Carrie Rickey

Whatever our misfortune, The Kite Runner says, sometimes we are fortunate enough to get a second chance to make amends for a first mistake.

The result is a movie about the many forms of social and sexual abuse that does not make the abusee a victim but victor.

Even if you don't give a shiitake mushroom about food, there's much to savor in this lively comedy with dramatic aftertastes.

Exhilarating, exuberant and drolly funny.

L'Enfant begins with the birth of a child, but its real concern is the moral rebirth of a man.

Like its heroine, the film's glib - and sometimes sidesplittingly funny - patter at first diverts viewers from its poignant insights. Happily, as Juno grows in experience and maturity, so does the film.

It is social criticism written with tears. [15 Feb 1995, p.E01]

They are the only misstep in Penn's otherwise sure-footed journey to what he reveals as the heart of lightness.

The film has the dog-eared look of a homemade valentine and the improvised sound of '60s jazz, courtesy of a score by Mark Suozzo and a spirited soundtrack including Marvin Gaye's "Ain't That Peculiar," which might be the film's anthem.

While it's too slight a movie for overpraise, there are such a serenity of vision and clarity of purpose to these characters that we easily are caught up in the boys' struggle to reunite mother and child.

In this, Alfred Hitchcock's centenary year, Felicia's Journey so startlingly channels the obsessions of the late director that it might be the greatest Hitchcock movie the master of suspense never made.

Bill Condon's screen adaptation of the 1981 Broadway sensation is, if possible, as dazzling and energizing as its source.

Paolo Virzi's film looks at school as the microcosm of society and at fathers too self-absorbed to be there for their daughters. He combines the themes played in "Mean Girls" and "Look at Me" and makes them vibrant.

Andre Techine creates living characters instead of sociopolitical symbols.

A macabre mystery for children and a cautionary tale for their folks, Coraline is a yarn - twisty, knotty, taut - about a perennially bored girl whose parents are too preoccupied with work to pay her much mind.

Vibrates with exuberance and erudition.

Bielinsky's movie builds like a poker game in which the players, having invested everything, cannot afford to fold.

It is the kind of film that enables adults to get in touch with their inner child - but more important, gets children in touch with their inner adult. [14 July 1995, p.03]

A pepperpot bubbling with pungent insights and sharp wit, Spanglish is about how people, like cultures, are more alike than not.

An intimate epic of infinite grace.

This small story that tells the much bigger story of the New Economy's bubble and burst is less a documentary than it is breaking news.

Here are five gifted actors at the top of their games as five characters in search of what makes a family.

Set exactly a century ago, The Last Station is a droll tragicomedy starring those battling Tolstoys, whose family is unhappy in its own way.

The most challenging obstacle encountered by reformers like Canada and Michelle Rhee, the embattled chancellor of education for Washington, D.C., are the unions extending tenure protection to teachers who underperform.

Enchanted and thrilling film.

In the end, Atonement sorts truth from fiction as it delivers a shattering kick to the solar plexus.

It is a damning indictment of the individuals and institutions who made money while customers lost their shirts.

If there's a more passionate love story out there, then I haven't had the privilege of seeing it.