F. X. Feeney

Silver, manages the deft balance of making Seagal seem both genuinely courageous and charmingly blockheaded.

Penn's own gifts as an actor seem, in turn, to bring out the best in Nicholson, as well as the rest of the cast.

It's a sweet chamber piece, beautifully played.

Cox's own directorial style is innocent, in the sense of being original without ever straining for effect.

The fun is in getting there, and in the mechanics, charted by writer-director Francis Veber.

What is surprising, and what one takes away most deeply and happily from Triumph of Love, is a refreshed admiration for Mira Sorvino.

Khouri manages, with terrific flair, to keep the extremes of screwball farce and blood-curdling family intensity on one continuum -- not only through the strength of the performances (including one from James Garner, who, as Sida's dad, gets the best one-liners) but in the ways they match across time.

The film works, cleanly, without any tiresome reliance on computer graphics.

Mike Myers wrote the abominable script, plays both leads and is miscast in each.

Dizdar maintains a knife-edged balance in tone throughout the film

Mamet's fixation on language is, nonetheless, more effective onstage than onscreen, where the technical and visual requirements distract from the sounds of the words -- the heart of Mamet's work.

The story sinks, along with any deeper laughs, under boringly formulaic motivations and plot twists.

The sense of loss aroused by the film is oceanic.

Surprisingly moving -- prompting lumps in the throat over what was, after all, a historic moment of the most luminous hope.

We never seem to be looking at actors, but at people; never at scenes, but at life unrehearsed.

A superb film by any measure, as deep and harsh as the sin Dillon committed to become great.

Although this movie doesn't have an ounce of depth, it's so thoroughly amiable and upbeat that you'd have to be in a fighting mood to find fault with it.

Leonard Schrader adapted the screenplay from the novel by Manuel Puig, and his fearless willingness to explore every corner of human nature serves what is greatest and sweetest in the performances of William Hurt and Raul Julia.

It's a fresh installment in what appears to be a self-perpetuating sitcom of British life.

A film whose story movingly outfoxes any number of shopworn expectations on its way to a singular, heart-rending outcome.

The picture's deepest strength, however, is the fire Fernán-Gómez conjures from deep within himself, as if "honor" were an extinct volcano he could will into exploding, given enough anger and time.

This is the deepest of Jewison's three racially themed films, the other two being "In the Heat of the Night" and "A Soldier's Story."

A sharp, upbeat, well-wrought meditation on love and race that kicks the new year in movies off to a terrific start.

Excellent performances.

First-time writer-director Paul Morrison has a gift for evoking a time and place.

Catches the volatile beauty of what it was to be alive and politically aware in the early '70s with a rare accuracy and depth.

Enigmas make Panic involving, and suspenseful.

Thrillingly unpredictable.