Bill Gallo

By the end, you may be exhausted by the effort of trying to unravel the thing, but you may also be taken by the power of its spell. This is a movie that compels you to watch.

Most obvious crime is first-degree dullness, giving us a thriller without thrills and a mystery devoid of urgent questions.

Waking Ned Devine works up enough feel-good momentum that in the end it's irresistible.

The result is a kind of quirky, high-toned soap opera.

Rookie writer-director Dylan Kidd, late of NYU film school, knows how to get the best out of jittery, handheld camera shots, and he knows how to go for the jugular. Roger is the bleakest comic portrait of misogynist self-delusion we've seen in a long time.

The horrors therein are vivid, even if the movie is a bit plodding.

Like all good concert films, it's the next best thing to being there.

Not just another lawyer movie, but rather one of the most striking dramas of the year.

This is probably the funniest Mamet piece to date (but not the weightiest), and it might be destined to take a seat alongside "The Player" and "Sunset Boulevard" in the front row of movieland satires.

By the time Sprecher's skeins, set forth in 13 related episodes, come together, we've got as clear a view of the big picture as we got assembling the elements of "Nashville," "Lantana" or "Magnolia".

Beautifully observed, miraculously unsentimental comedy-drama.

It's a bewildering but deeply satisfying paradox, this constant, nearly silent collision in Tran's films of the visible world and the turbulent, unseen world.

This nicely acted study of a love that survived all manner of trauma is a must-see for Joyce fans, feminist historians great and small and admirers of the Emerald Isle.

Emperor gives off a distinctly musty odor -- not least because Kline's character.

Even in Las Vegas, which is possibly the most irrational place on earth, drama demands a bit of dramatic logic. Romantic fairy tales just don't play well on The Strip, despite its fake Eiffel Towers, bogus Italian palazzos and strike-it-rich fantasies.

A vivid double portrait of the artistic sensibility in its many weathers -- expressed by two fine actors clearly engaged in a labor of love.

What a shame to squander the dramatic riches of Jones's life on third-rate caricature and paint-by-numbers storytelling.

For Jordan, this is a return to top form.

Karen Moncrieff makes an extraordinary debut as a feature film writer and director with this observant drama about a budding teenage poet who, amid many traumas, finds the courage to become herself and set out as an artist.

Shades of "House of Sand and Fog," without the compelling drama.

Its loose-limbed sweetness and gruff irreverence are just right.

This sweet-tempered retelling of "Romeo and Juliet," which substitutes uplift for tragedy, gives off enough energy and light that the audience wants to believe in it even if society's impacted prejudices continue to say otherwise.

A fascinating, frequently hilarious meditation on delusion, self-loathing and personal salesmanship

So thoughtful and provocative that we cannot help but become engrossed.

Analyze This won't win any Oscars, and its comedy is pretty tortured in places, but the pleasures of watching DeNiro onscreen never diminish--not even when he's putting the glories of his criminal past at risk.

As another exposé of stubbornness, petty opportunism, and greed, there's some residual value in the story of two unappealing characters.

Thanks to Spielberg's vivid storytelling and Hanks' matchless gift for bringing the common man to life, this is a relentlessly charming movie.

Eight Below splits into two movies--the compelling tale of the dogs' struggle to pull together and survive and the much less interesting one about Jerry Shepard's emotional trauma and his search for redemption.