Carrie Rickey

However great Murphy is in this film, even greater is Liam Neeson as Father Bernard.

An unnerving and astonishing thriller.

While these individually diverting factors add up to a good time, they don't add up to a good movie.

The result is visually inventive, narratively edgy, and unlike anything else.

Maybe it's just the subtitles, but it would seem that Fontaine has a keener eye for the elements that made Chanel's style than she has an ear for dialogue. But she gets a splendid performance from Tautou.

Whatever you say about Sex and Lucía, you have to admit that it takes place at a hormonal high tide that never ebbs.

The movie about literature's luckiest orphan may teem with children, but it is not for them.

Making a remarkable feature debut, Hamilton distinguishes herself more as a filmmaker than as a screenwriter. While she elicits smoldering performances from Mackie and Washington, the movie around them is rather diffuse.

Silly, but irresistible.

One admires Wallace's intentions while despairing at his execution. Yet as clumsily directed as his film is, it inspires compassion for Moore, his men and their foes. And in that, there is merit.

Among the leads, Radcliffe alternates between playing the wet blanket and the dry wit, and Grint strikes a few sparks as his ambivalent protector. It is Watson who catches fire as the strategist and soldier of this penultimate Potter quest. Watson's so good that one wishes Rowling had built her septology around Hermione Potter.

As it progresses, the film takes us to another borderland, that between reality and delusion. This is where Harlan's mind freely gallops.

The film's focus on the contest between the two agents does throw the film off-balance.

Despite its title, Outrage is calm, riveting, and provocative.

The movie that pretends to celebrate women devolves into the complaint of a wronged man.

So deadpan a film is Napoleon Dynamite, the story and the name of a gangly high school misfit in Preston, Idaho, that I can't say whether it was intended as a character study or a comedy.

Don Cheadle, wiry and wired, delivers an electrifying performance in Traitor.

The film is enjoyable as a performance piece, an eminently watchable contest between two actors at the top of their games.

While on its face, Mother and Child is about the impact of adoption, in its heart Garcia's movie reckons how consequential motherhood is in the calculus of womanhood. The fine actors show how we bond to those not related to us by blood - and also how we love. Bring Kleenex.

The scenery is majestic, the goats adorable, the characters alternately gruff and tender. Like the best storytellers, Carion delays vital information about his characters that makes their dynamic increasingly interesting.