A markedly better picture than Roberto Benigni's far more sentimental Oscar collector.

Robert Redford's handsome, smartly constructed new film stands likely to capture the imagination of the educated, culturally inclined public.

This intelligent, engaging indie sets out to find a few answers and in the process introduces a clutch of interesting, very human characters.

A treat, a delicious blend of perversity, playfulness and deadly passion concealed beneath the tranquil, moneyed surface of the Swiss bougeoisie.

The Industrial Light & Magic special visual effects unit does yeoman work in staging the action with cliffhanger intensity.

Vastly entertaining.

A weightier, more nuanced and fulsome experience than the film the world has known up to now.

The poignant and candid Boys Don't Cry can be seen as a "Rebel Without a Cause" for these culturally diverse and complex times, with the two misfit girls enacting a version of the James Dean/Natalie Wood romance with utmost conviction.

Producer and screenwriter have added enough fictional flesh to provide director William Friedkin and his overall topnotch cast with plenty of material, and they make the most of it.

Fierce, violent and searing in its observation, the film makes previous excursions seem like a stroll through the park.

A barkingly funny new "mockumentary" that does for those canine pageants what the helmer's 1996 "Waiting for Guffman" did for smalltown theatrics.

Technically superb and witty in an old-fashioned, veddy British way that will delight many adults but will sail over the heads of young audiences.

An entrancing ensemble piece, directed with calm assurance, acted by a fine ensemble, and structured and scripted with wit and precision.

An engaging, often very funny fish-out-of-water story that provides Hugh Grant with his best part to date.

A delightful and delicate comic fable.

A skillful blend of fire and ice that subtly conveys the emotional extremes fraught in the relationship.

Toy Story 2 is to "Toy Story" what "The Empire Strikes Back" was to its predecessor, a richer, more satisfying film in every respect.

Very much in line with his maiden screen efforts "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors"...ends with a satisfying shudder of recognition at the extreme cruelty possible within human relationships, particularly those conceived by Neil LaBute.

Pons has aimed for a performance-driven drama whose virtues are of the small-scale, low-key variety, with the director working within narrow dramatic limits as always but here doing so brilliantly.

Emphasis on its combustible emotions, suspense and surprising humor should help draw sophisticated audiences who, once lured, will quickly find themselves hooked for the duration.

Darkly comic, vastly entertaining and utterly original.

Exquisitely acted, tightly directed and impressively assembled.

Rendered deeply moving by the director's peerless capacity to combine humor and compassion with honesty and despair.

In the darkly humorous Fargo, iconoclastic filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen manage the precarious balancing act of respecting genre conventions and simultaneously pushing them to an almost surrealistic extreme. Very funny stuff.

Ominously atmospheric study of police corruption dangles danger and sinister motives at every turn.

Sings whenever Williams is onscreen.

An intimate chamber piece for two, superbly acted by Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, this is a mature, well-crafted movie.

A flat-out hilarious mainstream comedy.

Taped in stark black-and-white and clocking in 15 minutes shy of six hours, invigorating pic is big, passionate and brimming with compelling human details and broad sociopolitical idealism.

It's hard to walk away unaffected from this heartfelt, well-researched, feature-length documentary.

Part III matches its predecessors in narrative intensity, epic scope, socio-political analysis, physical beauty and deep feeling for its characters and milieu.

Distinguished by superb ensemble acting, intelligent writing and stunning design.

Imagine a live-action version of the "Dilbert" comic strip with a touch of Hal Hartley's deadpan absurdism, and you're ready for the frequently uproarious "Office Space."

Few actresses can convey the kind of honesty and humanity that Zellweger does here -- it's hard to imagine the film without her dominant, thoroughly credible performance.

A highly accomplished, compact feature, which, while it may be light on depth, is rich in humor, rhythm, energy and inventiveness.

A spectacular demonstration of what modern technology can contribute to dramatic storytelling.

Immensely entertaining and unabashedly inspirational.

The director has managed the difficult feat of making a nonlinear film that contains a handful of almost unbearably suspenseful sequences, each one undercut by bizarre black humor.

A riveting, thematically probing, richly atmospheric and just occasionally troublesome work, a deeply inquisitive consideration of the extent of trust and mutual knowledge possible between a man and a woman.

A resoundingly old-fashioned and well crafted study of evil infecting an American family, Frailty moves from strength to strength on its deceptive narrative course.

Taking advantage of a splendid cast, a sharply focused script and the fresh English setting, "Gosford Park" emerges as one of the most satisfying of Robert Altman's numerous ensemble pictures.

An intensely imaginative piece of conceptual filmmaking that also delivers the goods as a dread-drenched horror movie.

Matthew Barney delivers his masterpiece in Cremaster 3, unquestionably the 35-year-old sculptor-performance artist-filmmaker's most linear, most narratively inclined work to date.

Costner's directing style is fresh and assured. A sense of surprise and humor accompany Dunbar's adventures at every turn, twisting the narrative gently this way and that and making the journey a real pleasure.

The script is faithful, the actors are just right, the sets, costumes, makeup and effects match and sometimes exceed anything one could imagine.

Belzberg's unsparing camera sometimes portrays a level of cruelty that tests viewers' tolerance, but her fearless aesthetic is also a measure of the film's brilliant indictment of any society that can allow its most vulnerable to slip into oblivion.

Scene after scene is filled with a ferocious strength and humor. Michael Lerner's performance as a Mayer-like studio overlord is sensational.

10 dazzling and perceptive snapshots of women with which femmes everywhere can identify.

Scabrous, brutal and hip, Trainspotting is a "Clockwork Orange" for the '90s.

An exquisite reflection on personal bereavement.

Crass, broad, irreverent, wacky fun - and absolutely hilarious from beginning to end.

Scorsese's heartfelt love letter to Italian movies up to 1961.

The rough power, as well as the humor and sensitivity, of pop phenom Eminem is delivered intact in 8 Mile.

Exhaustively informative and powerfully emotional.

An unconventional biopic about a brilliant young pianist.

George Lucas has reached deep into the trove of his self-generated mythological world to produce a grand entertainment that offers a satisfying balance among the series' epic, narrative, technological and emotional qualities.

There's a kind of rawness on the screen that most movies never approach.

Delivers enough thrills, kicks and cool moments to satiate geeks, fans and mere general viewers worldwide -- until the "Revolutions" installment wraps up the trilogy in November.

If the satire feels familiar, and the dramatics often contrived, there's rarely a moment here when something funny, intense or cleverly interconnected doesn't keep one's synapses firing on overdrive.

Central to the film's success is a riveting, unfussy performance from Robbins. Freeman has the showier role, allowing him a grace and dignity that come naturally.

This is not "E.T.," nor is it a kid's film nor even necessarily a major mass-audience film, although Spielberg's name, high public anticipation and the child-oriented campaign will make it perform like one.

Mercilessly satiric yet good-natured, this enormously entertaining slam dunk quite possibly is the most resonant Hollywood saga since the days of "Sunset Blvd." and "The Bad and the Beautiful."

A first-rate thriller with grit and intrigue to spare.

A delightful experience.

The most satisfying epicurean feast since "Big Night."

A debut of enormous craft, surety and resourcefulness -- a superlative, soul-baring non-fiction work that will generate torrential word-of-mouth among auds lucky enough to catch it.

Looks to please the book's legions of fans with its imaginatively scrupulous rendering of the tome's characters and worlds on the screen, as well as the uninitiated with its uninterrupted flow of incident and spectacle.

Gripping, highly dramatic thriller that more than confirms the distinctive talent of young Brit helmer Christopher Nolan.

A vastly amusing satire of heavy metal bands.

Wickedly funny.

An intense, schematic, superbly made Vietnam War drama.

A breathlessly involving tale of urban indifference, rampant hypocrisy and the difference a little human decency can make, superbly played pic is a black comedy that's frequently funny but never frivolous.

Repo Man has the type of unerring energy that leaves audiences breathless and entertained.

Carried by snappy dialog and a wonderful ensemble full of familiar faces.

Truly beguiling romantic comedy.

A script as fresh and distinctive as any produced in the States in recent memory.

Enormously satisfying, superbly crafted.

Hard-hitting, dark and tragic story that rarely lets up.

The very good news is that, in addition to stylistic innovation, the film sports a provocative and appealing story that's every bit the equal of this technical achievement.

Brilliance of the action and effects are supplemented by a consistently superior and resourceful score by Tan Dun.

George C. Scott as the fiery Pentagon general who seizes on the crisis as a means to argue for total annihilation of Russia offers a top performance, one of the best in the film. Odd as it may seem in this backdrop, he displays a fine comedy touch.

Entirely unpredictable and marked by audacious strokes of directorial bravado.

The picture is a devilishly clever series of reversals that keeps you guessing to the very end.

A bona fide populist laugh riot.

All but stealing the film is Cooper, who seizes a rare opportunity as an extroverted, rather than buttoned-up, character to bust loose like an uncaged alligator.

The elusive, quicksilver nature of young love is often reduced to crude simplicities by the movies, but director Sebastien Lifshitz and writing partner Stephane Bouquet have observed it with a superb balance of aesthetics and insight in Come Undone.

Bold, inventive, sustained adrenaline rush of a movie.

A seductively structured and superbly acted suspenser that breathtakingly piles swindle upon scam without giving away the game until the very end.

Bears all the earmarks of a magnum opus for Martin Scorsese: Fascinating and fresh material about his beloved New York City, an epic reach, an equally epic gestation period, a dynamic criminal element, combustible socio-political-religious elements, outstanding actors and sophisticated allusions to cinema history that inform and enrich the experience.

Bigger, sleeker and better than the first, sequel Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle is a joyride of a movie that takes the winning elements of the year 2000 hit to the next level.

Audiences will be excused for any feelings of déjà vu the new film might inspire. That won't prevent them from watching it in rapt, anxious silence, however, as the gruesome crimes, twisted psychology and deterministic dread that lie at the heart of Harris' work are laid out with care and skill.

A fresh, disarmingly bright and at times explosively funny comedy well worth a trip to the mall, even if it eventually runs out of gas.

Performances by the entire cast, and particularly William Holden and Gloria Swanson, are exceptionally fine.

T3 delivers the goods. A hard-hitting, straight-ahead sci-fi actioner with none of the pretentions and ponderousness that have put at least a portion of the public off of "The Matrix Reloaded" and "Hulk."

Ingeniously conceived and impressively executed, Pleasantville is a provocative, complex and surprisingly anti-nostalgic parable.

An accomplished marriage of elaborate style and content.

Considerable intelligence and strategic finesse have been brought to bear on this handsomely mounted adaptation of Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which was hardly a natural for the bigscreen.

This slow but brilliantly sustained journey into madness is fronted by a remarkable performance from Ralph Fiennes and superb backup from Miranda Richardson in a triple role.

A smart sex comedy that successfully swims upstream to spawn and score.

Manages the difficult feat of being an intimate, even delicate tale played with an appealingly light touch against an epic backdrop.

Deconstructs time and space with Einstein-caliber dexterity in the service of a delectably disturbing tale of revenge.

A mostly superb bit of modern horror from the writer-director-editor previously responsible for the Frankenstein story "No Telling" and the urban vampire pic "Habit."

Visually stunning, practically dialogue-free and very family-friendly.

A luxuriously old-fashioned star vehicle custom-fit to its topliner's strengths, which come across to sensational effect.

Love it or hate it, Northfork is a cinematic vision (visually and textually) unlike any with which most moviegoers, even arthouse regulars, will be familiar.

Any negative stereotypes viewers might harbor about education in rural communities are sent packing by this magnificently lensed and cumulatively touching account from documaker Nicolas Philibert.

Chillingly hilarious.

Film gathers together only those who knew, loved and made music with "the quiet Beatle."

This full-bodied adaptation of Dennis Lehane's involved and involving 2001 bestselling crime novel about old friends in Boston's working-class Irish neighborhood finds Clint Eastwood near the top of his directorial game with a cast of first-rate actors.

A Thanksgiving family reunion comedy that sparkles with acerbic wit, original characters and genuine heart.

A superior example of fearless filmmakers in exactly the right place at the right time.

This fascinating portrait of an eccentric visionary and his chaotic triple family life is an accomplished, enormously satisfying non-fiction work.

The endlessly resourceful Nicolas Cage, as a celestial angel, and a terrifically engaging Meg Ryan, as a pragmatic surgeon, create such blissful chemistry that they elevate the drama to a poetic level seldom reached in a mainstream movie.

Wayne Kramer's sexy and often humorous feature directorial debut surrounds its sweet center with the energy, flash and risk of the gambling capital. Sterling performances by William H. Macy and Maria Bello as the long-shot lovers and Alec Baldwin as a temperamental casino operator.

An intelligent, visually ravishing adaptation of Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel.

Errol Morris delivers a compelling, thoughtful and entirely involving documentary in The Fog of War.

A faithful, powerful and superbly acted adaptation of Andre Dubus III's international bestseller.

Develops into a powerfully emotional experience thanks to a career-best performance by Toni Collette.

An arthouse film par excellence, a consummately made study of loneliness and frustration.

A doggone hilarious cartoon extravaganza...virtually bursts at the seams with a supersized abundance of witty wordplay, silly songs and inspired sight gags.

Think of an Anthony Mann Western made by an experimental film director and you get an indication of the challenging components of The Tracker, the story of a manhunt that is politically sensitive because of its depiction of atrocities perpetrated on aboriginals by a fanatical white cop.

Uses first-person on-camera accounts of the adventure by Simpson and fellow climber Simon Yates to backdrop newly shot you-are-there footage that brings home the awesome and harrowing aspects of their feat.

Dowd's graciousness and enthusiasm, and the enormous respect afforded him by industryites on record here, make this a thorough and satisfying acknowledgement of one man's unique contribution to popular music.

A dazzling delight.

A throughly researched and extremely informative survey of the life and work of one of the great figures of world cinema, Richard Schickel's Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin is a must for lovers of cinema.

Al Pacino again is outstanding as Michael Corleone, successor to crime family leadership.

Among the considerable achievements of Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter is the fact that the film remains intense, powerful and fascinating for more than three hours.

Wang has made a dramatically confident move into the mainstream on his own terms with highly congenial material.

If films about coping with memory loss and/or reverse-order storytelling now constitute a mini-genre, then Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is arguably the best of the lot.

A rousing, well-crafted romp packed with ingenuity, duplicity, close calls and heroic gestures, Bon Voyage is true to its title.

The film is traditionally and effectively made; it also is superbly acted.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Mastroianni is perfect in the key role of the basically good and honest boy who succumbs to the sweet life. Ekberg is a revelation as the visiting star, while Furneaux almost runs off with the picture as the reporter's instinctive, possessive mistress. (Review of original release)

Exquisitely made love story.

Unlike "Four Weddings," which ultimately was moralistic and conservative in its message --—About Adam is a frolic free of any judgments, and marked by Stembridge's sparkling wit.

A taut, suspenseful, linear approach, and a trio of excellent performances.

Lightning strikes twice, but not as brilliantly as before, in Shrek 2. The welcome sequel to the monster 2001 Oscar winner about an ogre's unlikely romance with a beautiful princess successfully recycles many of the qualities that made the first one an instant animated classic and worldwide smash.

Robert Shaw [is] absolutely magnificent as a coarse fisherman finally hired to locate the Great White Shark; and Richard Dreyfuss, in another excellent characterization as a likeable young scientist.

A thoughtful, melancholy story of love, loss, pain, betrayal and the lingering after-effects of tragedy, The Door in the Floor is an intelligent, impeccably acted, unsentimental drama.

At once rich in historic and character detail and full of eye-popping tableaux, this new spin on the Moses saga sometimes out-DeMilles DeMille's 1956 live-action epic, "The Ten Commandments."

A very entertaining get-tough fantasy with political and feminist underpinnings.

Four excellent lead performances, vividly evoked ambience and a masterfully sustained mood of quiet desperation mark Sydney as an impressive piece of work.

Los Angeles may be the most photographed city in the world, but it has never have been captured with such complex layers of meaning and fascination as in Thom Andersen's remarkable Los Angeles Plays Itself.

Structurally and thematically similar to John Frankenheimer's original but entirely different in style, feel and nuance, this political thriller about a brainwashed soldier being positioned for the White House provides a delectable network of dramatic tripwires that teases the mind and quickens the pulse. This is brainy popcorn fare.

Splendidly sinuous twister Red Lights sees Gallic helmer Cedric Kahn ("Roberto Succo") take his game to the next level with this inky comic thriller.

As carefully constructed, handsomely crafted and flavorsomely acted as a top-of-the-line production from Hollywood's classical studio era, Francis Ford Coppola's screen version of John Grisham's The Rainmaker would seem to represent just about all a filmmaker could do with the best-selling author's patented dramatic formulas without subverting them altogether.

A 10-course treat for the eyes and ears.

This richly textured parable feels every inch the work of a master.

Massively inventive and spiked with perversely wicked humor.

A beautifully observed, small-scale study of personal foibles, romantic uncertainty and two sides of the sadly predictable male animal.

It's a terrific war yarn, a picture of palpable raw power which manages both Intense intimacy and great scope at the same time. (Review of Original Release)

Superbly orchestrated, visually impressive.

Told with a blend of visual mastery and emotional intimacy, ambitious venture sustains a special melding of romance and pragmatism that should engage discerning audiences.

A hilarious farce.

Unflaggingly genial and universally funny.

A gripping, superbly constructed indictment of the way governments contribute to the destruction of their citizens' lives.

Wonderfully acted and slickly mad. Acutely written with an eye to the motivations and ambiguities involved on both sides in such a relationship.

Shines like a freshly minted coin in Oliver Parker's adaptation.

Expert story construction and compelling thesping and direction make all the narrative elements pay off as if calculated by a precision instrument in which all the parts are working perfectly.

Crucially for such an elaborately dressed production, the characters all come thoroughly alive with their ready wits and pulsing emotions, overcoming the two-century gap with seeming effortlessness.

Performed with matchless aplomb and made with plush professionalism, pic serves up pure pleasure from beginning to end.

Colorful characters, richly evoked settings, epic story of friendship, crime and punishment, and a strong dose of good old-fashioned star power.

An exemplary and dynamic work that goes about as far as a narrative film can in both analyzing a complex personality and portraying a cultural scene.

Tightly made and populated by a uniformly larger-than-life cast of characters , pic is a total delight for every second of its running time.

Not so much a Hitler movie as a portrait of a totalitarian machine's spiritual and emotional collapse, Downfall is a cumulatively powerful Goetterdammerung centered on the last 10 days of the bunkered Fuehrer and those around him.

Ghobadi in this pic displays a complete command of his art as he shifts between -- and even blends -- wrenching tragedy and amusing comedy.

At nearly six hours, pic's extreme length lets Giordana and screenwriters Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli build up a novelistic rhythm, pulling the audience so deeply and forcefully into their story that it becomes like a enveloping dream; when it's over, parting with the characters is truly sweet and sorrowful.

Endowed with captivating simplicity, gentle humor, rich humanity and infectious generosity of spirit.

With its strong premise, a couple of fine performances and highly polished tooling, The Jackal scores as an involving high-tech thriller that occasionally hits peaks of pulsating excitement.

Emerges as the best in the overall series since "The Empire Strikes Back."

Jaw-dropping, sumptuous visuals, a lush George Fenton score, state-of-the-art technology and some of the oddest creatures ever seen without recourse to artificial stimulants.

Direction, performances and lensing blend into an immensely satisfying, if almost uncategorizable, whole in Pawel Pawlikowski's My Summer of Love.

George A. Romero shows 'em how it's done in Land of the Dead, resurrecting his legendary franchise with top-flight visuals, terrific genre smarts and tantalizing layers of implication.

A gritty, intense and supremely accomplished sci-fier.

A superior all-ages adventure pic made by a filmmaker who knows more than a thing or two about the genre.

Followers of Alan Rudolph's career will rejoice at his latest effort, Afterglow, an incredibly and incurably romantic comedy-drama that most perceptively dissects the delicate imbalances of two very modern but very different marriages.

In his bigscreen feature debut, director and co-writer Jonathan Mostow displays real flair for visceral cinema while adroitly sidestepping many of the usual tripwires of this sort of film, particularly silly coincidences, stupid decisions on the part of characters with whom you're supposed to identify, and superheroics performed by ordinary people.

Anchored by a strong cast, including Samuel L. Jackson (also credited as a producer), Lynn Whitfield and Diahann Carroll, this talented debut by a black female writer-director is a well-made, if also old-fashioned, multi-generational drama.

An endearingly schizoid Frankenstein of a movie, by turns relentlessly high-spirited and darkly poignant.

Armstrong and Jones smoothly navigate the magical tale through numerous shocking twists and turns until they bring it to a most logical, emotionally satisfying conclusion.

Although the story is built around the automatically emotional situation of an imperiled kid, scripters Richard Price (who appears briefly as an uncomfortably handcuffed victim of Sinise in the early going) and Alexander Ignon and director Ron Howard largely steer clear of milking the easy melodrama.

As originated by Grisham and adapted by Akiva Goldsman, this is a story of elemental emotional and legal issues splashed across a large canvas, and director Joel Schumacher has done a solid job of keeping the many components in focus and balance.

The Disney artists have created a vivid palette for the picture.

Having earned his stripes by directing a few TV episodes, Frakes makes an auspicious debut as a feature filmmaker, sustaining excitement and maintaining clarity as he dashes through a two-track storyline.

Though lacking the sensationalistic elements of a movie like "Kids", Dollhouse offers unflinching realism, meticulous attention to detail and deliciously wicked humor as it explores the growing pains of a misfit.

Enormously absorbing.

Nicholson plays the character with personal flair, as penetrating as Antonioni's handling of the film. (Review of Original Release)

Last year's "The Prisoner of Azkaban" seemed dark, but this excellent fourth film derived from J.K. Rowling's books is the darkest "Potter" yet, intense enough to warrant a PG-13 rating.

Told primarily via body language and facial expressions with a minimum of dialogue, beautifully observed, emotionally intense tale is an ambitious and rewarding outing for Frederic Fonteyne.

Almost too much of a good thing, Peter Jackson's remake of the film that made him want to make movies is a super-sized version of a yarn that was big to begin with, a stupendous adventure that maximizes, and sometimes oversells, its dazzling wares.

Outstandingly realized on all levels.

A superb, eye-opening and often absurdly funny deconstruction of the myths and realities of global terrorism that is marked by a balance, broadmindedness and sense of historical perspective so absent from many recent political-themed documentaries.

Exquisitely modulated and superbly mounted, the directing debut of skilled cinematographer Lajos Koltai went through an extended, unpredictable production history to emerge as a genuinely new way of looking at the Holocaust that is markedly different in tone from other such stories including "Schindler's List" and "The Pianist."

But where most rugged he-man films feature a few action sequences scattered throughout, director Renny Harlin keeps the adventure stuff in this reputed $ 65 million production coming at an astonishing pace.

Rebounding from his biggest career flopflop with "Havana," Sydney Pollack has done an ultra-pro job in giving spit and polish to this star-driven, sure-fire commercial project.

Director Chris Columbus shrewdly brings together many of the same selling points as in his "Home Alone" movies, mixing broad comedic strokes with heavy-handed messages about the magical power of family.

Picture sets the gold standard for political documentaries.

Lively, intelligent collage, both richly complex and immediately accessible.

This is a hip, likable spin on the seasonal icon told with a deft mixture of comedy and sentimentality.

A period drama marbled with humor, bold gestures and bittersweet consequences.

Yet even with those slightly different chords, Ross manages to pluck the right heartstrings, in the process delivering a grade-A tear-jerker.

Lee takes a conventional, talking-heads-and-archival-clips approach to the material, but rewardingly establishes an intimate connection with his subjects by devoting considerable time to the personalities and families of the four victims.

Superbly crafted documentary is strong enough to make believers out of non-metalheads, and inside enough to get the devil's-horns salute from the most diehard followers.

The result is a tense, documentary-style drama that methodically builds a sense of dread despite the preordained outcome.

Picture's dour take on the dehumanizing process of medical treatment is leavened by black humor and dialogue that always rings true.

Deftly balancing epic sociopolitical scope with intimate human emotions, all polished to a high technical gloss, Deepa Mehta's Water is a profoundly moving drama.

Rib-ticklingly funny at times and genial as all get-out.

Grandly conceived and sensitively drawn.

Superman II emerges as a solid, classy, cannily constructed piece of entertainment which gets down to action almost immediately.