Chris Kaltenbach

It forces you to fill in the blanks, then refuses to judge whether you're right or wrong. It's almost like the audience writes its own script, and everybody appreciates his or her own work.

The heartbreak comes not from watching her fail, but from realizing how easy it would be for her to succeed. If only she knew better how to try.

Dawn of the Dead may depict the end of the world as we know it, but rarely has watching doom proved such a kick.

A withering condemnation of a culture where greed is a virtue, a culture that you don't have to feel guilty for laughing at.

In a cinematic landscape where truly original ideas are rarer than floating food, recklessness like this deserves to be appreciated. Not understood, but appreciated.

Moves along with great speed and verve, and it's got just enough of a sci-fi sheen to make things interesting, if not provocative. Philosophers and true believers may be disappointed, but for movie fans, I, Robot mostly delivers the goods.

Prime serves as yet another showcase for Streep; to prove how expertly she plays a Jewish mother with a Ph.D. in psychology, just imagine Barbra Streisand in the role -- you'd have a farce only a step above slapstick. With Streep, you get a smartly observant comedy that never overplays its hand.

Electric as Elektra, Jennifer Garner does a high-powered, blade-thrusting star turn as Marvel Comics' ninja-inspired superheroine, bringing such unbridled energy and sexuality to her performance, one barely notices the movie itself.

There's pleasure to be had in a film that suggests teen life can be hard without necessarily being tragic.

The result is a passionate, enthralling film that isn't afraid to take chances - even if it sometimes should be.

The people are just a little too calculatedly quirky in Off the Map, an otherwise engaging comedy.

It's deliciously warped, deceptively smart and undeniably funny. Isn't that enough?

Reaches the highest comic heights when the show itself starts.

Don't go expecting a good time to be had. But by all means, go to revel in a movie that, for about two-thirds of its length, is Mamet at the top of his game -- intelligent, tightly crafted, densely layered.

Wilson, who has never made the film in which he convincingly played sincere, turns out to be a wise choice to play John Grogan.

The weirdly exhilarating thing about Wicker Park is the reckless abandon with which it embraces the convenience of coincidence, and then the extreme measures it takes to reassure the audience that it's not a movie about coincidence at all.

Celebrates heroes without turning them into saints.

It's impossible not to be exhilarated by the energy and determination that infuses every frame.

It's plenty thrilling, and it appeals to the flag-waving patriot in all of us.

Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton are so good in Something's Gotta Give, it's a shame writer-director Nancy Meyers couldn't rein herself in a little more.

Wedding Crashers is unashamedly profane and, for its first two acts, very funny, a classic guilty pleasure that revels in its basest elements.

When Inside Deep Throat is over, it's tough to say which tragic moment lingers longer.

The result is a charmer that boldly marches where lesser movies - at least since the heyday of John Hughes - fear to tread.

While the film is obviously meant as a call to arms, the very single-mindedness of the approach could work against it.

There's an honesty to the film that elevates it a cut above standard slasher fare.

It rarely strikes the right tone and ultimately falls short of what one would expect from a collaboration between director Wim Wenders and writer Sam Shepard.

The film is the work of a visual genius who may have overextended his storytelling ability, but with fascinating results.

It's like a Harlequin romance trying to pass itself off as something deeper and more profound.