Desson Thomson

Lilya's struggle to make a life for herself is both heartbreaking and heart-stirring.

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.

A hilarious fantasy, about a plucky piglet that learns how to tend sheep, Babe is a barnyard charmer.

Few movies have evoked the happiness of a good, strong family as genuinely as this one. And this affecting atmosphere makes the eventual outcome resonate with great power.

Mullan's movie is admiringly uncompromising. He refuses to augment the horrors with relief.

Cronenberg's deeper purpose is to pull audiences into an affecting, powerful story about right and wrong.

The satire of the season, a hilarious, razor-sharp indictment of the American Dream.

You're exhilarated from beginning to end.

As exciting for its narrative twists and turns as for its Korean textures and rhythms.

A galactic slump of a movie that stuffs its travel bag with special effects but forgets to pack the charm.

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

Director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi take a deeper, edifying interest in the moral ambiguities that arise between Maurice and Jessie. And thanks to our warm investment in both characters, we're more than willing to sign up for this existential ride. We allow this relationship -- and the movie -- to take us places we'd never usually go.

A gently stirring symphony about emotional transition filled with lovely musical passages and softly nuanced performances.

Flirting With Disaster, like that Energizer Bunny, keeps on going. But in this case, the perpetual motion is a deliciously hysterical rush.

Watch this film. You may never look at nature indifferently again.

Speaking of jail, "Shawshank"-the-movie seems to last about half a life sentence. The story, chiefly about the 20-year friendship between Freeman and Robbins, becomes incarcerated in its own labyrinthine sentimentality.

A sobering reflection on our culture's attitude toward violence.

Maddin keeps what could have been a one-joke theme interesting for an admirably long time. But eventually, it becomes, well, hard to breathe. There's something wonderfully unique about the project but the reasons for doing it remain buried.

This is a captivating experience.

This brilliant combination of stop-motion animation, three-dimensional sets and superbly imaginative graphics, brings animation to new peaks. Burton, whose inventive, delightfully haunted mind put so much zest into "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," "Beetlejuice," "Batman" and "Edward Scissorhands," has done it again.

Touching and funny eye-opener of a documentary.

Although it contains many visually compelling passages and some provocative moments, the movie is strangely banal and simplistic.

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

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.

A movie for almost everyone, from boomer parents (who remember their teens and twenties) to their teenage kids (who can't wait to get started with same). And if there's anyone who can bring so many into the same mosh pit, it's Black, who so occupies the role you can't believe he's acting.

Franklin's picture is effortlessly wise beneath its entertaining surface.

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.

Thanks to Schlesinger's exacting direction and Malcolm Bradbury's witty, restrained script, these characters are kept more amusing than horribly pitiable.