Frank Lovece

Like the hardscrabble lives of this isolated wasteland, it's equal parts unforgiving white-heat aridity and golden late-afternoon glow.

That rare film aimed at teenage girls that's still enjoyable for grownup viewers.

Captures the way drug addiction gives structure and purpose to aimless lives, and evokes the breathtaking rapture of a fix. All this and a happy ending, too.

This is as powerful a set of evidence as you'll ever find of why art matters, and how it can resonate far beyond museum walls and through to the most painfully marginal lives.

Feel-good tone notwithstanding (and creepy to boot), there are nagging riddles about the Helfgott story that the film has neither the nerve nor the sense to tackle.

This sweet, lovingly passionate story is nonetheless a charmer. Anderson's technique -- jaggy, product-testimonial close-ups; eerie still-image insertions -- is arresting, but this is an actors' showcase.

It differs from American films about the period in its evocation of day-to-day passion. The power of beauty is often dealt with in films, but not so often its powerful curse.

The film proceeds from an utterly fascinating notion. As with A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Spielberg's admirable intent is to create a prescient, serious science-fiction movie.

While this is just as long as the first film, more convincing special effects help make time fly.

The character designs, however, are much less impressive. Except for the oddly naturalistic Sinclair, the rest look like cartoony characters from one of Disney's '60s films.

Though the electric organ score is unnecessarily ominous in clearly comical scenes, this is a fascinating early interpretation of what has become a classic tale.

Penn's stark and unvarnished portrait of the challenged Sam makes even the hardest-to-swallow plot acceptable.

The combat visuals that follow are as powerful as those of any war film.

The ever-charismatic character actor George Coe stands out as a small-town jeweler grateful for a late-life affair.

Sometimes seems as noisy and unrefined as Jean himself. But it has just as much heart, and builds up to rousingly "Rocky"-like climax.

The characters may be one-dimensional ciphers with nothing much to say, but boy, do they not say it with style.

With grace and cleverness, mixing romance and comedy in a genuinely delightful way.

The genial humor is occasionally marred by an overall sexist tone and some downright nasty homophobic and racist attempts at humor.

Amusing and at times uproarious.

The movie's physical violence isn't gratuitous -- it's the emotional violence that makes this a movie for grown-ups, not kids.

It would have been nice if Hardwick had a bigger budget for retakes to work out some of the supporting actors' stiffness, but he does keep the story moving, finding the humor in characters caught up in their own machinations rather than cheap wisecracks.

Kristin Scott Thomas is the film's revelation. She takes center stage as a smart, fearless woman who's utterly irresistible.

Essentially a feature-length episode of the popular Nickelodeon animated series, this faithful expansion is savvy enough to stay put.

The funny lines fall flat and the relationships and conversations among adult characters are straight out of 1950s sitcoms. Now that's scary.

As fascinating and well-crafted as it is, The Public Image Is Rotten is ultimately a vanity project, authorized by Lydon and his manager and meant less as an unvarnished journalistic documentary but as a burnishing of, well, his public image.

A massive, sweaty, frequently silly epic that nevertheless delivers enough brute pleasure to pass a rainy afternoon.

Some brilliant human moments do emerge, and there's nothing wrong with a reminder to live life in harmony, and not to beat yourself up.

This lively and nicely timed comedy has plenty enough, farce, slapstick and even drawing-room humor.