Ann Hornaday

A throwback to 1970s blaxploitation flicks, with a Latin accent, Illegal Tender would be a brassy, sassy guilty pleasure if it were more, well, pleasurable.

It succeeds, with a big, false-eyelashed wink.

Thanks to an exceptionally deft touch, Mottola manages to capture the absurdity and anguish of young adulthood, while never sacrificing meaning on the altar of crude humor.

The film's unforgettable stars are the beauty academy's students, women who have survived tribal warfare, Soviet invasion, Muslim tyranny, American bombs, patriarchal families and even Western good intentions with extraordinary grace and fortitude.

The premise -- a roundelay of New Yorkers looking for connection, or to escape it -- feels tired, and Mitchell's portrayal of sex as the ultimate vehicle for transcendence, self-knowledge and healing, while conveyed with authentic sweetness, seems shockingly naive.

Working with his longtime cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki, Cuaron creates the most deeply imagined and fully realized world to be seen on screen this year, not to mention bravura sequences that bring to mind names like Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick.

Writ small, Golden Door is an absorbing and moving love story; writ large, it's the story we've never stopped telling ourselves.

Yi's self-regarding, ironic tone makes the whole thing feel like a setup, designed more as an indie-chic calling card than a sincere inquiry.

Holofcener has accrued a rabid, loyal following for her singular brand of observant wit and aching tenderness. Both pour forth in abundance in Please Give, a wry, wistful portrait of contemporary urban manners.

With a grating combination of naivete and arrogance, The Green Mile consistently overplays its melodramatic material, including a portrait of a black man that is as breathtakingly offensive as it is earnest.

Kwietniowski has managed to create a surprisingly engrossing and suspenseful narrative without resorting to cosmetics, melodrama or hype.

Surprisingly smart, graphically faithful live-action adaptation of the Mike Mignola series

Both a snore and utter tripe.

A movie that feels written rather than lived; from "The Catcher in the Rye" to "Rushmore," it's a story we've seen in better versions before.

The beauty of Nine Lives is that its occasionally overlapping stories feel entirely unforced; Garcia's is a filmmaking style of rare lyricism, compassion and discretion.

The movie winds up a casualty of schmaltzy, patronizing sentiment on the one hand and overweening ambition on the other.

Still, it's difficult to hold his whoppers against him. In creating characters of such spirit and life, and in imagining such a vibrant, imaginative homage to the transformative powers of love, Kramer, more than most, has earned the right to push his luck.

This is a carefully conceived, thoughtfully orchestrated effort in taste and restraint that ultimately is too restrained and tasteful.

Manages to be both engrossing history and astonishingly germane to present-day political debates.

It's cool but not too cool, and cute but not too cute. A neat trick considering its overexposed avian cast.

Fairly bursts with the exuberance and youthful energy that must have attended its creation.

The result is a classic comic-book hero quest that, while not entirely novel, hews to its own rules and conventions with dignity and artfulness.

After delivering scene-stealing turns in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" Rudd claims the much-deserved spotlight in I Love You, Man, which in its own endearing way tweaks the very same male-bonding pieties that those movies made a fortune celebrating.

Until the last 20 minutes or so of Rock School, the actual playing, while often startlingly good, is kind of boring.

If you find yourself at "The Island" I have only three words of advice: Vote yourself off.

Trust the Man quickly begins to feel hopelessly derivative of other, better movies.

If parents feel like they've seen much of Shorts before, its celebration of mayhem and restless, thrill-seeking vibe will absorb young viewers, especially as the boredom of late summer begins to set in.

In elaborating on the original book so boldly, and repopulating it so richly, Jonze has protected Where the Wild Things Are as an inviolable literary work. In preserving its darkest spirit, he's created a potent, fully realized variation on its most highly charged themes.

Audiences craving big, gooey over-the-top romance have their must-see summer movie in The Notebook.

If anything, Fever Pitch will give Bosox fans one more chance to relive, in big-screen glory, those fleeting, flavorsome days.

Whether they're navigating a recently flooded Prague or the pristine waters of a Tuscan swimming pool, the fiends and angels who populate Beauty in Trouble are like so many scorpions explaining why they sting the fabled frog trying to help them: "It's my nature."

It's beautiful. I loved it. And it broke my heart.

Thanks to Marsh's sensitive storytelling, Man on Wire manages to put Petit's performance into another, more ineffable realm: What began as a caper turned into poetry, and poetry became a prayer.

Extraordinary on many levels...because Mountain Patrol instead becomes what might be the first Chinese conservationist spaghetti western ever made.

If Simon's desire to feed the better angels of our nature is admirable, it would be nice if he could do it with better movies.

With its incomprehensible plot, flat visual style and indecipherably mixed messages (violence is good; no, wait, violence is bad!), this movie seems chiefly to be an excuse to sell even more trading cards.

An exuberant, raucous and thoroughly endearing comedy

That rare, genuinely transporting movie that creates an alternate universe, invites the audience in and lets them sink ever deeper into its particular, sublime reverie.

As he has done in all his movies, from creature features such as "Mimic" to serious dramas such as "Pan's Labyrinth," del Toro creates unforgettable images, filled with color, texture, lyricism and horror.

Plays less like a novel re-imagining of a classic if campy narrative than a drearily self-conscious exercise in Know Your Film References.

If Shutter Island, a gothic thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, were put to a free association test, the word most likely to come to mind would certainly be "weird."

For the young people in its demographic wheelhouse, Inkheart packs a welcome amount of entertainment value, creating a genuinely original world of enchantment.

Artfully structured, combining old-school MGM-type musical numbers with occasional postmodern flourishes to keep the narrative moving.

For anyone to enjoy this starchy, contrived exercise in vanity and product placement, it's best not to have read the book. In fact, it's best not to have read ANY book.

For its flaws, Blood Diamond is a gem, if only for being an unusually smart, engaged popcorn flick.

For filmgoers whose idea of a good time is getting the stuffing scared out of them (who are you guys, anyway?), Signs should prove to be time well spent.

What makes Wilbur worth watching are its smaller bits: Mads Mikkelsen's hilarious performance as a taciturn psychiatrist and Julia Davis's equally funny portrayal of a needy group therapy counselor.

The Cider House Rules is about many things -- chance, passivity, free will and self-invention -- but ultimately it comes back to Larch, who emerges as a toweringly noble figure even in his weakest moments.

The good news might be that Huppert wasn't available for Alias Betty, but the bad news is that it didn't stop France from exporting yet one more cold, pretentious, thoroughly dislikable study in sociopathy.

An uneven, sophomoric and only fitfully funny omnibus of skits, The Ten is one of those silly-on-purpose ensemble exercises that must have been wildly fun to make.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse steals the movie in his screen debut as a nerd di tutti nerds, a kid whose fake I.D. reads "McLovin."

Efficient, precise, carefully calibrated and terrifically entertaining.

Not to be missed, if only for an unforgettable leading performance by Kevin Bacon.

A hackneyed psycho-sexual thriller with enough awkwardly executed Hitchcock references to qualify as a bad DePalma knock-off.

Kasdan has assembled a stellar cast of supporting players to lend this low-key tale some interest.

Bullock's character goes through some changes, but she never turns into some unrecognizably serious actress.

Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan are the nominal stars of First Sunday, but it's Katt Williams who steals the show in this by turns trite and mildly amusing B-comedy.

Exerts an unmistakable appeal, thanks to an absorbing story and fine performances from Morris Chestnut and Taraji P. Henson.

Only fitfully funny, and it makes up for what it lacks in genuine humor by overdosing viewers with outrageous sexuality and outsize stereotypes.

A good as the performances are, and as dutiful as Nolan has been in preserving the Kane legacy in Batman Begins, there's something joyless about the enterprise.

A glamorous, alluring entertainment that revels in the artifice of Hollywood while exposing its corrupt heart, L.A. Confidential pays stylish homage to some of the great film noirs of the distant and recent past.

Although the dogs have surely been Disney-fied to some extent, the sequences of them trying to survive are magnificent and deeply moving. Bring the Kleenex, and hug your pups when you get home.

Canadian director Atom Egoyan delivers a rare misfire with Where the Truth Lies, a shockingly fatuous murder mystery with pseudo-intellectual pretensions.

It's a bold exercise, an interesting experiment, but a movie it ain't.

This isn't your father's Stuart Little, but youngsters will be delighted. Mostly.

Just might be the most action-packed suspense thriller of the summer.

This installment has achieved a nearly impossible hat trick. It's a movie that is exegetically correct enough to appease the most hard-core buffs, while opening up the final frontier to a whole new generation of fans who have yet to appreciate Star Trek's ineffable combination of sci-fi action, campy humor and yin-yang philosophical tussle between logic and emotion.

A fascinating experiment that, if the viewer is willing to surrender to Haynes's sometimes hermetic meditations on Dylan's life, heartily rewards the investment.

Offers an unusually astute glimpse of power at its most alluring and corrosive.

Affliction turns the sound on with sudden, crystalline clarity, and echoes with the haunting power of a suppressed truth that has finally been released.

Often funny (just listen to Becky fulminate against Harry Potter), but it's also a scary.

X-Men flies to the rescue with superheroes who have real substance.

Ingenious, exhilarating, funny and profound.

For filmgoers determined to see cinema not just as mass entertainment but as an art form, The Beaches of Agnes arrives like an exhilarating call to arms.

Dollenmayer has managed to transform a sad sack into an indie screen goddess.

Even the uninitiated will be hard-pressed to resist the movie's charms, from its likable leading players and its charming Dublin setting to its wistful take on modern love.

Doesn't orchestrate the scares with much finesse.

Unfolds as a series of meticulous tableaux vivants, but like those parlor pastimes, it lacks physical verve and a compelling emotional charge.

A briskly moving, deeply engaging 40-minute documentary.

An absorbing and inspiring portrait of two musicians whose unerring sense of what's right -- both artistically and ethically -- has not just held them in good stead but driven their particular brand of success.

A slight, modestly funny comedy.

It's perfectly palatable family fare for a long weekend.

A lucid, emotionally affecting portrait not just of one man but of his times.

The kids in Nobody Knows are most decidedly not crazy, and we come to care for them to an almost excruciating degree.

The appeal of The Skeleton Key lies not in its plot but in its attention to detail, and the way director Iain Softley (still on probation for "K-PAX," but nevertheless the guy who did "Backbeat") luxuriates in the deeply textured sights and sounds of Louisiana.

Ratner makes a hash of the story and characters his predecessor brought to such complex, sympathetic life, delivering a pumped-up exercise in mayhem, carnage and blunt-force trauma.

Reese Witherspoon paces and cries through Rendition in a performance that does as much a disservice to her talent as the movie does to the issues it raises.

It's a funny, fearless, poignant, spectacular performance. Come to think of it, those words could well apply to the entirety of Tadpole.

Like the mix tapes that obsess its main characters, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist builds into something of infectious joy.

If the zombie genre steadfastly refuses to die, we can be grateful to Shaun of the Dead for breathing fresh, diverting life into the form, with subtle visual humor and a smart, impish sense of fun.

Still breaks the first and only commandment of remakes: Thou shall at the very least do justice to the original, or thou shall not be made at all.

A wise, funny film about the little leaps of faith it takes to just get through the day.

An exercise in vanity, indulgence and a startling degree of shallowness.

Kristin Scott Thomas delivers an unnervingly smooth performance as Auteuil's suspicious wife.

Part travelogue, part road picture, part meditation on class, mortality and intimacy, this extraordinary little movie might be the perfect harbinger of summer, as astute as it is steamy.

The wanton fabulistas of Party Monster are as boring and insignificant as the very "normals and drearies" they so contemptuously deride.

On the Outs has its rewards, especially in the mesmerizing performance of Marte.

Absorbing, artfully executed.

Unlike other movies about unpleasant characters, "In the Company of Men," for example, Chuck & Buck doesn't have that sharp observational edge.

Has a sweetness to it that's irresistible, and its techno, trance and jungle soundtrack is as infectious and hypnotic as a contact high.

Whether or not it's crucial for the gay community to have its own "Porky's" is a question for the ages; but please, not Another Gay Movie.

Family Law never really gets to the nitty-gritty of the Perelmans' fraught relationship, instead maintaining a gently ironic distance that, while admirable in its restraint, ultimately lacks emotional fire.

Slow going, but it provides an absorbing glimpse of a rarely seen side of Chinese life.

Not nearly as accomplished narratively as it is visually.

A celebration -- of love, commitment and devotion until the bitter end. Gay and straight viewers alike are sure to be inspired by this lyrical testament to a corollary of Tolstoy's famous dictum: Every unhappy family might be unhappy in its own way, but every genuinely happy family is a triumph.

Inception is that rare film that can be enjoyed on superficial and progressively deeper levels, a feat that uncannily mimics the mind-bending journey its protagonist takes.

This dialogue isn't helped by two actors who look terrific but can barely choke out a word that sounds remotely authentic or spontaneous.

By turns funny, affecting tale.

There's nothing wrong with the moral of The Ultimate Gift's story; in fact there's everything right about it. But director Michael O. Sajbel too often succumbs to movie-of-the-week sentimentality and starchy pacing. Still, Breslin's captivating performance reminds you why she was recently nominated for an Oscar.

The heart of Million Dollar Baby lies in the core relationships among Frankie, Maggie and Scrap, friendships so pure, so genuine, so authentic that it takes actors of Eastwood's, Swank's and Freeman's caliber to sell them in this otherwise cynical world.

May well wind up being the smartest bonehead comedy of the summer.

Has the tired, over-baked feeling of a script that never quite worked but was tinkered with until every ounce of spontaneity or life was hammered out of it.

Goes straight to hell, and in this case it is its own handbasket.

Isn't everyone's cup of tea -- as the Polishes admit in a clever bit of critical preemption -- but it possesses an undeniable, haunting grandeur.

Still, if for the most part Death at a Funeral is as tame as the tasteful parlor where most of its action takes place, it manages to explode one taboo, in casting mostly black actors in roles originally played by whites.

The kind of movie that gives mainstream Hollywood star vehicles a good name.

Say this for Confetti: It's a crowd-pleaser. If, that is, the crowd is composed of people who have never seen a movie by Christopher Guest or a TV show starring Ricky Gervais.

There's no doubt that Eminem has the talent and presence of a star. It's just a shame that the filmmakers didn't capture his power with mad skillz of their own.

Has Blanchett and Jones to its credit. To watch them is to take in two of the screen's greatest natural wonders.

The result is that Revolutionary Road is a hard movie to love. Plenty of people will appreciate the hopelessness, but they might wish for a little less emptiness.

Like Gervais, the audience wants to see a struggle, which here comes down to whether unvarnished honesty or random acts of compassionate deceit will win the day. That alone makes for entertainingly high stakes.

Koltai is an accomplished, Oscar-nominated cinematographer (for 2000's "Malena"), and Fateless is meticulously composed and shot.

Too sketchy about her protagonist's interior life, and too fast and loose with the details of this story, to make much of an impact beyond its initial shock.

Hollywood loves the heroics of good intentions, but this movie is just as interested in the road to hell.

The best part of Walk Hard, oddl enough, is the music. I might not care to see Walk Hard" a second time, but I can't wait to hear it again.

A killer concert film, an ecstatic testament to the joys of fandom and a tribute to the democratizing potential of moviemaking technology.

Often possesses the gimlet-eyed wit of "The Player" or the mock docs of Christopher Guest.

In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore largely stays out of the picture, and the film is the better for it. But otherwise his style hasn't changed.

Lowbrow humor is one thing...but Love Stinks sinks the bar beyond comprehension.

It's a clear-eyed, unsentimental portrait and indelible for that very reason.

McPherson has managed a rare hat trick in genre mash-up, fashioning a deeply absorbing movie that balances horror, romance, comedy and observant humanism with surprising finesse.

These guys are funny.

Two-hour exercise in chaotic action and coarse, annoyingly coy sexuality.

Will probably appeal only to the most committed of Leigh fans.

Bobby, even if it suffers from a few silly scenes, gets more right than it does wrong.

Micmacs brings an infectious note of caprice to the old-fashioned caper film.

The sexual frankness is refreshing. As Suzette and Lavinia banter, their dialogue often suggests how "Sex and the City" might sound 20 years hence.

Engaging, witty and touching film, one that defies categories to become a romantic comedy, historical biopic and philosophical rumination, all in one.

Some viewers will miss the warmth and boisterous family dynamics of its predecessors.

Terrific family entertainment, an action comedy on a par with "Night at the Museum" and "National Treasure."

At its best, Woman Thou Art Loosed conveys the unfathomable meaning behind those words.

This is a downbeat, indulgent and self-consciously quirky little movie.

Cinema at its most intellectually honest and morally necessary.

Harbors some indelibly arresting images and characters whose stories, even at their most superficial, manage to be authentically inspiring.

Suffused with a sophomoric sensibility that belies its more serious underpinnings.

Outlandish, uneven, preposterous and often maddeningly morbid.

Little more than an electronic press kit for the band, produced for the benefit of its fans.

An action thriller that adamantly refuses to deliver action or thrills, instead engaging in a brand of arty, self-conscious formalism rarely seen outside repertory theaters or cinema-studies classrooms.

For an agonizing and ultimately transcendent cinematic portrait of sacrifice, love and saving grace, audiences need look no further than this unpretentious and deeply moving film.

Just another tepid entry into this year's Death-as-Turn-On Sweepstakes.

Provides an arresting journey through the Japanese countryside and culture.

But despite doing its best to jiggle, giggle and ogle its way into a niche somewhere between "Heathers" and "American Pie," it becomes just another forgettable pastiche of sight gags and pop-culture references.

Full of visual dazzle, engaging characters and a reasonably sprightly narrative.

"Everything is achievable through technology," a character says more than once in Iron Man 2. Not so.

This drab exercise in glum piety slumps where it should soar, sapping the story of its mystery and transcendence with an overriding sense of literality.

Nader haters may not be mollified, but An Unreasonable Man, like its subject itself, is a one-stop civics lesson no one should miss.

An extravagant and thoroughly irresistible story of intrigue, romance, comedy and artistic inspiration.

One part Joseph Campbell hero quest, one part multi-culti morality tale, one part live-action "Flintstones" cartoon, 10,000 B.C. is finally every part just plain nuts, from a hike featuring more ecosystems than an Al Gore documentary to a wacky climax set amid pyramids that -- you'll e-mail me if I'm wrong -- wouldn't have been built for another 7,000 years or so.

As portrayed by William Moseley, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley and especially Anna Popplewell as Susan, the Pevensies still make for terrific tween protagonists, and Aslan, the majestic mythical lion voiced by Liam Neeson, is still a breathtaking manifestation of the Cat Upstairs.

Winds up answering the question of what "Shrek" hath wrought, and between its plastic-looking visuals and cynical attitude, the news isn't good. Lacking the genuine wit and humanism of that film and any number of forebears, this one deserves its dumpin'.

See Killer of Sheep, and see it again and again. It's one of those truly rare movies that just get better and better.

The compulsively watchable Owen makes for an ideal leading man of both action and angst. The film's eye-popping set piece, a shootout at the Guggenheim Museum, is an extravagantly choreographed valentine to philistines everywhere.

Becker handles the film's comedy with fluency.

As a director, Solondz seems to have his own locked-in fate -- to favor caricature over compassion -- and his movies are the worse for it.

Until those final moments, Flightplan succeeds admirably, both as a sophisticated psychological thriller and as an example of, if not great art, then superb craftsmanship.

This would have made a fascinating film if Freedomland were one movie. Instead, it turns into several movies, none fully realized. What could have been an unusually smart police procedural becomes a sprawling, overwrought melodrama that itself morphs into a sort of spiritual romance.

It's a warm, if pallid, romantic comedy that may not do much more to burnish Lopez's reputation, but will certainly not bruise it.

Terribly tragic, terribly romantic and, ultimately, terribly, terribly dull.

The greatness of The Battle of Algiers lies in its ability to embrace moral ambiguity without succumbing to it.

Lovely to look at and listen to but doesn't reward any closer study.

Stands as a valuable chronicle of a brief and snarling musical movement.

A gorgeous, if disjointed, spectacle, made endurable – if not entirely comprehensible – by its eye-popping cast.

A wartime epic in the most flamboyant, operatic tradition of the genre.

It doesn't take a screenwriter, for example, to point out the uncanny fact that, when two parent penguins perform a neck-curving pas de deux above their tiny chick, they resemble nothing so much as a perfect heart.

Paris, je t'aime builds into something quite wonderful.

Kick-Ass should delight fans of the original comics and garden-variety action junkies as well. Suggested subtitle: "Iron Man, You Just Got Served."

Should have been a smart bit of cinematic froth but instead sinks like an overworked souffle.

Jagged, unrelenting, claustrophobically intimate.

As little as there is to recommend in Scooby-Doo 2, it must be noted that the human cast has done an uncanny job of inhabiting their two-dimensional characters.

The main reason to see Criminal isn't for the mental workout it might offer but simply to watch these two appealing performers act and act and act.

A mean-hearted, ham-handed and gratuitous effort to exploit it's teenage audience's conviction that, underneath it all, their teachers really. do hate them.

Smarter and more poignant than the average chick flick.

These two generate real, slow-burning rapport, so that you're still pulling for them even during a gratingly preposterous climax.

Manages to be one of the genuinely fresh discoveries of the summer, a little gem that deserves to become a big sleeper hit.

Clerks II finds Smith up to the profane, raunchy, profoundly humanist mischief of which he alone is the master. This is a lewd, lascivious, exhilaratingly life-affirming celebration of misfits and the misfits who love them.

Unfortunately, Provoked possesses the tiny production values and schmaltzy music of a prime-time special, despite its ensemble of terrific actors.

This is documentary-making at its best, not pretending to be journalism, but still playing a crucial role in telling stories that otherwise wouldn't make the front page.

Keeps filmgoers wondering what will happen next even as they are repulsed by what's happening in front of them.

Bernhard Schlink's highly regarded novel "The Reader" receives a graceful, absorbing screen adaptation by director Stephen Daldry.

The movie's sweet, gentle nature may lack the subtle irony of the "Toy Storys" and "Shreks" of the world, but parents won't be bored.

But by far the most powerful element is N'Dour's lone voice, a thing of high, pure beauty that feels at once ancient and new. When he sings, an otherwise earnestly conventional film becomes a vehicle of incantatory power.

Combines nonstop action with an absorbing story to become a classic on par with "Hoosiers" and "Hoop Dreams."

Music video director Simon Brand makes an impressively taut debut with Unknown, a nifty little psychological crime thriller that suggests a "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" for the postindustrial age.

What makes Milk extraordinary isn't just that it's a nuanced, stirring portrait of one of the 20th century's most pivotal figures, but that it's also a nuanced, stirring portrait of the thousands of people he energized.

Indeed it looks as if this otherwise straight-to-video endeavor, which was made in 2003, is being released only to cash in on Bernal's of-the-moment-ness in Hollywood.

By turns fascinating, puzzling and troubling -- a deeply felt account of the varieties of religious experience but also a thoroughly uncritical apologia for fanaticism.

A bawdy, brainy sex comedy geared toward smart people with a sophomoric streak.

It resides in that cinematic middle ground of not-bad, not-great, just okay.

The only thing missing from this rich production is an emotional charge, which Highsmith could create on the page but which Minghella doesn't quite capture on screen.

If Casa de los Babys isn't necessarily a fully realized film, it's still a deeply felt glimpse into dizzyingly complex political and psychological forces that shape the most crucial decisions of a woman's life.

A sweet and hilarious romantic comedy featuring a breakout performance by British comic genius Ricky Gervais, inspires viewers to pause, reflect and praise one of the most rare and wondrous occurrences in contemporary cinema: the Good Movie.

Never gels into the smart, tightly orchestrated cat-and-mouse game that it promises to be.

As skillful an artist as Range clearly is, he has gone to an awful lot of trouble to make a painfully obvious point about threats to civil liberties in a post-9/11 world.

Combining the best of fantasy and somber reflection, The Water Horse is a lovely ride.

Epitomizes the best and the worst of what animated filmmaking has become in an era dominated on the one hand by ever more sophisticated computerized imagery and, on the other, by the grasping, increasingly grating desire to be hip.

Put delicately, this is one long sit, made all the more so by a turgid story, a dour visual palette and uninspiring action.

Funny Games condescends to its audience like a pretentious, preachifying graduate student in post-modernism. It would help us out of the cultural quagmire we're drowning in, if only we could understand its highly convoluted and exclusive language. [29 May 1998, p.1E]

At a time when the action genre has come to be dominated by sleek, matte surfaces and set-'em-and-forget-'em computerized effects, Live Free or Die Hard seeks to remind viewers of the simple, nostalgic pleasures of watching stuff get blown up and bad guys get smoked.

Possesses moments of fleeting grace, pathos and beauty, even if it ultimately doesn't amount to much.

With composure so out of fashion these days in the public square, Steven Soderbergh's adamantly restrained The Informant! arrives like a cleansing tonic.

Dragged down by a paper-thin story, the predictable number of fight scenes executed at equally predictable intervals and stock, unmemorable characters.

That rare kids' movie that may be even more entertaining for its intended audience's adult companions.

The yuck factor spins off the charts in Splice, a thoroughly repulsive science fiction-horror flick that slicks up its B-movie tawdriness with high-gloss production values and two otherwise classy stars.

Clockwatchers has a terrific, submerged feel, in keeping with its themes of corporate lassitude, isolation and paranoia. [24 Jul 1998]

Creadon and his editor, Douglas Blush, add verve to an otherwise talky exercise by cutting Wordplay as if it were a puzzle itself, with Across and Down camera moves and blocks of black space. A visual pun altogether worthy of those being filled in on screen.

Manages to navigate the era of cellphones and Mean Girls with retro nostalgia and wholesomeness, making it a rare girl-powered outing for tweens in an otherwise guy-centric summer.

Stone has a knack for pacing, detail and atmosphere that manages to feel authentic and fancifully allegorical at the same time.

What the filmmakers try to play for laughs -- a mom and her daughters chatting about orgasms while shoe shopping -- isn't funny, it's creepy.

Terrific looking in the extreme, The Beach is the movie equivalent of vacation reading: no more demanding -- and no less satisfying -- than a sandy paperback left on a damp towel.

Consistently absorbing -- thanks in large part to strong performances from the actors -- but not particularly rewarding.

Even in an increasingly virtual world, the filmmakers suggest, keeping it real still matters.

Argento and Aattou deliver appropriately outsize performances to fit the movie's sense of extravagant escapism, and Claude Sarraute delivers a slyly witty performance as the elderly lady carried away by Ryno's Scheherazade-like tale.

Belongs, wholly and completely, to Clarkson, who delivers Joy's mordant asides and withering observations with a flawless balance of tartness and vulnerability.

Joins such wonderful recent films as "The Lives of Others" and "The Baader Meinhof Complex" as a clear-eyed portrait of a highly charged chapter in Germany's history, a history that once again proves rewarding fodder for an alert artistic imagination.

It's a fun ride, and the big payoff -- that history turns out to be way cooler than its reputation suggests -- is even more gratifying. Bully!

For all the pain and loss that The Kite Runner depicts, it is still a film of exhilarating, redemptive humanity, conveying an enduring sense of hope.

In this toxic tale of young psychopaths in love, the stylish, often stunning visuals are ultimately outmatched by the repellent protagonists at the story's center.

Threatens to become a serious movie, but they're quickly overwhelmed by another indecipherable rampage or outsize visual effect.

A revealing, intimate, quirky and generous portrait of nothing less than the American Dream.

A delirious piece of pop ephemera.

Blessedly free of the self-righteous histrionics and sentimentality that so often cheapen powerful personal stories.

See Darfur Now, and you won't read the daily news the same way again.

For all the energy and personality of its subjects, Planet B-Boy tends to drag, especially toward the competition finals.

Given the current heightened tenor of religious rhetoric and paranoia, it may well wind up pushing brand-new buttons today. To quote Michael Palin quoting Jesus, "There's just no pleasing some people."

A shorter version of which was shown last year in a series of house parties sponsored by the anti-Bush organizations MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress -- Greenwald marshals dozens of impeccably credentialed witnesses to debunk the case made for going to war.

It's a gentle, surprising little movie whose rewards lie in what its characters don't say as much as in what they do.

One of the best performances -- and movies -- of the year so far.

A poignant portrait of one woman who has loved and lost, and another who never had a love to lose.

Ends up being more about her hair (Meg Ryan's) than anything else.

Will remind filmgoers that one of the chief pleasures of going to the movies is a good old-fashioned swoon

The frightening myths about adoption that run through Like Mike make even its happiest endings a little bit creepy.

The dopest thing about The Wackness is Thirlby, who, after supporting turns in "Juno" and "Snow Angels," is quickly becoming reason enough to see any film she's in.

Tries desperately to lower the bar for scatological gags, rank sexual humor and cheap physical shots.

To call it sophomoric would libel even the most pathetic, pimply underclassman.

It's as predictable and comforting as a Happy Meal, but it must be said that The Proposal manages to elicit some genuinely amusing moments.

There's many a slip between the page and the stage, to which The Edge, starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, ploddingly attests. [26 Sep 1997]

Thank heaven for Judi Dench, whose M provides Quantum of Solace its sole quantum of peppery brio.

The movie goes off the rails only when the filmmaker inadvertently legitimizes the Protocols' loony philosophical heirs by interviewing a New York medical examiner and a widow about the remains of one of 9/11's Jewish victims.

There's less here than meets the eye, not to mention the ear, nose, tongue and fingertip.

Actually moves, whisking the audience on a funny, sad and extraordinary journey through a singularly compelling moment in American pop culture.

A singularly vulgar piece of work.

Silly? Contrived? Vapid? You bet. Put more simply, "The Prince & Me" is . . . cute.

The power of this quiet little film lies in the lyricism of its images of life on Bangladesh's waterways and in its towns...and in the naturalistic performances from its cast of mostly nonprofessional actors.

Possesses memorable portrayals of thoroughly original characters and draws a beguilingly bleak portrait of its Rhode Island settings.

An overlong, visually incoherent, mean-spirited and often just plain awful Spider-Man 3.

Uma Thurman delivers a mesmerizing performance in The Life Before Her Eyes, a film that, once seen and fully digested, exerts the same haunting pull as the shattering events it chronicles.

It's a smart, bold genre exercise that's enormous fun to watch, harking back to gritty urban thrillers of the 1970s with an assured sense of tone and style.

It's a film within a film about a film within a film, and seems to lose layers of authenticity with each iteration, finally becoming a profoundly alienating experience.

A mesmerizing and weirdly manipulative experience.

Clara Khoury delivers a performance that is luminous, fierce and intensely focused as the title character of Rana's Wedding.

May not be for everyone, but filmgoers tuned in to its particular, perverse frequency will find much to value in its bent sense of humor and compassion.

As visually stunning as it is, though, the film's most enduring gift is the simplicity and sensitivity with which it was made by Truffaut. [19 Dec 2008, p.WE29]

Arriving on the nastier heels of the horror comedy "Jennifer's Body," Whip It plays like that movie's more wholesome twin, delivering the same jolt of anarchic guerrilla-girl empowerment, only with a far less threatening disposition.

At one point, Frank contemplates a wheeled suitcase and infuses in that one moment the sweetness and vulnerability of E.T. See Everybody's Fine, but one piece of advice: Phone home first.

The best reason to see 44 Inch Chest is simply to behold some of the finest actors working today, especially Winstone -- who can embody winsomeness and menace in one sweaty, unkempt glance -- and the woefully underemployed Dillane.

It doesn't open up much new territory, except to eschew much of the dark, frank sexuality that has characterized such recent sexual coming-of-age movies as "Mysterious Skin." Instead, Bardwell offers a cheerful, if sometimes strenuously earnest, take on a subject that seems overdue for a lighthearted touch.