Jack Mathews

May be the year's most derivative film, but it's also the most original.

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

With nifty new villains, a revived Green Goblin, plus $300 million worth of aerial special effects, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 is definitely good to go.

Unlike Glenn Ford, a soft-spoken studio star who was cast against type as Wade 50 years ago, Crowe is a perfect fit. Not because of his bad boy behavior offscreen, but because he can blend charm and menace better than anyone.

Dunst and Williams...turn ditsiness into a frenetic comic duet.

Maybe you have to have experienced one of these anti-weather urban cocoons to appreciate the concept of the film, and the prickly people who populate it.

The most compelling and least partisan of all the Iraq documentaries.

Remarkable first film.

Even if The Mummy is imitation Spielberg, it offers more bang for the buck than we're used to getting.

A powerful, deeply moving tale, immeasurably facilitated by the performance of relatively unknown Hilary Swank as Brandon...smartly shot and edited, and the performances are dead-on.

Michael Corrente's Brooklyn Rules takes him to the mean streets of Gotti country, circa 1985, and it's another gem.

A strong, gritty, powerful piece of film making, and one of the three or four best movies made about the Vietnam era.

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

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.

An astonishingly intimate and painful coming-of-age story.

With a grating symphonic score by ­Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and the constant sense of danger following Plainview, "Blood" does not release its grip on the audience until its last, bizarrely crazy minutes.

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.

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

If "The Godfather" movies were based on real gangsters and some of them were still around to talk about the good old days, they might be as fascinating as the characters in Billy Corben's documentary about the cocaine import business in 1970s Miami.

Does a meticulous job of summarizing these notorious events, but it is the stories of Liuzzo's five children that gives it fresh emotional power.

For the initiated, the third time's a charm. For everyone else, it's just a scream.

As inventive as "Being John Malkovich," as psychologically quirky as "Ghost World" and as honest as the day is long.

If you're in the mood for a horror movie, this ought to do you.

Berry gives a riveting performance, but as a deeply decent man trapped in a hell of his own making, Del Toro gives the kind of career performance Berry gave in "Monster's Ball."

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.

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.

Breathtaking.

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