Claudia Puig

My One and Only has an old-fashioned sensibility -- and some lovely Mad Men-style costumes -- making for a pleasantly diverting road movie.

The new Wuthering Heightsis all gloomy moors and muck, but not much convincing passion.

Unstintingly explores and exposes excruciating pain, raw grief, ruinous vengeance and life-affirming resilience, creating human portraits that are uncommonly exhilarating in their honesty. This is cinematic art in its highest form.

Caramel is a sweeter and more believable version of "Steel Magnolias," Middle Eastern style.

Though the plot can be vague and occasionally convoluted, Harrelson is mesmerizing.

Watching Rudd bring dimension to what could have been a clownish caricature is the best reason to see this good-natured family comedy.

It energetically captures the frenzied pace of contemporary existence, the complexities of life in a multicultural world, the rootless joys of living in a foreign city and the heady world of possibilities one envisions while in college.

While potent and well-paced, Contagion doesn't come together as the fearsome bio-thriller it starts out to be. But it may make audiences twitchy about the guy coughing in the next row.

It could have delved a little deeper to keep us wide-eyed and engaged.

The unfunny jokes center on outhouses, vomit and flatulence. Gooding mugs, screeches, even hops up and down to no avail. Nothing can wring an ounce of comedy out of this sorry spectacle.

It's a pleasure to watch these men perform. These are real-life guitar heroes. But it would have been a treat to see more of them talking shop.

This is a Frank Capra-meets-Judd Apatow comedy with a sweetness-laced ribaldry.

A gently funny ensemble comedy that feels less like a movie than a short story.

The Coen brothers have fashioned a wry and riveting hybrid of a drama, Western, crime thriller and action film that is as powerful and thought-provoking as it is genre-bending.

At a time when romantic comedies seem to have exhausted unique ideas, along comes Lars, an original, amusing and heartfelt tale sharply written by Nancy Oliver (Six Feet Under).

The movie and its theme of self-acceptance has an honesty, undercut by occasional preciousness, that makes it worth seeing.

Tarantino exercises both his obsession with vengeance and his fascination with the movies.

Babel may be the most ambitious movie of the year, tackling towering communication barriers, global politics and cultural divides in a structurally complex and fascinating narrative.

It's a maniacal performance, complete with mad gales of laughter and insane bouts of temper. Cage doesn't go over the top, but he teeters darn close.