Chris Kaltenbach

The film stays true to its characters and keeps the laughs coming in what may be the closest thing in spirit to the old Warner Bros. Looney Tunes to hit the screen in years. And when it comes to animation designed primarily for laughs, praise doesn't come any higher than that.

Garden State is filled with characters you long to know more about, in situations to which almost anyone can relate. And that's as near a can't-miss movie formula as one can get.

Offers plenty of honest, good-natured laughs in the process. That's something young and old can appreciate equally.

Soars on the strength of strong acting and a script that stubbornly refuses to go all sappy and preachy.

Unsparing and uplifting - a wickedly difficult combination to pull off, but one that gives the film an emotional weight that's impossible to dismiss.

The potential for action never lets up; you never know what's coming around the next corner.

Paints a vivid and darkly humorous picture of a world where directors are all-powerful and vampires are real; whether you want to buy into either fantasy is up to you. I did, and had a grand old time.

It's the rare film that trusts both its audience's intelligence and its emotions.

An unrelentingly dark vision that's as hard to watch as it is impossible to walk away from.

Bolt proves a refreshing throwback to the animated classics of yore.

It's a top-notch action film, albeit on the bloody side, complete with decisive action, mysterious characters and a nobility and sense of purpose that allows its excesses to be forgiven.

Alien, even with some scene tinkering that has left this "director's cut" one minute shorter than its original release, is still one of the creepiest, scariest, most shocking films ever.

It's a zombie flick that moves -- no stumbling, staggering living dead here -- in an atmosphere that feels like a Gothic docudrama, and it's freaky beyond all reason.

Probably the most sweet-spirited sex comedy ever made. It's pretty funny, too.

The images here are graphic and disturbing. But Miike somehow manages to stop just short of disgusting.

A remarkable film about a remarkable man who's lived the kind of life usually reserved for adventure novels and pulp fiction.

Sure, this movie is proudly profane, but it's also funny.

The perfect film for anyone who finds the Keystone Cops a little too understated and I mean that as a compliment.

This is a marvelous film, a look at the strange, exasperatingly labyrinthine process of adolescence and the diverse ways people find to deal with it.

Viewers impressed by the fairly standard martial-arts action of "Crouching Tiger" will really be wowed after seeing this film.

Offers a welcome perspective, reminding us that extremism in the name of a values system is nothing new -- not even on these shores.

One of the year's most unsettling -- and perhaps most illuminating -- films.

The true heartbreak of Maria Full of Grace is that it never comes.

The Cockettes is a grand place to visit, even for those who wouldn't want to live there.

Spring, Summer values life, beauty and even human fallibility, ascribing to humanity a nobility we neglect at our own peril.

Replete with so many wisecracks, puns, double entendres and visual jokes that you almost need a flow chart to keep up with them all. But try; the effort is definitely worthwhile, and the results are hilarious.

Monsieur Ibrahim is about people interacting as people, not symbols (one reason, Sharif has said, he took the role was to help his grandchildren's generation understand that idea).

It's a frustrating film in that its characters resolutely defy convention, and its story offers no epiphany, no one moment when everything becomes clear.