the villains of our entertainments) as heroes.

Despite a few places where the air of déjà vu is a bit too thick, it's a class act, with a textured script, one of the series' more stunning title sequences.

Forster carries the movie with an effortless grace and professionalism, creating a character of surprising nobility who is the very opposite of the Willy Loman caricature that's been the de rigueur salesman stereotype in movies of the past 50 years.

Works mostly off Quaid's performance.

While it lacks the original's streamlined core, the father-son relationship, the sequel gets by on assembled moments of sentiment

The three stars communicate the fears and dreams and frustrations of teenage girls with subtlety, sensitivity and dignity.

Too bad they didn't skip the gags and one-liners, along with the songs, and go the distance in making this an authentic dinosaur world.

A powerful experience, filled with dazzlingly executed action sequences that generally avoid the rock music and drugged-out conventions of "Apocalypse Now," and even exude a certain core of humanity.

She's foul-mouthed, trashy, a legal pit bull ... and she's wonderful.

The most pure of Mamet's works to come to the screen.

Although it's often uneven and rambling, its sum conveys an unusual richness and satisfaction. While most films these days are about nothing, this film seems to be about everything that's plaguing the human spirit in a relentlessly globalizing world.

At 160 minutes, it's a bit long and uneventful for anyone who is not at least a moderate fan of the musicals.

Pleasantly modest, endearingly etched and briskly set to a pounding beat.

The film is so crisply acted and smartly drawn that you barely notice the cracks in the veneer.

An endearing comedy that could well end up being one of the year's big hits.

Melancholy, haunting and riveting true-crime saga.

It's LaPaglia's finest, deepest role and he's matched by Armstrong, who makes Sonja's undaunting optimism palpable within a trying marriage that's gulping for breath.

Confidently directed and elegantly designed, this smart drama is sensitive, sympathetic and refreshingly free of glib moralizing.

Jewison handles this rich tapestry of non-linear scenes with the skill of the old pro he is, and carefully modulates the drama to create the maximum emotional impact.

Has the sensibility of a Hollywood "woman's picture" of the '40s -- the weepie saga of a married woman trapped in an untenable situation.

A thinker's film about the ever-shifting paradigm of man-woman relationships.

A suspenseful, fascinating movie that milks the premise for all it's worth.

In the face of intolerance, Two Family House lovingly celebrates the triumph of love and acceptance over prejudice.

Varda sees herself as a gleaner as she searches for the people and cultural activities missed by the rest of the media.

It has a terrific retro style, it's well-directed and it makes an engrossing showcase for its trio of stars.

Many will find the subject matter disturbing, but it's clearly one of the holiday season's richest and most daring movie entries.

A satisfyingly nasty piece of work so black and cruel it's often more sick than funny.

As a goofy little fantasy, however, this film has loads of charm.

From Harry's perspective, it's a grotesque life, a dead end for his new protege Michel, but Moll also shows the sensitivity beneath the sniping and that's where With a Friend Like Harry ... really scores

It lacks history, background and cultural roots, but it's undeniably infectious.

Its overall effect is haunting, hypnotic and moving in a profound and unexpected way.

A delight, a vigorous, vibrant romantic comedy that mines emotional desperation and frustration for all its comic potential, but never at the expense of its temperamental heroine.

Michell captures the awkwardness of real-world behavior with gentle, unforced humor.

This devastating film is buoyed by Dequenne's bravura willingness to go all out; she's a baby-faced kid when the camera focuses full on and an exceptionally beautiful young woman in profile.

An extraordinarily absorbing neo-realistic tragedy.

Ullmann has honed a too-long and sometimes relentless film that delves into the selfishness of passion but also captures the elusiveness and unpredictability of love.

It's compelling, poetic, rebellious, funny and one of the few movies that feels like it's been culled from another time and place yet broodingly bends modern societal taboos.

If you can forgive some plot artifice and gloss, there's a seductively intuitive and resonant theme resting at the core of Jeremy Podeswa's haunting new film.

Goes down like a cool glass of lemonade on a hot day.

The funniest thing I've seen this summer.

Above all, the film is just wonderfully ... well, Fellini-esque. It looks like nothing the cinema has seen since then.

Deliciously dark tale of insidious seduction.

Gunnarsson masterfully weaves these strands into a bold, multilayered tapestry surrounding a powerful story.

An alternately angry and sad portrait, passionate in its presentation and moving in its portrayal of individuals who sacrifice their love for the tenets of their religion.

It's a beautifully crafted, almost perfectly sustained little drama that skillfully makes a subtle, bittersweet point.

Covers this exact same territory, but does it with such refreshing, clearheaded honesty and skill it seems like a revelation.

Skillfully crafted, flawlessly paced, intellectually challenging tension of classics like "Bad Day at Black Rock."

A terrific movie about middle-age malaise and a comedy of unusual wit and drollness.

A mix of the poetic and the polemic, the film is oddly abstract and untethered.

Not quite a masterpiece perhaps, but a visually stunning mountain drama, and an absorbing look at a dying culture.

It works because it never tries to be more than the very personal memory piece it is.

Fumbling characters find that survival is not a matter of economics alone, it's also a matter of hope.

Scott owns the film from scene one.

Sweet, sexy, and unexpectedly enchanting, Yana's Friends is the little feel-good comedy that could.

It is passionate and angry and rousing where you might expect it to become numbing and depressing.

A perceptive, fascinating and relatively evenhanded look at the most radical arm of the American student rebellion of the Vietnam era.

The poetic justice strains the verisimilitude of a film otherwise grounded in a tough reality, but there is a guilty satisfaction to it all.

Not quite up to the exalted level of the two predecessors ("Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2"), be assured it's still the most eye-popping and thoroughly entertaining animated film to come down the pike so far this year.

An absorbing slice of the New China and a fascinating duel between two magnificently stubborn antagonists.

The movie misfires: It's numbingly cold and soulless, and the zeitgeist stays far beyond its reach. But it's so visually striking you almost don't notice, its relentlessly somber mood has a certain masochistic appeal and, while hardly a career-redefining performance, Hanks is as winning as ever.

The surprise is that it's one of the most exciting and enjoyable disaster epics to come out of Hollywood in some time.

Comes together with a wry sense of humor, a total lack of gratuitous movie nonsense and a graceful dignity that allows the humanity of his characters to shine through in a very special way.

Grueling but ultimately rewarding new documentary.

Ireland says he was after the kind of "elegant simplicity" of the great Hollywood romantic dramas of the '50s, and, for the most part, this is exactly what he pulls off.

While the characters lack the quirks and affectations that have enlivened the impulsive figures from past Dogme films, the passion of the players and Bier's sensitive direction give these utterly normal figures a vivid aliveness, along with dignity and everyday beauty.

It's smart, instructive political cinema that tackles complex issues of the globalization with practical examples and vivid images and presents its effects in immediate human terms.

This is a film about anger, shame and helplessness, and it offers no answers, merely hard questions and angry challenges.

It's a funny, insightful film whose feminist undertones don't overwhelm the story and characters.

Surprise of surprises, it's a blast.

It's a brilliant little microcosm of the '60s experience that, in a most gentle way, shows us how the counterculture probably was doomed from its inception.

This is no Disney fable and the apocalyptic vision isn't for everyone, but science-fiction fans and adventurous filmgoers will find this ingenious explosion of retro-cyberpunk a compelling dystopian vision with a gleam of hope.

A highly original, often hilarious, what-if farce about Watergate.

The biggest surprise for Miike fans and musical lovers alike is that for all the black humor of this deliriously bizarre fantasy "Happiness" is a warmhearted film about sacrifice, support and four generations of family togetherness.

Has a slight bite.

Secretary is one of the best of a growing strain of daring films -- "Bliss," "The Lifestyle," "Satin Rouge" -- that argue that any sexual relationship that doesn't hurt anyone and works for its participants is a relationship that is worthy of our respect.

Like Lyne's other heavy-breathers, this one has glossy production values, a relentlessly somber mood and its share of sexual gymnastics. But it's atypical and unique in the way it builds a volcano waiting to erupt with nail-biting anticipation and sympathy for all three characters.

Best of all, the second Potter movie reunites its adult cast: Harris, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, John Cleese, Alan Rickman, Julie Walters and others -- a veritable Who's Who of British actors that single-handedly elevates the proceedings out of the kid's movie genre into something special.

Captures the pain and desperation of adolescent powerlessness and humiliation with powerful intimacy, strung out to almost 2 1/2 lazy hours of stories that wander through an ever-widening group of characters.

As entertaining as it is a viable, political message destined to make viewers rethink their stance on war.

There are two reasons Ramsay succeeds with a story that might at best be called morbid: She visually transforms the dreary expanse of dead-end distaste the characters inhabit into a poem of art, music and metaphor -- and she has the perfect actress to embody Morvern.

Fascinating.

Hayek throws herself into this dream Hispanic role with a teeth-clenching gusto. She strikes a potent chemistry with Molina and she gradually makes us believe she is Kahlo.

Underworld opera of the bravura kind, this is driven, like most Hong Kong action, more by emotion than logic.

Anderson is a hopeless romantic in a cynical world, and for a brief moment he makes the case that true love is the only power that can crack time and space.

The artist's life and times were turbulent and tragic, but the effect of the movie is the opposite: it's somehow a very calming, almost Zenlike experience, and it left me with a peaceful glow that I managed to carry around for the rest of the day.

A hard film to shake and makes us think and think again.

I loved it...Without trying very hard, Farnsworth commands a unique and immensely appealing screen presence that could be called "a compilation of all the great western heroes of the movie past."

Like Kubrick, Field doesn't make any moral judgments about his characters, and his film remains stubbornly enigmatic. It can be read as a high-class revenge thriller, an ode to the futility of vengeance or almost anything in between.

Not only feels real, but it avoids preciousness and cute eccentricity and, in its lean, almost grave, cut-and-dried delivery makes more of an emotional impact because we're able to imprint our own memories of adolescence upon it.

Douglas brings a hilarious kind of Gordon Gekko assurance to his character, and Brooks' long-suffering, naggy persona -- which hasn't had a showcase this strong since "Lost in America" -- sparks off it like Hope with Crosby.

As dark as a Greek tragedy yet it has a vibrance and joie de vivre that can't be contained by grief.

A mix of H.P. Lovecraft madness, David Cronenberg biological mutation and David Lynch small-town weirdness, it teasingly dangles explanations never delivered and escapes never sought, while diving into one of the most gonzo horrors to twist onto celluloid in years.

Washington brings it off with an unforced and well-earned emotional wallop, and whose strong hand, keen eye, sweet spirit and good taste are reflected in almost every scene.

All told, this first Bond of the new millennium may be far from the best of the series, but it's assured, wonderfully respectful of its past and thrilling enough to make it abundantly clear that this movie phenomenon has once again reinvented itself for a new generation, and is very likely to outlive us all.

Singer deftly crafts a sleek, unusually tight film that balances comic-book adventure, pulp opera and the fear of being different.

Think of this corrective to Kipling as "The Longest Yard" meets "The Seven Samurai" with cricket bats, choreographed dance numbers, romantic triangles and a rousing call to solidarity.

If the new Ocean's Eleven is mostly Clooney's show, he's more than up to the task of carrying it. Indeed, this could be his career-defining role: The twinkle in his eye has never seemed more disreputable, his devil-may-care charm has never seemed so appealing, and he dominates the movie with the graceful ease of a Golden Age Hollywood star.

Pfeiffer devours every one of her scenes with a ferocious performance.

Nettelbeck has created a movie recipe that ladles great dollops of dessertlike joy and equally dark tragedy around her strong-willed heroine. It wouldn't work without actors capable of finding vulnerability, humanity and kindness in sometimes inaccessible characters.

There's no denying the skill and flair with which director Paul Greengrass has restaged this unhappy event, creating an uncanny sense of immediacy and allowing us to be a fly on the wall at a seminal '70s tragedy.

Another harrowingly cynical dirty-cop movie in the recent tradition of "Training Day" and "Narc." Yet it's so much more complex, engrossing and satisfying than those films that the comparison is not entirely fair.

It captures the excitement of a breaking star, it generates a raw and unsettling emotional power and it honors the aesthetic of hip-hop in way that's never quite been done on film before.

Uses sports as metaphor for life with rare twist.