Jack Mathews

Lost in La Mancha basically catches "Don Quixote" in free fall…It's our loss nonetheless. Gilliam is one of the great film fantasists of our age, and one expects he would have done Cervantes proud.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped has nonetheless brought attention to a nearly lost classic. For more than two decades, "Fingers" was not available on video or DVD and was rarely screened. But it's available now, and if you've never seen it, put it on your must-rent list immediately.

Oddest-of-the-year romantic comedy.

Rather than heightening our sense of empathy, we become numbed by the repetition.

Feels like a college knockoff of Billy Wilder's "The Apartment."

Good music stands alone, and the documentary is jaunty fun.

There is no great story being told here. Mostly, it is a conventional road movie - a buddy comedy even - about the quests of two likable guys. The memoirs exist only because of Guevara's subsequent fame as a revolutionary leader in Cuba, Congo and Bolivia.

Built from a perfect story-telling collaboration.

Remarkable first film.

The result is a long night of confrontations that feel heavily rehearsed and unlikely. There are some good moments, but I didn't believe any of this.

Levinson is so skillful at developing personalities, even among the story's would-be villains, that by the halfway point of the movie, every gesture and expression has unexpected depth and texture. The performances are across-the-board superb.

If, unlike his friends, you don't take anything Andre says seriously, there is a wicked sense of fun about it, and you may even see a little of yourself in one of the characters.

People unfamiliar with either man may think Altman is mocking Keillor and his 32-year-old radio program here. But, it is pure affection, and the movie is as much up-tempo, irresistible fun to watch as the show is to hear.

Both frustrating and instructive.

The Specialist allows Eichmann to convict himself, not of complicity in the Holocaust -- to that he pleads guilty, by reason of nationalism -- but as a man unfazed by his own inhumanity.

Fascinating, amusing and ultimately disturbing.

The Bridesmaid is fairly familiar Chabrol country, an exploration of the psychological undercurrent of the bourgeoisie, with heavy helpings of black comedy.

Moore's most assured, least antagonistic and potentially most important film.

What we need to remember, what Black Hawk Down reminds us, is that there are no safe missions when you're chasing bad guys. Especially when you have to chase them down a hole.

This computer-animated feature rivals "Cars" for the year's most visually exciting cartoon, but watch your step - most of the movie takes place in the London sewers, where the script may have been conceived.

Surely, this bloodthirsty comic farce about a sadistic backwoods family being hunted by a sadistic backwoods sheriff is the "Citizen Kane" of hix-ploitation horror.

The story is fanciful, with grotesquely improbable twists involving the fictional Garrigan (James McAvoy) and one of the dictator's three wives (Kerry Washington). But as Amin, Forest Whitaker's command of the screen is so thorough, so frightening, so ripe with malice that you won't move in your seat for fear of catching his eye.

Though Jessica Sanders' rambling documentary about the damaged lives of wrongfully imprisoned men would have made a better subject for an hour-long "Dateline" special, it's still a powerful indictment of a judicial system too anxious to close cases, and then close ranks when someone tries to reopen them.

The island phase of Hanks' performance is simply amazing.

A combination ghost and shaggy dog story that is so well-made and acted you can nearly overlook its murky, unsatisfying ending.

This is ensemble work at its best.

It's frightening because it's so effective in fomenting fear and because it's so easy to recruit bombers among repressed and hopeless societies.

A well-conceived story that is very hard to shake.