F. X. Feeney

Mamet's fixation on language is, nonetheless, more effective onstage than onscreen, where the technical and visual requirements distract from the sounds of the words -- the heart of Mamet's work.

What is surprising, and what one takes away most deeply and happily from Triumph of Love, is a refreshed admiration for Mira Sorvino.

First-time writer-director Paul Morrison has a gift for evoking a time and place.

Less a movie about stepfamilies than a PSA about how cancer makes everyone behave themselves at Christmas.

The sense of loss aroused by the film is oceanic.

What transpires is so rich that I've seen this movie three times. The joy of being involved with two wholly truthful (if colorfully fucked up) characters is that exhilarating.

The picture's deepest strength, however, is the fire Fernán-Gómez conjures from deep within himself, as if "honor" were an extinct volcano he could will into exploding, given enough anger and time.

Taymor has done an inspired job of resurrecting one of Shakespeare's unruliest works, just in time for the new century.

Writer Sam Catlin and director Danny Leiner have fashioned an alert, shrewdly observed portrait of a moment in time.

Writer-director Carl Colpaert never loses his balance, despite the David Lynchian leap of faith he asks us to make midway, in a twist so bold as to be a backflip. If anything, this extra layer in the story effectively illuminates the moral choices Jesus must navigate.

It's a sweet chamber piece, beautifully played.

As with "The Blair Witch Project," one must swallow one's irritation at paying yet again for big-screen video -- but even so, the spectacle of an America falling apart is acutely and hilariously embodied by Dawn.

A smoothly structured, earth-toned and well-drawn Japanese anime.

Inglis offers complicated characters and uniformly worthy performances without falsely manipulating us into sympathizing with anybody but tries too strenuously to fuse his warring polarities of character-driven intrigue and plot-driven treacheries into an allegory of redemption. In the end, that feels like one or two big things too many.

A film whose story movingly outfoxes any number of shopworn expectations on its way to a singular, heart-rending outcome.

The Messenger may be a caricature of theology, but then Besson is a cartoonist of genius.

Their discretion makes From Hell less a horror movie than a classical film noir.

Some critics are badly selling the film short, when the story it tells, measured strictly in terms of emotional power and overall fun, is as moving and pleasurable as any matinee item by Ford, Hawks or Raoul Walsh.

This gets my vote as director Franco Zeffirelli’s finest film. Certainly, it’s his most personal.

Thrillingly unpredictable.

Pellington's sharp, fastball compositions and nerve-splintering cutting style are of a piece with such intelligence, devilishly mixing shock with optimism.

Goei's sharp-eyed satiric sense evokes the diversity and energy of Singapore, and his good-humored nostalgia makes disco rise from the dead.

May lack any transcendent point that would make it exceptional, but it is certainly a worthy start, and worth catching.

A snappy, delightfully balanced bit of historic whimsy.

Mike Myers wrote the abominable script, plays both leads and is miscast in each.

Even as the psychological interdependencies of the two boys take the foreground, the movie gets more and more crowded with fun-house surprises and cliffhanging set pieces.

I've not stopped thinking about it -- weighing might-have-beens and alternative courses of action, as though remembering an actual event rather than a nimble, superbly-realized fantasy. That's a first-rate achievement.

An abbondanza of busy, situation comedy twists that snip one's suspended disbelief and send it crashing like a chandelier.