Desson Thomson

As Juliet, Winslet is a bright-eyed ball of fire, lighting up every scene she’s in. She’s offset perfectly by Lynskey, whose quietly smoldering Pauline completes the delicate, dangerous partnership.

A thoroughly gratifying prestige thriller, thanks to riveting suspense and two brilliant stars.

Has a refreshingly keen ability to see everything from multiple angles.

Not only gives us a superb new cast of believable characters, it transcends its own genre. Only superficially a teen comedy, the movie redounds with postmodern -- but emotionally genuine -- gravitas.

Makes compelling, provocative and prescient viewing. You can draw your own conclusions.

Although fictionalized, it feels depressingly real. It's a 90-minute newsreel with a broken heart.

Frances McDormand enjoys the comedic role of her career.

The movie's intense watchability can be traced directly to superb performances by Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley.

It avoids the compulsively calibrated storytelling of big-studio moviemaking for a slower-moving but powerfully absorbing drama.

Unabashed, streamlined entertainment, and you won't hate yourself in the morning for liking it.

The movie, when it finally gets going, is funny. At times it's hysterical. The great discovery about Noises Off is how tried and tested Frayn's basic formula is. The physical, verbal and situation comedy is universal, no matter who the performers. What counts in this ensemble production is the collective choreography, the great farce machine. In the movie, everyone, Reeve included, more than plays his part.

I don't pretend to understand a darned thing about Jean-Luc Godard's In Praise of Love...But it's undeniably powerful and, if you're up for the experience, exhilarating.

Nair is not making a caricature out of Lalit or anyone else. She's inviting us into the inner recesses of her culture. And it's both pleasure and privilege to be one of her guests.

It's not the enormous undertaking that impresses so much as the sheer ecstasy of flight and the ability of Perrin's team to catch it.

Fabulous mental escape. It's fun and playful, rather than dark and foreboding. And there doesn't seem to be an original cyber-bone in the movie's body. But it's put together in a fabulous package.

Observed mostly from Remy's rat's-eye view, Gusteau's kitchen is a memorable world-in-miniature with its vivid old-fashioned stoves, bright, brassy pots and general air of frenzied industry; never did sliced red onions or simmering soup look so fresh and real.

So full of creativity, so subversive, so alive.

Martin Scorsese brings honor back to the remake. He shines up this reprise of the original with original brilliance

It's tremendous fun. The movie -- directed by Rob Cohen -- switches pleasingly from exciting fights to moments of magic playfulness. It's doubly touching to experience Bruce Lee's fleeting life and, in the brief depictions of little son Brandon, to fatefully anticipate the tragedy to come.

Makes for fascinating cinema.

Wins you over with its devastating simplicity.

[Zaillian] employs every trick and convention in the Hollywood book, but with such expertise, it feels original. Never were the emotions this roundly affected -- around a simple board game.

Hilarious, touching and wonderfully dyspeptic.

An absorbing, intelligent and suspense-filled film... It's streamlined and rich at the same time -- like the best of the James Bond films, but serious.

Until its final stumble, this intelligence thriller, starring Val Kilmer, is charged with brilliance.

The scenes unfold with such unhurried delicacy, and the characters are so intriguing, you can ignore the editorial bluntness and savor the smaller, sweeter details.

So elegantly layered and emotionally restrained, it makes the horror at its center all the more disturbing.

Exults in the hard-riding romanticism of classic Westerns, but it takes revisionist stock too. It dismounts at places usually left in the dust -- the oppressed lot of women, the loneliness of untended children, adult illiteracy and the horrible last moments of the dying.

An extraordinary piece of electronic history. And a riveting movie

A saga of unbearable sadness and romantic beauty.

A modern epic that fuses myth with hard-edged reality, it's a one-of-a-kind, thoroughly engaging experience.

Brings kinetic, stylistic and even sexy dimension to the Bram Stoker legend.

Richard Linklater's satirical take on high school life in the 1970s is not only funny and entertaining. It's practically a historic document of life during the smiley-face button era.

In keeping with the Smith rules, the movie is irreverent, self-referential, twisted, cheap and tasteless. And, of course, I mean that as the highest compliment.

What's truly surprising about Happy Feet is not its giddily brilliant entertainment, its intimate knowledge of the culture or its toe-tapping music. It's how commonplace these qualities have become in computer-animated movies… Happy Feet may be just one of the crowd, but what a great crowd it is.

The real importance of "Earnest" is the thrill of brilliant repartee. And as we laugh, an amazing thing happens: Oscar Wilde comes alive.

If he had to die so soon, this movie is the best and most appropriate sendoff Lee could have hoped for.

Commitments, adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais from the Roddy Doyle book, exults in its own world. The characters, with their foibles and verbal joustings, are everything. There's something poetically sardonic in every sentence they utter.

There's a good chance you're going to enjoy Aladdin more than the children.

Add uniformly good acting to Sayles' script of dark coal pits, West Virginia spirit and cowboyish melodrama and you have stirring cinema.

Suffused with sunlit, sensual images, Chocolat feels rather than finds out, implies rather than blurts out. Like an odd collection of old-time photographs, it seems to hold enigmatic truths -- ones that can't be expressed but that you have an instinctive understanding for nonetheless.

Appealingly, the movie has a certain lightness -- like the aforementioned butterfly -- which makes its foreboding qualities surprisingly user-friendly.

A gee-wonderful virtual visit to the arid orb, which uses ingenious technical sleight of hand to -- let's face it -- fake it beautifully.

Treat this project as you would a safari: It has its slow parts but the wildlife makes it worthwhile.

Quite unintentionally, Ildiko Enyedi's My Twentieth Century demonstrates the importance of a good story in a film. The movie doesn't really have one, but this shortcoming, which keeps the Hungarian film unmistakably shy of greatness, is its only fault.

Wonderfully silly all the time.

No matter what is going on in the story, these star-crossed lovers are always fascinating to watch.

There are extremely touching moments between Jesse and mystical Randolph, who seems to understand just about everything; and, more tellingly, between Jesse and mechanic Jim.

A museum piece, something to be enjoyed for its historical value. [2000 re-release]

Extraordinarily poetic, suspenseful film.

Elle fans will likely ignore the narrative shortcomings in favor of a well-loved character.

The Batblast of the summer.

A film that's tender and disarming for its intimate honesty. It's also deeply refreshing to see a movie that dares to explore sexuality among mature characters.

The cast, all classically trained on the stage, is simply commanding.

This fictional documentary's films-in-miniature -- subdued, engaging grace notes that run from 45 seconds to several minutes -- create a subtle, appropriately unconventional portrait of this eccentric man.

Corbijn makes us achingly aware of the singer's talent, the haunting poetry of his songs and how, living in the gloomy culture he did, his passing was virtually inevitable.

A sort of romance noir -- spruced up in pressed white linens -- this British-made film is elegant, uncompromising and oh-so- veddy nasty.

Although the movie -- falls occasional prey to pretension, it's a classic guilty pleasure.

Kitano the filmmaker makes sure that everything is beautiful, from the wonderful colors and passing tableaux to the intricate fighting choreography. This blind swordsman, you realize, has vision to spare.

This is the kind of sophisticated and pleasurable movie you dream of seeing from France.

Diabolically amusing without plunging into the Mel Brooks zone, and it's smart without being pedantic. And it's genuinely scary at times.

It is a fascinating dance between style and substance.

A firepowered, blood-drenched action picture that doesn't let up.

Terrifically funny romantic comedy, is a slam-dunk for Julia Roberts, the Michael Jordan of cuteness.

What keeps the film (adapted from the late John O'Brien's harrowing semi-autobiographical book) from being completely unbearable are the extraordinary performances.

It's a pleasant experience. But that's what it is: a sequel that replays every aspect of the original movie.

An entertainment to be seen and appreciated in momentum. As such, it is constantly gripping

The movie's entertaining for some wickedly funny situations and witticisms.

Cheerful, energetic and on the money.

A bare-bones outline ignores the performances, the stirring music, the close-in camerawork and the direction of Steve Anderson. The emotional punch and atmosphere of the movie soar through any hokiness. Plummer's search for the son he never saw grow up becomes a powerful odyssey.

It's more a collection of episodes that build to a complex, richly layered picture of these girls' lives. And the more time we spend with them, the more endearing they become.

It's full of good heart, and you can't help but like its unequivocal sentimentality.

Parents is an impressive debut, and certainly the most provocative new release around town. You may leave this movie realizing how dark your childhood actually was. You may also leave a vegetarian.

Start lining up now, bring a bullwhip -- and maybe some d-Con. Indiana will do the rest.

We are left with vivid images of Dominique, whose desire to change his country, despite formidable intimidation, is an inspiration to any supporter of democracy.

There may not be a bigger-hearted performance this year than Jamie Foxx's in Ray.

August, who also made "Pelle the Conqueror" and "House of the Spirits," steers this story to its stirring conclusion with firm lack of sentimentality.

Manages to be innocent, physically passionate, earnestly romantic and self-deprecatingly funny, all at once.

It's a B+, not an A. This would be enough for most filmmakers. But Anderson must contend with a higher standard. It's his fault for being original.

Admirable in its refusal to be politically correct.

The most enjoyable John Sayles movie in recent memory.

A deft, entertaining story that mixes menace with charm and satire with seriousness.

It's an intriguing experience.

So disarming, it's hard to say anything but good things about it. So get in line. The doctor is in.

Cruise is at the top of his form, and Gooding makes a brilliant opponent.

One extended guilty pleasure.

Tarkovsky pulls you into a dark, foreboding nightmare and Nykvist gives that nightmare an explosive awakening.

Hoffman's touchingly fractured performance gives the picture a warm dimension.

It is a movie about the real challenge of heroism.

Gibson may get top billing, but it's Sam Elliott who steals all the scenes. As Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, a man who fires with his own .45 revolver rather than the standard M-16 rifles, he's full of hilariously colorful comments.

There's a refreshingly unusual spirit at work.

A movie that grows better by the minute.

Not only visually brilliant, it's funny, too.

Screenwriter Michael Goldenberg and director David Yates have transformed J.K. Rowling's garrulous storytelling into something leaner, moodier and more compelling, that ticks with metronomic purpose as the story flits between psychological darkness and cartoonish slapstick.

Bening makes the movie into something finer still.

Con Air, a summer blast of a movie, teaches us many things: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer never met an explosion, a car crash or 20 tough guys talking trash he didn't like. Nicolas Cage is one of our most enjoyable screen heroes. As long as you're funny, you can literally get away with murder in a movie.

Has the glorious, gaudy benefit of much stock footage of Those Days, featuring all manner of drag queen, bearded lady and lactating hippie.

The movie, which Carion wrote with Eric Assous, has a calming quality. The story moves slowly but, given the milieu and pace of life, this seems perfectly appropriate.

Depp is a charm. He becomes his own, subtly compelling Barrie.

A one-of-a-kind experience, a Molotov cocktail of a seriocomedy.

The movie's devil-may-care freneticism is edgily amusing, almost liberating.

Straightforward but nonetheless powerful documentary.

This French film has a breezy, documentary air that belies the important issues is raises.

In terms of sheer belly-laugh count, this one's in the same plentiful company as "There's Something About Mary" and "Road Trip."

To watch this movie is to not only appreciate the majesty of Shakespeare's poetics but to engage in a profound, subtextual dialogue with bigotry.

Shows firsthand the appreciation and warmth from the musicians who worked with him.

In many ways, watching the movie is BETTER than concertgoing. We can enjoy that buzzy feeling of community without the fist-pumping biker obscuring our view.

When I say this movie's a charm, I'm really talking about Irwin.

Like rubbernecking motorists, we can't help but watch with lurid fascination.

Nadja has some delicious qualities. Most delectable of all is Elina Lowensohn as Nadja, the brooding daughter of Count Dracula, an otherworldly being with ebony lipstick, lusciously dark eyebrows, a dark hood and a great accent to match.

It's a movie of deft impressions and telling human moments. Whether or not those impressions and moments add up to anything is almost beside the point.

This is a charmfest of a movie, for bird lovers and non-bird lovers alike.

Unfolds with a marvelously understated humanism.

Penn's performance is the movie's ultimate grace note. As funny and ingenious as Allen's films can get, they are rarely known for depth of character.

Almost every scene has something to chuckle over.

Peppy, funny and sensual. If you have to see any romantic comedy that's not directed by Billy Wilder, or written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, this wouldn't be a bad choice.

Director Fernando Eimbcke, in an extraordinary debut, never expresses contempt for his characters. By examining their inner lives with compassion and respect, he inspires us to do the same.

This Is England, set in the social dystopia of Margaret Thatcher's Great Britain, gives us something far more humane and complex than a culturally specific memoir about Doc Martens shoes, reggae music and mindless aggression.

Watching Kidman, Leigh and -- in his nutty, damn-the-torpedoes way -- Black as they torment, confound and torture one another amounts to a vicarious thrill ride in human behavior.

Testament to the emergence of a visually masterful filmmaker, capable of ingenious, low-tech special effects.

Probably the most engaging Potter film of the series thus far.

Apocalypse Now Redux, which contains about 50 minutes of extra footage, is Coppola's final artistic assault. This is the one where he honors his vision -- or clears his name, whichever way you look at it. Does he do it? Perhaps the first thing to get out of your mind when watching this "Apocalypse," or the 1979 version, is worrying about whether the film's a success or failure. It's both. The more you see of "Apocalypse," the more obvious its triumphs and mistakes.

Robocop is one weird and entertaining hybrid of camp and sci-fi shoot-'em-up.

It's definitely NOT a conventional biopic about Kurt Cobain. (Nor, as its title oddly suggests, is it about the demise of writer-director Van Sant.) It's a tone poem, an elliptical, fictionalized meditation about the ill-fated rock 'n' roll superstar.

If you do not bring pride, good taste or sense to this third American Pie installment, you'll have a good time.

Warmhearted and slightly edgy seriocomedy, these sisters experience some pretty entertaining ups and downs. Entertaining, that is, for people who appreciate irony.

As we vicariously participate in their daily rituals, we find ourselves at the ground level of spiritual worship. It's hard to recall a similar documentary that brings viewers so palpably close to that sacred experience.

A percolating comedy. The laughs may not tear your belly up, but they're constant and they dovetail with the story.

Wonderful images, hues, sensations and faces.

Although the movie is slow-going at first, it gradually awakens, like Lilia. And then it dances.

Beam yourselves aboard Sunshine, set 50 years in the future. The voyage works, beautifully.

I was hooked from beginning to end.

It's formulaic, yet edgy. It's predictable, yet full of surprises. How far you get through this tall tale of a thriller before you give up and howl is a matter of personal taste.

A movie of biting social observation. And it masterfully avoids Manichaean simplicity.

This is cinema as oral tradition. And one heck of a cheap-seat deal.

There's no denying its surreal, hypnotic effect.

Based on a true story, the movie takes us through some harrowing times.

You don't have any idea what's going to happen next. You're not caught in a movie, so much as a narrative stratagem.

I think you can say that almost everyone watching this will be spellbound, whether they're stupefied by its insanity, more conventionally compelled by the various horrors in store or a combination of both.

Levinson was never one for narrative tightness. As with much of his previous work, Bugsy is a maze of episodes, a sprawling excuse for engaging human banter. Although the truth will inevitably catch up with Beatty -- especially concerning that expensive nightclub -- it's not entirely clear what the movie's about. But that's the kind of detail Beatty's Siegel wouldn't even worry about. Neither should you.

Even though it's weak in the final stages, Rock Star has more than enough sparkle to last you. That's chiefly thanks to Wahlberg, the main firework of this movie.

Director Demme is smart and sensitive enough to sit back and listen to the music without attention-getting intrusions. The tunes are subtly compelling.

To come out of the summer haze and enter the dark (and cool) wonder of Batman Returns is a pleasure not to be denied. Even more than before, this cartoon opera about cloistered personalities bathes exultantly in moody blues, gothic music swirls and a symphony of character tragedy.

It sweeps over you with blunt, unequivocal conviction.

This finale turns Assisted Living from fascinating experimental film into something finer.

The performers bring freshness to what could have been cliched roles.

The haunting beauty of the music, and the people who produce it – that's the chapter and verse of this story.

There's a great sense of fun in the cultural collision between Indian and British lifestyles -- often within the same person.

James Woods, a bushy-tailed attorney, goes the distance with the powers that be and makes "True Believer" a legal blast.

If the movie is straightforward and predictable in its attitude, it also exudes a sort of documentary lyricism.

You probably never dreamed a charming romantic movie could be staged against a backdrop of Scud attacks from Saddam Hussein.

This is a superb theatrical situation, and you have two great performers doing the emoting.

This is a Reagan youth's wet dream of underwater ballistics and East-West conflict.

Witty, sweet and charming but never sappy, the movie joins the heady company of such extraordinary child-centered movies as "The 400 Blows," "My Life as a Dog" and "Au Revoir Les Enfants."

And thanks to great existential one-liners from scriptwriter Robert Harling (with appropriate plaudits to novelist Olivia Goldsmith, of course), gender warfare is made amusing for almost everyone.

A compelling, compact story about a country that was left to destroy itself while one man presided futilely over the carnage.

The most brutal husband-wife encounter since axe-wielding Jack Nicholson yelled "Heeeeere's Johnny!" to Shelley Duvall in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."

His spirited take on the Sicily-set comedy is enjoyable, primarily for its all-embracing attitude. It breathes modern life into old expressions like "fare thee well" and "by my troth," and it welcomes nontraditional New Worlders Denzel Washington, Robert Sean Leonard, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves into the traditionally British throng.

Touching and funny eye-opener of a documentary.

You can expect to fall about, snort and hoot, at times hard enough to hurt inner body parts that only doctors can identify.

An enormously enjoyable gothic yarn from Mexico, transfuses the genre with wry grotesquerie, but retains respect for the old, classic films.

A bleakly comic, palm-sweaty hoot.

Just about everything you ever loved (or hated) about Italian films can be found.

It's a movie full of quietly assured flourishes: elegant camera compositions, wonderful uses of silence and an entertainingly eclectic cast, including Peggy Lipton as a sensitive bartender.

Luminously understated.

A full-throttle fantasy, about as heady a movie experience as it gets.

It's not every day that movies present a Teutonic character in SS uniform as an unambiguously moral hero, so enjoy this rarity. And the film.

With disarmingly entertaining movies like this, dare I say, who needs big bad superhero movies?

Exudes that seriousness about life and openness about style. It's about nothing and yet everything.

Turns potentially forgettable formula into something strangely diverting.

Macabre, yes, but the movie's also inventive and funny. You get a lot of smart bang-bang for your buck.

Has an intoxicating, old-fashioned feel about it. We are instantly lost in the period, thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe's almost haloed images and Joseph Bennett's authentic, restrained production design.

There's a documentary-like realism to the movie, thanks to its authentic Maori cast and Tamahori's semi-improvisational approach to direction. Tamahori also gives everyone a sympathetic, realistic dimension.

A Chinese film whose simple surface belies greater mysteries.

There is a clear festive buzz, as attendees laugh, bob and listen to Chappelle's impish, inventive comedy, and some of the best music hip-hop has to offer.

Spielberg takes assured control. In his hands, Minority Report is a classy, chilly quasi-Hitchcockian affair.

To the patient viewer, the rewards are many, especially Bardem's performance.

The result isn't a fragmentary experience so much as an evocative collage.

Director Pascale Ferran makes this a sort of opera of two bodies, as the characters discover not only each other but themselves. And the French filmmaker cannily turns their corporeal discoveries into a moral mission, two desperately lonely souls crying for spiritual freedom in a world of moral constriction.

Possibly the most suspense-charged mountain-climbing movie ever made.

Director Jay Chandrasekhar ... has found the perfect balance of old-fashioned charm and postmodern touches -- but not too many to overshadow the show's precious texture.

It's not art, this movie. But it's much more amusing than you'd expect.

This is a one-riff movie and instant cult classic.

You may leave this movie exhilarated by its no-holds-barred boldness or annoyed and bewildered at the unpredictable course it takes.

It's a joy to see nice warm performances by real people of different shapes, sizes and ages, who are seldom to be found in any glamour catalogues. And it's even more rewarding to watch Ferrera's many-sided performance.

Even though the story ultimately doesn't match the intensity with which it began, the movie's extraordinary for its two main performances.

Big muscular guys pruning roses IS funny and charming.

A Molotov cocktail of a movie, an engaging conflagration of British B-flick, cockney wit and gallows humor. There's even a delicate little love story in there.

A historical drama about a black regiment that proves its mettle during the Civil War, may not hold up to intense scrutiny but it marches to the glorious beat that fired up the Massachusetts 54th. And it's hard not to get carried along.

Filmmaker Gray, only 25 when he made this, expertly delineates the restive characters in this Jewish emigre community, and the existential voids among them all. He's helped by assured, subtle performances all around

A politically incorrect but often hilarious jam session, in which men and women trade insults like musical licks.

First Contact, written by Ric Berman, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, pulsates with great imagination, amusing characters and the fundamental optimism handed down by "Star Trek" founder Gene Roddenberry.

Vibrant and engaging documentary.

In this movie, only one thing is certain: No one remains the same.

If Collateral is all formula, it's polished to a fine sheen.

It's a stylish and classic gangster saga about the clashing of rival empires.

Only one filmmaking team should be allowed to make sequels: The Naked Gun people. In Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, they reach maximum velocity immediately. Naked 3 sets such a great pace at the beginning, it can't possibly keep up. Inevitably, the movie has its slower sections, coming almost to a halt in a slapstick finale at the Oscars. But wherever you are in the story, there's always something funny coming at you.

Aside from the plot -- and if you can figure out the plot, the CIA's special projects unit wants to talk to you -- Cop II is a rarity: a sequel that's as good as the original, if not better.

A most excellent sequel, funnier and livelier than the original.

As Tsotsi, Chweneyagae turns his face into a living battle mask -- curved, molded and sandpapered into smooth ruthlessness. But as the story unfolds, Tsotsi's mask begins to crack, and his humanity begins to flow through.

The movie's a treasure of small gems.

A helter-skelter ride of the soul, an unblinking, white-knuckle crash landing into the mushy mysteries of the subconscious.

Grim, yes, and great viewing.

This story doesn't just belong to them anymore. This richly observed, sometimes heartbreaking movie has become ours, too.

To watch this movie is to be moved not only by an affecting, warmly spirited yarn, but also by the wisdom that seems to waft to us directly from those snow-capped peaks.

Huppert and Greggory provide the emotional impact. They respond accordingly, imbuing their mutual suffering with an exacting and moving finesse.

Barry's deliberately unspectacular performance makes this even more powerful. He gives "Assassin" a disquieting authority.

It's as much fun to anticipate what he's (Herzog) going to say as it is to appreciate the snowy landscapes, belching volcanoes and mustachioed seals before his lens. And what could have been a conventional travelogue becomes a sort of ruminative odyssey of the mind.

It is stylistically breezy but deeply sincere, as Tickell offers a thoughtful, well-researched argument for alternative energy.

For the first time in ages, it seems, there's something in an Allen movie to take home with you. I'm convinced, for instance, my wife will eventually leave me for Liam Neeson.

Fascinating facts and testimony.

There are scenes that simply ask the audience to drink in the details, to enjoy the repast, just as much as follow the plot.

Takes unabashed delight in itself and its own culture.

Miller time for the funny bone.

Tautou is a delight, as always, using her bubbly personality to comic advantage. And Elmaleh makes for a sort of poor man's Buster Keaton, perpetually stressed but refusing to surrender, no matter how much damage he sustains to himself or his wallet.

It is a snapshot of a great actor in his prime and a chance for us to see one of yesteryear's great films in all its kingly luster.

Shaolin Soccer is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" with soccer balls, a touch of Sergio Leone and not one microsecond of seriousness.

May just be the best in its genre… Entertainment and radical street preaching, all rolled into one. If it tells black kids not to try this at home, it also revels cinematically in blam-blam-you're-dead. This is what makes the movie maddening -- and what gives it strength.

The movie, which suggests a combination of "Wait Until Dark" and "Rear Window," not only takes your breath away on an aesthetic level, it eloquently evokes the mother's and daughter's vulnerability.

Relentlessly funny satire.

Makes a virtue of its own simplicity. But don't be fooled. That simplicity is mere cover. You're kept wondering about the outcome until the very end.

It's not art, but it's fun artfully done. And as long as you're paying less than the price of a cheapo motel for the night, it's worth checking into.

Wedding has enough coincidences, screamfests, drunken rants and shock revelations to fill a season of "Desperate Housewives," but it comes across as finely textured drama, thanks to the performers, who make their characters so persuasive and three-dimensional, we're too mesmerized to care about the story's more overwrought or histrionic passages.

There isn't a dull or dumb moment in this movie.

Writer-director Niccol (who wrote and directed "Gattaca" and scripted "The Truman Show") uses disarming, but wicked lightness to damn the celebrity-worshiping culture and Hollywood's beyond-the-looking-glass filmmaking.

You're drawn in, like it or not. You can't get away from the immediacy. Or the feeling that you're getting sucked in, too.

The movie is given unusually wide dimension by director Taylor Hackford, who creates a subtly scary drama that emphasizes character over caricature (in most cases) and plausibility over formulaic stupidity (again, in most cases).

Bacon's subtle, assured performance keeps us with him every step of the way.

The gals are fab. And so's the movie.

Far richer than you'd ever think possible.

The movie's wonderfully original, fast-moving and funny.

Odd, complex and charming.

That the actor performs so effortlessly, so casually, is the real magic here. You forget about technique, and, best of all, you forget you're watching a black-and-white subtitled French movie from the dusty past.

In the end, the movie works because Grant and Roberts are disarming geniuses at playing themselves -- and then some.

Though the story line seems grim at times, it's always made lighter by Brodsky's gentle, often hilarious presence.

The most cinematic of the three films. It tells its story in stark, often wordless scenes.

Although we miss some of the finer details that made Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 book so meaningful, we're moved by the movie's themes of cultural displacement and the power of chance.

Intense and absorbing experience.

Thanks to the new guerrilla narrative, the world has a constant flow of images to file in its collective consciousness. And that camera-testable accountability slowly becomes a global civic right that fulfills the noblest purpose of journalism -- to bring truth to power.

The story, which deals straightforwardly with racism, miscegenation, adultery and consumerism, is a fascinating combination: a movie with an almost Capraesque heart and pristine, almost stagey lighting schemes, that addresses uncomfortable moral issues with today's perspectives.

Hums with compassion for its outlandish, lonely but always sweet characters.

This is a captivating experience.

The images are crisp. The story is restored. And there's no sign of Raymond Burr.

As they stumble, bumble and fumble their way to love, they get more charming by the minute. Which makes them more interesting than Hollywood-style characters, anyway.

A devilishly, hysterically, cacklingly, subversively funny picture that builds and builds until it literally self-destructs.

You will surely leave this movie shocked, shaken and surprisingly moved. And definitely stuck on that poor octopus.

It's not the deepest thematic concern you ever saw on screen. But it's watchable, great fun.

It scores its comic points with dire one-liners, an astringent dearth of sentimentality and only-in-America developments.

No matter what's coming their way, post-apocalyptic doom or gloom, this James Gang of the galaxy is just plain fun to watch.

I had to beg my 8-year-old to stop laughing.

In a sense, Shattered Glass is a parenthetical horror movie in which someone discovers (or worse, denies) the monster within themselves.

Stephen Frear's The Snapper hits the spot nicely, if your spot likes hearty rounds of working-class comedy.

It's great to watch characters in The War Room operating as most of us do -- by the seat of their pants.

Surrender and enjoy the spectacle.

All in all, this is a celebration of Australian exuberance, a national ethic of adventurousness and enormous charisma.

This is Disney at its live-action best and brightest.

Whatever its ultimate position on the greatest hits list, Monsters, Inc. is supple and technologically sophisticated entertainment.

It'll keep you amused enough to sit still and even remember it fondly.

Vietnam will do well on the strength of Williams' performance: He's Groucho in 'Nam, with his rapid-fire quips and cast of imaginary guests. But when it's time to mourn Cronauer's departure, after a final softball game with the locals and a farewell to buddies-in-arms, there isn't a wet eye in the house. [15 Jan 1988, p.N31]

The cliches are obscured by the sheer fun of it all.

The movie's a gas. Very funny, to a rather dark degree.

Apart from moments of conventional schlock (the ending included), "Serpent" twists with expertly drawn menace. The editing's snappy, the images visceral, and Craven's Haiti is a craze of blood ceremonies and political rioting -- it's set during the fall of "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

Belgian actor [Jan] Decleir's tough-guy vulnerability ... gives an otherwise standard police procedural extraordinary grace and power.