F. X. Feeney

Everyone plays their role (and the roles within their roles) to perfection, and writer-director Mamet keeps us guessing what's what and who's who right up until the final minute.

To their great credit, writer Benjamin Brand and director Greg Harrison weave these contradictory variations into an effective puzzle, if one that doesn't quite transcend being a puzzle - it never becomes a mystery, like, say, "Mulholland Drive," or even "The Sixth Sense."

Well-tuned wisecracks and clever plot twists.

Above all, Oshima has fashioned a tale of men among men that feels familiar at first, then moves boldly into more enigmatic terrain.

The film's discretion short-circuits any impulse we might have to regard Glennie as a handicapped person who has “overcome.” Instead, we're led to experience her life as she does - as an adventure in which setbacks are not challenges, but illuminations of untracked paths.

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

This is the deepest of Jewison's three racially themed films, the other two being "In the Heat of the Night" and "A Soldier's Story."

Astonishingly deep and moving.

Overall, Whitely's debut film may just fill you with an unexpectedly deep elation.

Yet Waiting for Guffman is never mean-spirited. Its weird warmth is perfectly embodied by Guest himself, whose flamboyant, stagestruck choreographer, Corky St. Clair, could have (in less ingenious hands) been a cruel, gay-bashing caricature, but instead becomes a hallucinatory Everyman.

It's a film which aims to persuade us of its truth without props or signposts--and it does so with unforgettable beauty.

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

LaGravenese (writer of "The Fisher King," adapter of "The Bridges of Madison County," making his directorial debut) eschews distractions of style and molds our attention to the performances.

Writer-director Sebastian Cordero wrings nerve-racking suspense, and complex performances, from these dynamics.

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.

Although this movie doesn't have an ounce of depth, it's so thoroughly amiable and upbeat that you'd have to be in a fighting mood to find fault with it.

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

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.

The main body of the film earns comparison with the military parables of John Ford, particularly "The Long Gray Line" and "The Wings of Eagles."

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.

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

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.

Janssen proves herself an actress of delightful range.

It's a first-rate chamber piece for actors, but Julie Christie brings a particularly layered depth to what could have been a very flat role; a combination of bereaved mother and castaway wife. Her torment and her intermittent joys are so fully communicated that they anchor the film.

Surprisingly moving -- prompting lumps in the throat over what was, after all, a historic moment of the most luminous hope.

Lyrical and funny, Full Grown Men is a tough-minded film about the need to grow up.

The good news is that they've resurrected a franchise with wonderful potential and may eventually grow bored enough of recapping past triumphs to take it in more daring directions.

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