Ann Hornaday

He (Herzog) emerged with a breathtaking tour of art that, in its formal sophistication, dynamism and rhythmic lines, looks as bold and new as Cezanne's work must have looked in the 1860s.

A mesmerizing cinematic journey that is often as arduous and spare as the lives of its hard-bitten protagonists.

On Stranger Tides feels as fresh and bracingly exhilarating as the day Jack Sparrow first swashed his buckle.

Wiig has the natural beauty and self-deprecating expressiveness it takes to be a star comedienne; she spends much of Bridesmaids looking like a slightly girlier version of Lucinda Williams.

In The Conspirator, Wright announces in no uncertain terms that she is back and more than ready for her close-up.

This is a movie that imbues even the hoariest quest-peril-life lesson tropes of family animated films and imbues them with new life and rhythm.

This meditation on violence explores the toxic knock-on effect of powerlessness and overcompensation, delivering a potent essay on the roots of society's most primal evils.

A taut, mostly well-crafted race against the clock that combines the time-loop conceit of "Groundhog Day" and the postwar paranoia of "The Manchurian Candidate."

In spirit, and sheer joie de vivre, it's everything the movie business should aspire to. Win Win exemplifies movies the way they oughtta be.

A pleasantly seedy crime thriller.

While qualifying as the most gorgeously appointed and finely detailed version of the novel so far, still lacks the element of essential fire to make it come fully, even subversively, to life.

A lurid, loopy, utterly ludicrous enterprise.

Telling an old story in a new way and infusing what might have been a dry political polemic with poetry, passion and unlikely warmth.

Depp possesses one of the finest speaking voices in the business - a nimble, mellifluous instrument that can go from sexy growl to fey warble in no seconds flat.

Equal parts playful, sophisticated and engrossing, The Adjustment Bureau is like the first songbird of spring, signaling that the winter of our collective brain-freeze is over and it's safe to go back to the multiplex.

Haphazardly conceived, phlegmatically paced, lazily filmed and punctuated with gratuitous moments of sexual and scatological slapstick.

The weakest link in Unknown - okay, other than the utter preposterousness of its entire premise - is Jones, who as a modern-day version of Hitch's ice queens can't hold her own with the likes of Kim Novak, Grace Kelly and Eva Marie Saint.

Like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton before him, Helms plays a lamb trotting hopefully through the abattoir, blessedly unaware of the blades hanging just above his head.

An egregiously unfunny enterprise.

Another Year allows viewers to occupy both psychic spaces, nesting into the warm comforts of a long-lived-in home and then, on a dime, seeing it through the searching eyes of the marginalized figures that, over the course of 11 films, Leigh has so often championed.

Writer-director Derek Cianfrance, who with Blue Valentine makes an astonishing debut.

What on the surface seems to possess all the melodrama and photogenic suffering of a banal prime-time weepie instead becomes a lucid, tough, deeply sensitive examination of emotional fortitude.

It's the kind of movie that succeeds as a culmination of moments that ring true and sweet.

"Don't tell, show" has been the writer's imperative for generations; Coppola takes that edict to its most visual and satisfying extremes.

True Grit has sweep and scope and entertainment value to burn, but it's Mattie who invests even the grandest aesthetic elements with meaning.

If you think "Rocky" and "Raging Bull" define the alpha and omega of boxing movies, think again. David O. Russell's The Fighter proves there's still punch in the genre, especially when a filmmaker tells a familiar story in a brand-new way.

It's the kind of absorbing, attractive, unfailingly tasteful enterprise that a critic can recommend without caveat.

Due Date isn't pretty; in fact, it gets kind of ugly. But, at least in the eyes of certain beholders, therein lies its peculiar, bent beauty.

From the story itself to the way it's told, Unstoppable is a hymn to stylish, unpretentious competence.

A jagged little pill of a movie from baby boomer avatar Edward Zwick.

One thousand points of light never looked so fetching.

Burlesque delivers eyeful after eyeful of rapid-fire opulence and spectacle. But its most memorable sight is the indelible image of one star taking flight, and another triumphantly staying put.

At its heart, it's about the communities we forge - real and imagined - to save our own lives.

All Good Things is creepy and weird and sad, and little else.

It's half of a really good movie, full of the enchantment, emotion and incident for which the Potter series has become so fanatically cherished.

A funny, affecting movie about growing up in the shadow of a formidable mom.

A near-masterpiece of a film set in the hothouse world of New York ballet.

It plods along dutifully, with the occasional zigzag into contrivance, tidy coincidence and outright preposterousness.

The kind of taut, serious adult drama Hollywood rarely produces anymore. Quality-starved audiences should flock to it, if only to ensure that more of them get made.

Although Ralston's act of desperation is admittedly difficult to watch, viewers who might avoid the film out of squeamishness would be depriving themselves of one of the year's most exhilarating cinematic experiences.

Client 9 doesn't make any excuses for Spitzer, who is interviewed extensively in the film and who wisely insists that he alone is responsible for his fate.

Even Mary Tyler Moore's sunny but vulnerable Mary Richards or Tina Fey's Liz Lemon seem more fleshily real than Becky.

Howl mixes a number of story lines and aesthetic approaches: We get glimpses of Ginsberg's early days as a poet, including his relationships with Kerouac and Neal Cassady, as well as a depiction of the trial, where a parade of critics and professors pronounced Ginsberg's creation either a work of genius or irredeemable filth.

If you think you've absorbed all you could about subprime mortgages, credit default swaps and the arcana of elaborate derivatives, think again. Inside Job traces the history of the crisis and its implications with exceptional lucidity, rigor and righteous indignation.

Say this about Stone: When it's good, it's very good. And this twisty, atmospheric drama is at its best when Edward Norton takes center screen as the title character.

A wonderful thing to snuggle into, as full of heart and pep and innocence as the title character himself.

Pirouettes along a beguiling but treacherous line between horror and whimsy.

May not achieve the transcendent heights of "Neil Young: Heart of Gold," but it has its own pleasures.

Even at its most troubling, Cyrus is powered by a deep vein of humanism, one that offers hope to even the weirdest among us.

A grisly, often cynical piece of work whose joyless, aggressive spirit is made even less appealing by its soulless visual style.

At once daring and hackneyed, absorbing and off-putting, a triumph of one sort and, more lastingly, a failure of another.

Has its share of surprises, especially in the performances of its two main players.

Elmo graciously shares the stage with a cast of players who will not only delight youngsters but will come as sweet relief to grown-ups.

Much of what's offensive and insufferable about All About Steve can be laid at the feet of screenwriter Kim Barker, best known for inflicting "License to Wed" on the world. Why do these people still earn obscene amounts of money churning out dreck? And why do stars like Bullock keep paying them?

They succeed in presenting a compelling series of dots, to use the current parlance, but they don't succeed in connecting them.

Late Marriage is a closely observed, somewhat funny, ultimately very sad movie.

As vivid as many scenes are, there are just as many that seem taken directly out of the Cute Irish Movie notebook.

If Fighting for Life is propaganda, it's the best kind, largely avoiding editorialization and instead focusing on simple human drama.

An unobjectionable if uninspired updating of a classic family story for the minivan generation.

9 Songs inadvertently proves just how limited experimentation for its own sake can be.

It should be required viewing before going into a supermarket, McDonald's or your very own refrigerator.

Riveting, gracefully constructed film.

Anamaria Marinca delivers an utterly transfixing performance as Otilia, a young woman who helps a friend (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an illegal abortion in the waning days of Romania's communist Ceausescu regime.

Even the most forced, artificial episodes in Funny People ring oddly true, because George's life -- the obscene wealth, the loneliness, the fame -- is odd. Perhaps not since "Sunset Boulevard" have the wages and eccentricities of celebrity been depicted with such tough, almost perverse honesty.

May be most valuable for its depiction of the strength of democratic ideals, even in the most precarious and contradictory of circumstances.

The jittery, scattershot camerawork of Greengrass's longtime cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, was used far more coherently in Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning "The Hurt Locker," and the constant blurry close-ups of computer screens and street-level scrums lose their power with each successive cut.

From its sepia-toned palette to the Motown hits that drive its terrific soundtrack, Glory Road is utterly authentic. But most astonishing is an unrecognizable Jon Voight as Adolph Rupp.

A depraved, incoherent, instantly disposable piece of hackery.

Sloppy compendium of filthy jokes and lowbrow sight gags.

While its themes of revenge, mutual resentment and grim fatalism offer little hope for a ready solutions, the movie itself testifies to the power of creative collaboration in finding common ground.

As much as any earnest historical drama, Secret Ballot serves as an eloquent argument for civic life, showing its human elements to be no less flawed for being so necessary.

A wonderfully complex character at the center of a gratifyingly satisfying yarn.

Brokeback Mountain possesses handsome and sympathetic lead players, magnificent scenery, heartbreaking melodrama, righteousness and cultural import. But as a testament to the importance of following one's passion, it's devoid of one crucial thing: passion.

Oropelled by memorable performances by mostly unknown actors. The most famous of the ensemble, Hanna Schygulla, delivers a by turns serene and shattering performance as a mother struggling with loss, conscience and the first glimmers of unexpected connection. She's only one essential and unforgettable part of a flawless whole.

Sylvia plays it safe, and in doing so it becomes little more than just another domestic melodrama devoid of life and, of all things, poetry.

Jack Frost can't possibly straddle its emotional shifts between morbidity and sheer nonsense. [11 Dec 1998]

The biggest sin of Sex and the City 2 is its lack of beauty. It's garish when it should be sumptuous, tacky when it should be luxe, wafer-thin when it should be whip-smart and sophisticated.

Might provide a much-needed fix for Mac's most ardent fans, but they'll have to wait for a star vehicle that fully exploits the range of his comic gifts.

Rarely has love at any age been depicted so honestly on screen. For such a fully realized portrait to be created by a 28-year-old first-time director is even more remarkable.

Read like a long, anguished prayer, but on screen it looks an awful lot like blasphemy.

Blessed with some outstanding performances, among them Ribisi's.

Hot Fuzz deploys the same mix of genre conventions, slapstick and old-school British humor that made "Shaun of the Dead" such a dumb-but-good romp.

Lasseter and his team plunge the audience into a collective case of empty- nest syndrome, with a dash of mortal terror thrown in for grins. And again, they make it work.

A taut, meticulously crafted police procedural.

Whether the entire production comes off as classy or cloying depends entirely on the viewer's mood.

Both lead players are appealing and attractive enough to make an otherwise tepid movie at least un-excruciating.

If Mystic River is just a bit overplayed, a tad too highly pitched, it still resonates with grief and fury and feeling.

Stanley Kubrick's wicked sendup of the then-burgeoning military-industrial complex is still lacerating today. Which is better, George C. Scott's bull-like portrayal of Gen. Buck Turgidson ("Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed") or the Peter Sellers trifecta of Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake, Dr. Strangelove and President Merkin Muffley? You'll watch it and weep -- from laughter and maybe just a hint of despair. [13 June 2004, p.N03]

Visually dazzling, epic in its sweep and deeply romantic in its sensibility, The House of Sand is one of those films whose images and ideas linger long after the lights come on, having been burned into the viewer's consciousness.

Let's get it out, loud and clear: Jerry Maguire is not a sports movie. It's a stealth chick movie, wrapped in a swaddling of jock stuff so that it gets through guy radar without setting off the missile defenses.

Just when you begin to think you know who the cat and mouse really are, in steps Viola Davis to steal not just her scene but the entire movie from Streep.

A stunningly inert piece of cinema, a movie that basically boils down to serial shots of people talking to each other.

High-grade cheese, the sort of highly pitched melodrama that in the 1950s would have been the stuff of a lurid, lavishly staged Douglas Sirk picture.

It's at once too restrained and too perversely funny to have emanated from the play-it-big-but-play-it-safe sensibilities of Hollywood, U.S.A.

A tough movie to love.

Whether it's the sight of Reynolds squeezed painfully into a football uniform or the endless footballs-to-the-crotch and tired gay jokes, The Longest Yard has the feeling of mutton dressed as lamb.

A carefully conceived and earnest movie that announces its many points just a bit too carefully and earnestly.

Even within what often looks like a self-indulgent exercise in humiliation, pain and gratuitous gore, there is no denying the moments of genuine and powerful feeling in The Passion of the Christ -- some of which, by the way, evoke Jesus's most profound teachings of Jewish principles.

That rare movie that manages to be not only an adroit, carefully observed study in character and suspense, but important.

It's popcorn pulp that collided -- at 100 mph, natch -- with a far more sober and crafty grown-up movie.

The three leads deliver funny, convincing performances in a film that wears both youthful callowness and intellectual sophistication lightly. Mutual Appreciation is the kind of movie whose dialogue mostly hews to the rhythms of "like, you know, whatever" but then occasionally throws in a word such as "puissance." And, like, it totally works.

Aside from Lillard, the stand-out here is Cook, who plays a new breed of post-feminist Cinderella with a convincing mix of seriousness and vulnerability (although just once, it would be nice if Cinderella could keep her glasses on and still be beautiful). With her doe eyes and peaches-and-organic-yogurt complexion, Cook resembles a young Winona Ryder (if that's possible), right down to the appealing blend of sweetness and self-assurance. [29 Jan 1999: 1E]

Most of the humor in The Pink Panther derives from Martin's silly French accent, especially when he tries to pronounce the word "hamburger." But zat joke, she ees not funny. And The Pink Panther ees, how you say, ze real dog.

A thoroughly absorbing, even transfixing, journey to a future that may already be upon us.

It's a sprawling experiment in philosophical time travel and metaphysical noodling. And it's an earnest, magnificent wreck.

Filled with so much heartbreaking beauty, Bringing Out the Dead might be best described as an artist's sketchbook, a series of tableaux and ideas that provide a telling glimpse of a director whose work is always evolving.

Exudes genuine appeal, thanks to director Kenny Ortega's brilliant choreography and a gifted cast.

May not be "Fargo," but it nestles comfortably somewhere beneath that masterpiece and "Miller's Crossing," yet far above such forgettables as "The Ladykillers" and "Intolerable Cruelty."

The most controversial thriller of the year turns out to be about as exciting as watching your parents play Sudoku.

Kiarostami has been hailed as the premier humanist filmmaker at work in a larger Iranian cinematic renaissance, and all his formal signatures are on view here -- the small, intimate canvas, the loose, improvised air of the performances, the absence of an authoritarian directorial hand.

Like all good fairy tales, this outsize celebration of perseverance and moral triumph contains within it a deeper idea -- in this case, the relative nature of what we think we know, and what's worth knowing at all. No doubt Dickens himself would approve.

Goodbye Solo is visually simple and stunning, especially the haunting nightscapes of Solo's perambulations. But more important, Goodbye Solo is driven by deep feeling and sensitivity. Don't miss it.

The new Karate Kid brings fresh life and perspective to the classic tale of perseverance and cross-generational friendship, thanks to Harald Zwart's sensitive direction and two exceptionally appealing stars.

Ultimately groans under the weight of its own quiet gorgeousness.

To watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which continually sacrifices its potential for sophisticated fun on the altar of style and physical stunts, is to realize how far we've come from the great movies of, say, George Cukor or Howard Hawks.

Bekmambetov handles these narrative bumps with ease, infusing even the hoariest -- and goriest -- of horror movie cliches with equal parts macabre fascination and jaunty humor. The film lives up to its hype with a style, swagger and substance that will appeal not just to the fanboys (and girls) but to their uninitiated friends as well.

Dworkin, having led viewers so deeply into her subjects' lives, resists coercing them into any pat conclusions. We're left to wonder about Love and Diane -– and root for them -– on our own.

Features a handsome production and terrific performances.

One of those cinematic curiosities that almost always fade quickly, but that will usually find a devoted cult audience once it hits that peculiar Elysian Field known as the aftermarket.

Shouldn't fool viewers into thinking it's anything but a pseudo-artsy piece of tripe.

Catherine Breillat's pretentious, meandering, self-indulgent portrait of a libidinously deprived young woman is nothing more than pornography tricked out as feminist parable.

Volckman and Miance are undoubtedly superb draftsmen; what they need is a writer of comparable skill.

Eat Pray Love finally settles into its own cinematic destiny as an attractive escapist love story, in which the romance is more with the I than with the guy.

By presenting Avatar in 3-D, Cameron is staking his claim and building a fence around his own precious resource, making it unobtainable on any but his own terms to increasingly emboldened and technologically savvy natives.

Regardless of the cute little hats and clam-diggers she wears, it's impossible to believe Kidman as a breathless ingenue; that relentless drive and steely Kidmanesque determination keep jutting through the cotton in flinty, sharp-edged shards.

Bale and Jackman inject their reliable charisma into two otherwise very cold fish. Okay, I'll say it: If you see only one magic-at-the-turn-of-the-century movie this year, make it this one.

Builds slowly but passionately, not dancing to some Hollywood tune, but finding its characters where they are and letting them be who they are.

It's as soothing and pure as the sweetest water from the deepest well.

A special place in purgatory must be reserved for John Leguizamo, who produced and stars in The Babysitters, a loathsome slice of exploitation at its most cynical and crass.

Guest has proven to be this era's master of humanist satire.

Within this structurally baggy weepie, at least two perfectly good movies fight to break free, one a provocative legal thriller, the other a melodrama.

A movie that sags and drags under the weight of poor pacing, execrable writing and largely unlikable characters.

If not always coherent, at least compelling.

It's all too zany and madcap and Woody Allen-redux to be remotely credible, but Ira & Abby turns out to be witty and winning, in large part because of its cast.

Has important things to tell viewers about global politics, and in an eerily resonant way.

Helped immensely by a lush and poignant musical score by Joe Hisaishi, Fireworks makes a quietly powerful impact. [22 May 1998]

A super-stoked action thriller

Overblown sanctimony and sentimentalism as corny as the Fourth of July.

In reality, Eros is a letdown, a collection of bagatelles that, with one exception, fails to live up to its promise.

The film would be insufferable if it weren't for the total sincerity and commitment of its players.

A dog-frequency movie: enjoyable only to those tuned in to its particular register.

For the uninitiated? Man, it's a bummer.

A boilerplate melodrama whose good guys and bad guys are so baldly drawn they could have been conceived by Friz Freleng.

An inert, sloppily written melodrama as grim and featureless as its frozen Midwestern setting.

Epitomizes the kind of somber, aesthetically refined and morally engaged film that commands deep respect without inspiring much affection.

A movie that, in the story of one man dying, shows us all how to live.

Grounded in the direct, disarming truth of their experience, the movie has a straightforward lack of cheap sentiment that saves it from being either too maudlin or saccharine-sweet.

A riotous, rapturous explosion of sound and color, Black Orpheus is less about Orpheus's doomed love for Eurydice than about Camus's love for cinema at its most gestural and kinetic.

Although audiences will admire the film's do-it-yourself energy and commitment, Poster Boy finally collapses of its own contrived weight, deflating just when it should soar into madcap -- or at least thoughtful -- satire.

Packing a dizzying array of motives and tensions into his careful, densely layered round robin, LaBute orchestrates The Shape of Things like a suspense thriller, full of hidden agendas and emotional switchbacks.

Viewers are urged to grab an aisle seat, the better to dance when the music moves them -- as it surely will.

At the movie's thoroughly expected conclusion, a visual joke has a bedraggled cat licking at the icing on a wedding cake, but it's really Melanie who gets to have it and eat it, too.

An uninteresting take on a tired formula that is only occasionally funny and usually pretty gross.

Does a terrific job of capturing the outlaw energy of the original production.

The net effect is one of frustration and will surely send Cohen compleatists back to their record collections for relief.

A smart, absorbing, often exhilarating documentary.

Well, it's better than "The Phantom Menace."

Little more than a sleek, stylish stunt.

Falters when it falls into exploitation (Irena's flashbacks to scenes of depraved sexual torture) and fatal contrivance.

A lyrical, mysterious and provocative meditation on the power of memory and narrative, After Life is a fascinating speculation on life and death -- until its plot takes a turn so melodramatic that the spell is broken. [20 Aug 1999, p.3E]

At once listless and overheated, giddy and utterly zipless, the current incarnation lacks not just the savoir-faire of its stylish predecessor but also the sex appeal.

An uneven, if lively, diversion.

If you're looking for some good family interspecies entertainment, take the little ones to see "Stuart Little 2" again; in the meantime, you might want to crawl into your cave and sleep through this one.

In addition to being a study in great acting, this is a study in great directing.

A true original, thanks to some memorable characters, an engaging story and a thrilling classical soundtrack.

Most important, the film has a terrific supporting character in St. Marie herself, portrayed by the real Canadian island of Harrington Harbour (pop. 300).

In a textbook example of the have-it-both-ways ethos of self-loathing narcissism, Carell has succeeded in creating a character of old-fashioned decency in a movie that otherwise flouts it at every turn.

It has its own subversive power, as it elevates one family's struggle for working-class survival and valorizes a woman of simple faith and inner strength.

He has a knack for creating vivid characters even in the briefest of vignettes in his live act, many of which are taken from his life, growing up poor in Greenbelt.

There is undeniable power in Magnolia, in which small moments of truth are given epic gravitas, not just by Anderson's adroit cinematic style (no one's camera is more restless or inquisitive), but by the wisdom and compassion of the characters he creates.

The loudest, trashiest, stupidest, cheesiest celebration of ritualized male aggression of 2004.

Explodes in a burst of energy, musical chops and an eerie political prescience that makes it feel like something beamed from some past-is-future time warp.

Indeed, Scream is better than the average slasher film, as its advertisers insist. And, indeed, it is probably Wes Craven's best film, as they also insist. But that is a little like saying the pimple on the left side of your nose is "better" than the pimple on the right side.

A quietly resonant movie about the painful alliance between single mothers and their daughters, and the complicated drama of separation.

The news is good for Bridge to Terabithia fans. The beloved children's book has not just survived but thrived in its adaptation to the screen.

Morgen plunges viewers completely into the anarchic, exhilarating, finally ambiguous world of 1968 America; his final stroke of genius is his choice of music, which includes a breathtaking use of Eminem's "Mosh."

Resourceful, if occasionally forced, teen melodrama.

A soaring, sympathetic ode to the outlaws, subversives and insurgents who occupy the edges of popular culture, making them safe for everyone else's dreams.

Must-see viewing for anyone who thinks of Christmas as just a mall and its night visitors.

This toxic, contemptuous, unforgivably unfunny bagatelle finds Allen at his most misanthropically one-note.

The less said the better.

Like its predecessor, the movie is a joyous celebration of extravagant pulp and post-Soviet kitsch, joyously trafficking in gore, loud cars, ladies' stilettos and excess for its own sake.

The result is a film exponentially more vivid and absorbing than the garden-variety rock-doc or biopic. "About a Son" is a must for anyone who still loves Cobain, or still has hope for cinematic portraiture.

Trudging nobly under a mantle of impeccably earnest intentions and a fussy, too-quaint-by-half production design, Honeydripper lags and drags to its utterly predictable end. There's not a spark of spontaneity or soul about it.

Sadly, the filmmakers haven't given viewers enough context or information about their protagonist to know whether he's utterly free or utterly unmoored -– or to care very much either way.

Reproducing every bruise, blowup and body-check and getting right up on the ice and into the fray, the movie brings the audience back to 1980 with bone-crunching verisimilitude.

Viewers anticipating side-splitting guffaws will be disappointed: Stuck on You is a strangely lackluster, flaccid string of fitfully humorous episodes.

McQueen has taken the raw materials of filmmaking and committed an act of great art.

Anemic, pretentious.

Shockingly inert.

Without a note of music or any other extraneous narrative device, Emitai plunges the viewer deep into the lives of the Diola, to the point where the subtitles translating the Diola and French languages are almost superfluous. [02 Feb 1998]

A candid, colorful and deeply meaningful sociocultural time capsule, one that captured the black community at the height of its political energy and optimism.

One of the most eagerly awaited cinematic projects of 2006, which may be why it lands with such a curious thud.

Hypnotically absorbing film.

Siegel's depiction of the film's supporting characters too often borders on caricature. By the movie's strained, overheated climax, it's clear that Siegel, in his directing debut, is less interested in his protagonist as a character capable of transformation than as a human petri dish of futility and pathology.

Garca brings his finely calibrated sense of drama to the subject of adoption, which he handles with characteristic restraint and insight -- at least until the film's maudlin, too-pat finale. That sharp melodramatic turn is a shame, because so much of what has gone before in Mother and Child is of real quality.

No matter how much fun it is to watch -- and for hard-core movie fans, it is often enormous fun -- there's a certain relief when it stops and we're popped back out to our banal, one-track lives.

Shot through with cheeky wit and hilarious musical numbers by the aforementioned slugs, Flushed Away features an eye-popping boat chase through London's watery nether regions, as well as the winning vocal talent of Kate Winslet, Bill Nighy and Ian McKellen, doing his best Sydney Greenstreet. Well done!

Absorbing, funny, exhilaratingly entertaining ride through two years in the life of the most successful heavy metal band in history.

Invictus, which features outstanding performances from both its lead actors, succeeds wonderfully on its simplest level, as a portrait of political genius.

Schorr's endearing little movie gets under your skin much like the music it celebrates.

Idiotic, ugly and ridiculous.

The story's more sober elements are regularly leavened by hip visual flourishes and even some quiet comedy.

As a tasteful take on a minor novel, Metroland is genteel enough, but it lacks the urgency and scope of a must-see movie. [07 May 1999]

Rarely have the dangers of drifting apart been given such a visceral and genuinely upsetting emotional wallop.

An elegant romantic thriller adapted from a novel of the same name, is a terrific film.

A lively, engrossing documentary

Hang in there and Despicable Me turns into an improbably heartwarming, not to mention visually delightful, diversion.

If Slade doesn't necessarily advance the medium with this installment, he nonetheless advances the franchise, with enough lucidity and skill that he's persuaded at least one erstwhile agnostic to take a stand.

Shower makes for a lovely and poignant journey.

It's not meant to be scary. It's meant to be Disney -- a fun and warm children's fantasy.

The Fall is often an affectionate caricature itself, but one of astonishing beauty, featuring two heartfelt performances from Untaru and the tender, often mordantly funny Pace. They're perfect foils for Tarsem's gorgeous tone poem to cinema as a medium of magic and miracles, stories and lies.

Well worth the wait.

Preserves and resuscitates the hard-boiled genre.

Exhibits the weaknesses and the strengths of what has become a nearly foolproof formula for keeping viewers engaged.

So understatedly good.

Humor and warmth abound in Mrs. Henderson Presents.

The conventional and the cliche are slam-dunked in favor of a fresh, authentic take on passion, ambition and coming of age.

Dans Paris will delight aficionados familiar with its myriad references, and there's no denying the appeal of Duris and Garrel. But once the source of the boys' primal wound is revealed, the whole enterprise comes to feel as mechanical as the Bon Marche window display that serves as one of the film's plot points.

An emotional thriller that is by turns contrived and impassioned.

Afghan Star goes much deeper, eloquently conveying the tensions, small victories and shattering setbacks of a fragile democracy struggling to regain a once-flourishing culture.

The Road possesses undeniable sweep and a grim kind of grandeur, but it ultimately plays like a zombie movie with literary pretensions.

A gripping, deeply moving film

Coppola brilliantly conjures the young queen's insular world, in which she was both isolated and claustrophobically scrutinized.

There're some low New York laughs in Swingers and some nice clothes if you like bad taste, but on the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. At least they know how to make a sandwich in that town!

Antic, puzzling and disturbing film.

The question is why the time, talent and treasure of such energetic and even gifted artists have been marshaled in such a disgusting and trivial genre exercise and what viewers are supposed to get out of it. Isn't life hard enough?

Shot through with a bold, extravagant generosity of spirit, this journey behind the literal and figurative looking glass marks a gratifying return to form for Gilliam.

Grisly, stylish and often weirdly funny, Blood Simple is a reminder of how rarely an original artistic sensibility is announced to the world and how much better movies are when that sensibility is allowed to keep going its own way.

An only fitfully engaging L.A. soap opera.

Though Watt's emphasis on coincidence and fate seems strained at times, Look Both Ways is rich in dreamy summer atmosphere and deadpan wit.

The movie has been made with consummate carelessness but with occasional moments of knowing humor.

Brain-softener.

There's too much slow-mo and too many music cues, but there's a low-key buzz to Wahlberg's scenes with Greg Kinnear.

Won't break your heart -- it will make it soar.

Creation is fatally weakened by an excess of pathos; in a Darwinian universe, it would be quickly swallowed up by a leaner, fitter movie.

Prove(s) once again how ingenious, artful and flat-out entertaining animation can be.

A movie suffused with a warm glow of nostalgia for times and music and movies gone by.

Surprisingly formulaic. So many scenes seem lifted from a 1950s melodrama, from Blake and Francis' repentent mother (Leslie Ann Warren) to the film's tearjerker of a final scene.

The fact that there's nothing wrong with it -- that there's nary a scenic detail or scrap of dialogue or performance that isn't utterly on the nose -- is precisely what's wrong with it.

Crackles right along, stopping only long enough for Scorsese's signature bursts of explosive violence. Those brawls feel a bit rote, but what's different here is a newfound playful humor.

The result is a vivid portrait, not just of one unforgettable young man but also of a country in transition.

An exquisite return to cinema at its most intimate, allusive and humanist. Without a firebomb, muscle-bound star or gunfight in sight, it explodes with the most fragile and combustible substance on earth: human nature.

Busy, over-stylized mess of a movie.

McDormand is the best thing about Laurel Canyon. She's also the most unfortunate victim of a film that seems unable or unwilling to give even its most intriguing and compulsively watchable character her due.

The most misguided, ill-conceived and lamentable film.

Smart, subtle, deceptively simple little.

The film's flaws are nothing compared with the pleasures it offers, chiefly in its unapologetic pursuit of old-fashioned sweetness and romance.

At once belabored and muddled movie, whose dreamy visual style and daring sexual material can't elide glaring inconsistencies in tone, plot and logic.

Quite simply, a beautiful film, in both form and content.

Most revelatory here is Malli, who defies the stereotype of submission and subservience and emerges as a woman of self-possession and substance. (The earthily beautiful Bat-Sheva Rand infuses the character with a generous dollop of her own zaftig sensuality.)

If I had to sum up Tristan & Isolde for a term paper, I'd say it's like "Braveheart" without the face paint, "Shrek," except the Lord Farquaad character is a sweetheart, and "Freaks and Geeks" because James Franco is so hot, even in Orlando Bloom-y ringlets.

A vivid, poetic evocation of life in post-invasion Iraq that works both as impressionistic collage and candid portraiture.

Moormann deserves credit, not only for choosing a wonderful and deserving subject for a film, but for doing him proud.

It's trivial and narcissistic and ultimately rather sordid.

Despite Madagascar's formulaic tendencies, it's a formula that works, so parents are urged to sit back, relax and enjoy -- the kids surely will.

Deeply absorbing and moving with the caffeinated speed of Smith's own feisty campaign, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? is at once a celebration of small-d democracy and an elegy to it, a portrait that will surely inspire and infuriate viewers.

Why -- when there are so many funnier, smarter, more gifted performers who can't get arrested in Hollywood -- why, for the love of all that's good and holy, does Martin Lawrence get to keep making movies?

Rich, sweet, densely layered and deeply satisfying. A film that might have been a dry exercise in earnest nonfiction filmmaking becomes a soaring, artistically complex testament to survival, character and hope.

This is a movie that starts silly and just gets sillier -- at one point Candice Bergen shows up with a Buddhist monk -- but its laughs are sweet-natured, and Heaven knows the lead players earn every one.

Possesses its share of modest laughs, many of them delivered by Ted Danson as Bridget's bemused husband. But director Callie Khouri (best known for writing "Thelma & Louise") doesn't bring the dash needed to make this a comic heist on a par with "Ocean's Eleven."

Pride and Glory would be risible if it weren't so reprehensible.

It feels like a retread of several better movies, with a nastier, more bitter edge.

It's as if the book itself has been locked up and institutionalized, forced to conform to a system that all but obliterates its own unique personality.

An engrossing, well-crafted story of a grave injustice avenged, hitting all the right notes of sympathy, outrage and, finally, relief.

An absorbing primer in one of the most fascinating chapters in American social history.