Jack Mathews

[Boyle] shrugs off any intellectual pretense to rollick in a dead-on scare fest. On that level, 28 Days Later is indeed a frightfully good time.

Penn is projecting heroic qualities onto a young guy who simply got in over his head.

As sensitive to its subject as it is stark in its rendering.

Scanner is mostly all talk, and the talk is entertaining only when it's coming from Downey. The actor's long history of drug abuse taught him a thing or two about cooked behavior, and he gives some anxious run-on monologues that are very funny.

Stamp, whose ability to make Wilson simultaneously coarse and charismatic is irresistibly entertaining.

The story, which was inspired by an Albanian novel and the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, ends with a literary patness. But it's still a potent tale of fraternal love and the loss of innocence.

Gerstel's efforts are a testament to her own humanity and a ray of inspiration for some ultimate peace. But it also speaks to the near futility of individual forgiveness in a continuing tinderbox of hatred.

In this documentary, I learn there are people who can solve a Monday New York Times puzzle in less than three minutes - without looking words up! I don't necessarily want to know these people, but they put on a good show at the annual crossword championship in Stamford, Ct., which is the centerpiece of this affectionate, smartly-done promo for puzzling.

Some of it is brilliant, some is tedious and some is just plain incoherent.

Looks stunning, but it's an ill-conceived mess that plays like two movies awkwardly spliced together. In one movie, parents are asked to stand by while the kids are entertained with cute animal tricks and slapstick pratfalls. In the other, the kids will be hushed while the parents are treated to inside jokes.

Despite all the violence that ensues, The Proposition is a psychological Western more in the mold of Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" than the John Ford films its stark cinematography resembles. It's about a good man, Stanley, who does bad things, and a bad man, Charlie, fighting his conscience.

Arguably Lumet's best film in 20 years.

Shortland's script takes some unnecessary turns, mostly with Joe's drinking and sexual insecurities. But as long as it's focused on Heidi's predicament, it is riveting drama.

"Filthy" may have been a better title for Dirty. The rough language is not just pervasive, as the MPAA's R rating describes it, it's assaultive. The violence is not merely "strong," it's incessant, sadistic and broadly unbelievable.

Spider-Man is an almost-perfect extension of the experience of reading comic-book adventures.

The film serves him well, replaying a few surviving recordings that make clear what a beautifully melodious voice he had and what a talent went wasted.

A dazzlingly original visual adventure.

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

Super Size Me produces more laughs than a man's gastrointestinal distress should.

The two-part film focuses on Jung-rae's one-night stand with the protégée of a colleague he invites to his seaside retreat, and then with a second woman who merely reminds him how much he liked the first. The scenery's great and the performances adequate, but wake me when it's over.

Among the creepiest adult monologues you'll hear in a regular theater this year comes from Karen Young in Heading South, a well-acted but misguided tale of displaced sexual longing on the beaches of Baby Doc Duvalier's 1970s Haiti.

The Macao settings are beautifully rendered, and the dark humor is often very funny. But it is noisy.

Minghella has certainly mounted a gorgeous movie and the battle scenes are brutally spectacular. But overall, "Cold Mountain" is like a fine piece of hand-crafted leather, where the stitching shows its quality. That looks good on a handbag, not so good on the big screen.

A quirky comedy-drama that gets the bulk of its humor from the well-placed non sequitur. It never seems to be going where you think it is, and that includes its oddly endearing dialogue.

The intimate love story is overwhelmed by the carnage. It may be an accurate picture of life in Medellin, but it's not convincing.

If you're looking for a bit of an uplift, you could do worse among the gloom of so many holiday dramas.

The themes are about the power and consequences of sex, but the stories are too glib and episodic to leave any impression.

Whether the movie will make you believe a shocking-orange stock car has a future with a lavender Carrera, it's more fun to follow than a televised freeway chase.

Roberts carries the film in the best sense, by taking us on a human journey of genuine discovery and growth.

Though The Lookout is eventually a genre film, with a tense, bang-up ending, it is also a thoughtful study of a young man trying to make sense of a world that he is having to learn all over again.

Laced with flashbacks and stylistic tics, but it never loses its forward momentum, and to the last shot, it avoids predictability.

Has the gentlest feel of any movie I can remember.

Every once in a while, a performance pops out of a Hollywood movie that is so brilliant and unique to the matching of actor to role that it's impossible to imagine anyone else achieving it.

Designed as a giant put-on, "Kiss Kiss" is so inside Hollywood, so anxious to bite the hand that fed Black, that it plays like an elaborate prank. Some of it is a lot of fun; most of it is a lot of nonsense.

Works on every level. The humor and language are as crude as an R rating allows, but Carell and Apatow's script is so hip, funny and - yes - innocent that it's never offensive.

It irks the ink out of me to see Lane exalted as a hero for doing what any responsible editor would do, then being paid to consult on his own canonization.

What stands out, not surprisingly, is the work and passion that goes into the shows. But seeing all this from the inside creates an extraordinary level of empathy for those involved.

As the relationship between the two British schoolteachers begins (quietly), builds (deceptively) and dissolves (spectacularly), Dench and Blanchett give a master class in acting. Pick your own sports metaphor, but watching them go at each other is the match of the year.

The Czech Republic and Russia, the respective homes of Emil and Oleg, should sue.

Fujimori comes off as amiable and in full denial, recalling the positive headlines of his presidency - and there were many - while laying the scandals off on Montesinos.

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.

The strength of McKay's film is not in identifying a cultural period, but in giving voice to so many great theater people. Their passion is infectious, their stories are priceless and their humor is boundless.

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.

The film's standout performance belongs to Ed Harris, who plays a Boston detective with decades of experience and an equal amount of built-up resentment toward people who would harm children.

A long sit for those unfamiliar with Proust's literary quest and output, but the view is sensational.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger serves as both a prosecution brief on the above charges and an unauthorized biography.

The result of Moskowitz's sleuthing is Stone Reader, a combination mystery, book celebration and -- sorry to say -- intrusively annoying self-portrait of the filmmaker.

It takes us about half the film to adjust to its quirkiness, and we leave the theater with both laughter cramps and the feeling that it should have been funnier a lot longer.

There is a vengeance motif that is worked out in a way that is both emotionally satisfying and completely unbelievable.

The dubbing from German to Polish is off-putting, but it is Schlondorff's best film since his classic "The Tin Drum."

The fourth documentary screed this summer to have grown out of the left's frustration with the nation's turn to the right. Keep 'em coming, I say.

America's favorite superhero reappears in Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, and all we can say is, "Man, oh Man of Steel, it's good to have you back."

While not nearly as elaborate as either film, Heist plays like a combination of "The Sting" and "Mission: Impossible."

Hellboy may be a big, noisy goof of a comic-book action film, but love is in the dank, dark, subterranean air as the bulky red-hued palooka tries to win the heart of the pyrokinetic beauty Liz Sherman.

Rai's acting is frustratingly passive in Provoked, and the script is laced with prison and courtroom cliches. But the movie gets most of the facts straight and the flashbacks to the wife's abuse are harrowing.

It takes chutzpah to title this movie Déjà Vu; every scene in it rings a bell. Certainly, I had just seen the same affable-righteous performance from Washington in Spike Lee's "Inside Man."

What keeps the film from becoming obnoxiously redundant is the conviviality of the comedians. These are funny people even when they're not telling the joke.

Commits the sin of a hundred sports biographies in overselling its inherent drama.

Boring is too active a verb to describe this minimalist psychological thriller.

Kassell has serious talent. The movie is beautifully shot, and the performances are all spot-on. But like many young screenwriters today, she has overwritten her script to the point where everything is simply too tidy for the messy psychological material.

I'm not sure how tolerable this would be without Palmer's charm, because this is a formulated script where everything is tied up in perfect bows, just like life isn't.

Johnson combines the elements of classic 1940s film noir and "Rebel Without a Cause"-style teen angst in a movie that is as phony as it is ambitious. It's an A+ film school exercise with zero emotional or social impact.

It's a slice of life, with all the trimmings, and one of the strongest films of the year.

The course of Martha's relationships with Lina and Mario holds no surprises, but the performances of Gedeck and Castellitto, like the work of a great chef, make something special out of something very ordinary.

What it lacks in irony and suspense, Gilbert Adler's Tales From the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood makes up for in whimsy and cheeky self-assurance. The second feature to emerge from the long-running HBO horror show is a bawdy romp into vampire mythology, an empty-headed joyride into a crypt that resembles a costume party orgy. This is the version of "Dracula" that Bram Stoker would have written with the collaboration of Mel Brooks and the Marquis de Sade over drinks at Hooters. [16 Aug 1996, p.F10]

What Walk the Line does well, it does really well. Mangold was ­wisely gen­erous with the amount of musical performance he included in the film, and the later scenes - showing Cash and Carter as partners - are so well shot and edited, they defy you to sit still.

The movie is as unpleasant as its hero, and the film audience gets no more for its money than the customers at the Laughing Stock. Still, watching Whaley take Jimmy down his tortured path has some morbid appeal -- like a train wreck in progress.

Any opportunity to see Pete Seeger perform, even at age 85, is worth taking - and Seeger is front, center and full-throated in Jim Brown's concert film.

Spellbinding.

The joke is that the salesmen believe they're actually trying to discover talent and - like the people they're encouraging - are victims.

At the stunning conclusion, you feel as if the weight of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has come down on your head.

Sometimes painful, often joyous, and altogether illuminating.

The best comedy of 2004. In fact, it's so far the best movie of the year.

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.

This is a midnight stoner movie if there ever was one.

Left-wing flame-thrower Robert Greenwald (Uncovered: The War on Iraq) gets after the global giant anyway, and he may have you thinking twice before entering another Wal-Mart parking lot.

That (cinéma-vérité) feel is absolutely convincing, as are the performances.

Have Marc's friends tricked him with a conspiracy of silence, or was that mustache a growth only in his mind? The filmmaker has said there is no intended meaning to any of this, so search for it for your own amusement.

A great family movie, with a terrifically empathetic young hero, strong messages about the powers of familial love and friendship, buried treasure and enough action to keep the little ones from getting bored.

This brilliant documentary, which shows not only how Belgian King Leopold II made the huge and resource-rich central African Congo his own private reserve, but how his legacy of exploiting the land and brutalizing its people continues in modern times.

It's more fun than a turkey shoot. It's also one of the most entertaining riffs on American culture in years.

In Aniston's previous film roles, the "Friends" star has made little impression, but under the direction of the gifted young Arteta, she's certainly grown to fill the big screen here, and looks ready to leap from TV to film.

If Intolerable Cruelty isn't a convincing love story, it's a hugely entertaining one, with comic relief -- in the form of Cedric the Entertainer as a voyeuristic private eye and Tom Aldredge as a decaying law-firm boss issuing directives while hooked up to life-support -- piled on top of the comedy.

On the surface, Le Petit Lieutenant is propelled by the search for two Russians somehow responsible for a pair of murders along the Seine. And though that's a pretty mundane setup for an urban drama, it serves nicely in allowing us to get to know the haunted Caroline and the impetuous Antoine.

It's never a good thing to notice that the actors in a movie are having a better time than you are. It's so unfair. They're paid to work, you're paying for fun.

Jack Nicholson in a performance that ranks among his best, yet leaves you feeling unfulfilled as never before.

Given the tragic events that actually happen, "Nickleby" ends not knowing what it was supposed to be. But those first two acts are nearly worth the price of admission.

The filmmaker's ego and ethics aside, there's no denying the power of Wuornos' behavior here.

As a film, The Score may not add up to much, but take it apart and it's something to see.

Funny, insightful, unpredictable and blessed with pitch-perfect performances, Ghost World is one of the year's best movies.

Savvy, unflinching, often bloody documentary.

Locks in on its self-destructive subjects so precisely, it's almost unbearable to watch.

The whole movie is something of a joke, a feature-length prank that mixes stark violence and shock humor in the mold of Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." Though it is a far less ambitious entertainment than Tarantino's masterpiece, it has its moments.

Hurt and Dancy are terrific in these roles, but the power of the movie is in the tension created by Caton-Jones on the same sites where this historical event unfolded.

After dazzling us with its undersea discoveries, "Aliens" turns downright silly at the end, with a fantasy sequence set in a presumed ocean on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter.

Ultimately, it's too much information coming too fast.

Like Stone in "Basic Instinct," van Houten has an audacity to match Verhoeven's. Hers is a role that Bette Davis would have killed Ingrid Bergman for, and she is so good in it that it seems only a matter of time before she'll star in a real Hollywood movie - as opposed to this pretender.

There's a reason filmmaking is considered a craft, and Hoge, a former teacher in a juvenile prison, cannot pull off what would be a tricky proposition for a skilled veteran.