Jack Mathews

A slick, fast-paced production with first-rate performances and an emotional punch you won't soon forget.

Beautifully shot, both in darkened homes and on the misty green Irish landscape by Loach's frequent cinematographer Barry Aykroyd, "Wind" has a you-are-there intensity and intimacy about it that make it nearly overwhelming. But for all its violence and subsequent sadness, it's a movie of extraordinary importance.

Breathtaking.

School of Rock may be to Black what "The Nutty Professor" was to Jerry Lewis, or "Groundhog Day" was to Bill Murray - that rare, perfectly tailored opportunity to play against one's broadest impulses. Not to neutralize them, necessarily, but to tame them and turn them into something very human and charming.

Tony Gilroy, co-author of the superb Jason Bourne film trilogy, makes a stunning directorial debut with Michael Clayton, an out-of-courtroom drama that helps solidify George Clooney's acting bona fides.

The very thought of humanizing Hitler makes me queasy. If he had a good side, I don't want to know about it.

Until he was shot to death in 2000, Haitian radio journalist Jean Dominique was a lone voice for truth and freedom in his politically riven country.

Greenebaum's tedious, film-school level exercise in self-indulgence and exploitation.

Everything about this political thriller is ridiculous.

First-time feature director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's dark, complex allegory about luck, chance and fate is one of the year's most morbidly fascinating foreign films.

A gritty thriller on the theme of the con man conned. It works as well as it does thanks to a captivating lead performance by Emmanuelle Devos and the superb direction of Jacques Audiard.

The humor in de Heer's script is mostly anatomical, and the performances of the nonpro cast are stiffer than bark. But you've never seen anything like it.

It's just twice as much as we need to know about the Sex Pistols.

A guy flick, but I can't imagine many male viewers actually identifying with Elliot or his friends. The depression would be unbearable.

A popcorn movie with a protein center, satisfying neither taste.

In any case, this is the image of the marquis we would know had he been handled by a top publicity team.

It is certainly the feel-good movie of the season.

I like the idea of a cybercrimes agent cracking cases through superior knowledge of the Internet. Marsh could be a great heroine for a continuing series. But Untraceable essentially forces its audience to identify with those who would be willing accomplices to torture and murder. To understate the point, that's not an audience-friendly approach.

Mendes -- wants to have it both ways, to get close to mob life, but be no part of it. And he keeps us at a dime-novel distance, too. He has made a dreamy, poetic impression of a world that exists only on film and in comic strips, and that has no resonance for most of us.

One of Rohmer's more engaging slices of life. The acting is impeccable.

By turns brilliant and tedious, imaginative and mundane.

There is no turning back; the biggest project in China since the Great Wall and the Grand Canal has claimed its human cost and now must prove its own worth. -

Boorman signals that he may not like what the real Cahill did, but as a storyteller with a proven affection for larger-than-life subjects, he can't resist him, either.

A great big sloppy kiss of entertainment for audiences weary of explosions, CGI effects and sequels, sequels, sequels.

What a movie! This is how the medium seduced us originally.

At times, Chicago has the feel of a revue, with the major characters taking turns at their own show-stopping numbers. If it's too much of a good thing, I say, bring it on.

The World has a pokey pace, but it presents a uniquely powerful look at the new big kid in the global economy.

Other than a tortured apology from Bill Clinton for having misunderstood the gravity of the situation, there isn't a peep of remorse heard from the normally sanctimonious West. And Dellaire's final bit of self-abuse is to blame himself for his failure to shame the world to action.

A meticulous, elaborate stunt, a movie two degrees of separation from its source, and maybe another degree from viewers' hearts.

It is a devastating indictment of the ruling class of Money, Miss.

Far from the smart historical epic some might have expected, is just another feisty summer shoot-'em-up.

Clever, compelling, funny and unpredictable, and it has a lollapa-looza of an ending.

Fans of anyone other than Sean Connery who has played James Bond may want to look away, because admirers of Ian Fleming's 007 novels are almost bound to agree that Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Sean.

Creepy in 1980, Cruising is almost macabre now, knowing that most of the young men involved in rough, unprotected sex then began dying of AIDS shortly afterwards.

This is as bitter and despairing an exploration of the human spirit as any of Bergman's films, and it is just as vibrantly written and directed.

A couple of the stories don't quite accomplish what Rodrigo intends, but most are poignant, disturbing, and superbly acted.

With echoes of "Dave," in which Kevin Kline takes over for the comatose U.S. President he resembles, Kristoffer begins to feel the power given to him and to make his own decisions, leading to some hilarious situations and an unpredictable ending.

It will make you laugh, and feel like crying.

A breathtaking visual history of big wave surfing. This is vicarious daredevilry at its best.

It captures the animal attraction we call lust and carefully tracks its evolution to true love. For all its faults, this beautifully shot, sexually graphic film is a gem.

More fun than a company picnic - and a lot more fun than the classic 18th century novel that inspired it - Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story is the first good comedy of 2006.

The biggest little movie of the year - and one of the best ever about the news media.

This fine documentary mixes archival footage, interviews with the sailor's family and sponsors, and - most amazingly - excerpts from the film and audiotape diary kept by Crowhurst.

A charmer, a comedy with drama -- or vice versa.

Not bad. It actually might have been considered pretty good had it been made 30 years ago, when people might have cared about the backstory of Father Merrin.

Apparently, the show’s appeal is due to the good-heartedness of its undereducated anti-heroes, but their kind of dumb grows old fast.

A slice of life in the most profound sense.

Looks a lot like 1950s American gangster films -- particularly, John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle" -- but it's decidedly French in its sexual candor and moral laissez-faire.

Has many of the qualities that made the actor such a great target for self-parody in Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich" - it's sober, deliberate, self-consciously mysterious and no fun at all.

It's not as clever, or as consistently funny, or as well-cast as "Shakespeare in Love," but Richard Eyre's Stage Beauty is the most fun I've had with the Bard since that 1998 Oscar winner.

Rarely does an animated character merge as perfectly with the persona of the actor providing his voice as the star of Monsters, Inc. does with John Goodman.

Meticulously researched documentary.

As tension mounts through the evening, Giraldi cleverly sweeps in and out of conversations -- and brings it all together in a climax that is as hard to see coming as it is to resist.

For those who didn't get enough violence from Martin Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," welcome to City of God.

In condensing Rusesabagina's story, George has undoubtedly overstated the specific dramatic moments; the movie has more cliff-hangers than the "Indiana Jones" series.

The face-to-face interviews laced throughout the movie are fascinating and often laugh-out-loud funny. Ask people to talk dirty and you don't know what they'll say.

This is Murray's subtlest performance, and one of his best.

Eastwood's sepia-toned combat scenes are as graphic, if not quite as jolting, as those in "Ryan." And without a Tom Hanks-size star in the cast, "Flags" is not likely to do "Ryan's" blockbuster business. But "Flags," a true story directed by someone with far more faith in the audience's ability to empathize, is the better movie.

This might have come off as both self-indulgent and preachy if McElwee weren't so persuasively earnest. "Bright Leaves" becomes both a mystery and memoir in progress and though the filmmaker does not find the truth he is looking for, it was clearly a quest worth undertaking.

The monster's mashing of Tokyo looks as Ed Wood-like as ever, but the film's humanity gives it depth.

We're treated to two smashing performances from Morel and Blanc, and all of the mysteries raised before are satisfyingly resolved.

Sillier than it is clever, and Toback's self-indulgence is tiresome. He's a genuine auteur, all right, but his life and the funky tastes that inspire him are just not as interesting as he thinks they are.

Harris brings into focus a nearly forgotten success story, filling in another blank in the ultimate mosaic of the 20th century's greatest tragedy.

At one point, Junge complains that her memories are banal, and they are -- But when sounds of war penetrate the bunker and the end is near, the details become high drama.

The movie fascinates not so much because of Strummer, whose brooding temperament and flash-and-burn career arc seems pretty routine by rock standards, but because of the way Temple organized and edited the film.

Keane is a movie you might see on a dare, and though I think it is brilliantly conceived, I wouldn't dare to dare you.

Trying to resist Reese is like trying to resist Reese's Pieces: They're always the same but you can't help yourself.

Without a persuasive ending, Zodiac is an exercise in frustration if not futility. But before it hits the inevitable wall, it does something better than most genre films even attempt: it perfectly depicts the obsession that often overtakes cops and reporters involved in high-profile crimes.

The film is as faithful to its subject as perhaps any film biography has been. As Eastwood said, Parker was a paradoxical character, both self-destructive and full of life, and the movie, simultaneously dark and exhilarating, takes that as its theme. [22 Sep 1988, p. 1]

28 Weeks Later has a stronger story line, equally fine performances, greater tension, enough gore to satisfy the most hard-core zombie fan, and a narrative pace that flings us from the opening scenes to the very last image.

Morton's as good an actress as any working today and in Control, she overcomes an age gap to give one of the year's most heartbreaking and honest performances.

Whether this reserved, hypercautious widower can deal with the arousal she creates in him - let alone be physically able to act on it - is one of the many layers of tension that drive this unusual and absolutely riveting dance.

A thing of beauty and imagination.

Fuqua's passion for the music comes through in the clear, unobtrusive style of the film, which mixes generous footage of the event's performances with interviews and archival footage, all adding up to a luscious historical snapshot of one America's original art forms.

The source for Jieho Lee's The Air I Breathe is an ancient Chinese proverb about the four cornerstones of emotion - love, pleasure, happiness and sorrow. But Lee and co-writer Bob DeRosa went 0-4 with their convoluted screenplay, making me thankful they didn't try to adapt the Seven Deadly Sins.

Once again, the director's eye is faultless as he captures both the essence and beauty of the art of Jang Seung-up, Korea's legendary 19th-century painter. But he doesn't capture the artist's soul.

Frears story's grotesque subject offers an opportunity for a sick audience payoff that is more "Death Wish" than social commentary, and he takes it. It works -- you'll laugh! you'll gulp! -- but it's cheap.

A brilliantly spare and poignant tragicomedy that projects such savage self-criticism of China's "economic miracle" that the film has been banned at home.

When it's funny, Best is hilarious.

It's got a hot premise, some cool sets, attractive stars and action that lets up only when it thinks you're about to surrender.

It is remarkably, unsentimentally dramatized by Fred Schepisi, courtesy of the pitch-perfect performances of its ensemble British cast.

The tension and intrigue between the pretender and his would-be associates is as dense as the woods surrounding their hiding place.

Like Wong's past films, 2046 is lovely to behold, elegantly moody and rich in atmospherics. And the women caught in Chow's web are extraordinary beauties.

The romantic subtext of their characters' relationship is the film's chief liability, and feels forced and undeveloped.

A small gem in the postholiday depression.

A grim, poetic, heart-wrenchingly fine ode to the lost children of Glasgow's forgotten class.

Smith turns it on with co-star Eva Mendes in a manner that will have George Clooney taking notes.

Like Ceylan's earlier films, Climates is as gorgeous as it is self-consciously composed, but an hour and 40 minutes is a long time to spend with Isa, forget three seasons.

In the year of the animated movie, this one soars above them all.

The documentary plays it down the middle, neither condemning nor romanticizing the political outlaws, but making sense of who they were and what they did.

If you approach this movie in the right frame of mind -- that is, with total contempt -- you can still enjoy it as a comedy.

Notre Musique is a cry against war and man's inherent needs for tribalism and violence, a position that wouldn't start a good argument in a college cafeteria.

Belvaux says his tryptich...are stand-alone movies that can be enjoyed in any order. I disagree. None is a complete experience and "An Amazing Couple" can be easily skipped. But the first and third add up to something very poignant and satisfying.

No better than whatever you might pick up while wearing a blindfold at Blockbuster, even if you happen to reach into a trash can.

The film is beautifully shot and edited, but these emotional snapshots won't stay long in the memory.

Critics are already comparing the two movies and largely agreeing that Tarantino?s story about a psychopathic stuntman who targets women for highway carnage is the best. I disagree.

A gripping, sometimes dramatic, sometimes annoying collection of jerky images and subjective impressions.

"Songs" is a delight. It's a visual feast and often hilarious.