Jack Mathews

In this candid, fascinating film, Cadigan has the will - and the family support - to defeat his demons. It's clear that for him, the ending is only the beginning, but it's filled with hope.

Good, indecent fun starring two of the most amiable comedy actors around.

Despite being abandoned in the late going by his director, Cheadle gives one of the year's most fully realized performances, and Henson is a revelation.

It is driven by the finely expressed -- if nearly mute -- performance of Lemercier. We learn a lot about this woman and her emotional state from Lemercier's subtle body language. As for Lindon's Jean, well, it's enough that he's there and doesn't require batteries.

A speculative re-enactment of the 1999 Columbine slaughter, told from the point of view of two suburban high school nihilists as they videotape themselves preparing for the last and "best day" of their lives.

The final image of the snow-covered landfill, having consumed the debris, provides a kind of closure for Sauret. But for the firemen, the nightmare continues.

To say Spike Lee is repeating himself is itself repetitious -- he is getting B-O-R-I-N-G!

In Crazy Love, friends of Burt and Linda express as much confusion over their relationship as we feel, and the Pugaches themselves make an unconvincing case for theirs being a love that conquered all. On the contrary, love doesn't seem to have had anything to do with them. She married him out of desperation, and he pursued her out of a sense of entitlement.

This is cheeky sitcom in a minor key, and fated to be a mere footnote on McAvoy's resume.

Some people will want to call it pornography. In one respect, it's the opposite.

Gets too caught up in its escalating violence and strained-to-bursting moral subtexts. It's the blood of souls drenching the screen, and it's a hideous sight to behold.

The incredibly moving post-9/11 drama Reign Over Me proves that behind the funny guy facades of former standup comedians Mike Binder and Adam Sandler are a pair of very serious talents.

I don't know if that makes Infamous a better movie, but it's certainly as good and a lot more fun. British actor Toby Jones is so physically right in the role, you'll think Capote is playing himself.

The black-and-white animation won't dazzle your eyes, but everything else about Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's adaptation of Satrapi's graphic comic book series Persepolis will hold you in its thrall.

The film lacks a certain coherence, and Levi - one of Italy's most important postwar writers - is mostly relegated to an excuse for a sociopolitical travelogue.

North Country may be a simplistic account of a hard-won battle, but it will have audiences cheering.

Passionate, enlightening and unabashedly one-sided, Abby Epstein's documentary is not for everyone. But at the very least, it should be seen by every pregnant woman in America.

No one makes something out of nothing like the French, and in this wispy tale about a jilted middle-age man and the very young housekeeper who briefly lights up his life, writer-director Claude Berri's got plenty of nothing.

Showing as much courage and talent behind the camera as he has while acting in front of it, Roth has crafted for his first film one of the most bluntly graphic and disturbing movies ever done on the subject.

A ponderously slow experience.

Often tedious, sometimes fascinating anthology.

Completely false, manipulative, exploitative and insulting.

This is a riveting story about a man who for years moonlighted as an anonymous hangman while holding a day job as a wholesale grocery delivery man.

Apocalypto exists solely as an action-adventure and a deft cinematic demonstration of man's capacity for cruelty. This is the true passion of Mel.

It's galling to see such a low-life canonized in a film, but it's also riveting drama.

Whether he'll achieve his goal of setting the world land-speed record for motorcycles is never in doubt, of course, but getting to a film's climactic scene has rarely been more fun.

A little Disney Christmas release that comes wrapped in used toilet paper.

A captivating piece of visual wizardry. The house, which eventually frees itself from its moorings and chases after our trio of tweener heroes, is a genuine original.