Jami Bernard

Caché seems at first glance like a straightforward thriller - about a talk-show host being stalked by a technologically savvy blackmailer. But it's really a sly, subversive commentary on conscience, race, class and inequity.

A haunting, melancholy work.

This is a wickedly funny skewering of a prewar London society gone mad with frivolity.

The combination of old-time Hollywood valor and ahead-of-its-time surprises makes this restoration a big event.

Million Dollar Baby is a knockout. It is Clint Eastwood's baby in every respect — a movie that approaches the level of great boxing films, like "Raging Bull," by using sport as a metaphor for human nature.

It's the rare film, Dogma or otherwise, that keeps you smiling long after the lights come up.

Like watching an American teen-sex comedy through a glass darkly.

After all the observations on heartache, politics, art, commerce, passion, identity, mortality, even mental health, six hours begin to seem downright compact.

Its simple, straightforward storytelling makes mincemeat of the idea that, gee, if these people just worked a little harder and got motivated, they, too, could get a piece of the American Dream.

Is a movie worthwhile if it makes you sick? Absolutely, in the case of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.

Tarnation represents a breakthrough in the possibilities of the personal film as a mix of poetry and journalism. It's also harrowing as hell.

Susan Tom has her hands full in Jonathan Karsh's documentary My Flesh and Blood -- she's dealing with her 13 children, most adopted, some with serious maladies. Rarely does one encounter such capable hands.

Hell has not yet frozen over, but here's something equally unexpected: David Mamet has made a G-rated movie for adults.

Giddily inventive.

An entrancing experience for Potter fans. It's a carefully crafted, dreamy immersion in a world that feels snugly familiar even when evil intrudes.

Another perfect little gem from Iran in which the simplest story unleashes a torrent of emotion.

Funny gem.

No picnic to watch -- Leigh's camera is unsentimental and unsparing.

An excellent movie about a real-life nail-biter, forcefully acted, true to its period and directed with clarity.

The movie doesn't stoop to cheap psychoanalysis and must be commended for a bravely ambiguous ending. But most of the credit goes to Lane, who is simply extraordinary as a woman whose body is at war with her conscience.

Deliriously inventive.

This movie is for select tastes. It's not the fusillade of porn that wears you down, but the melancholy of watching an unremarkable man glide down the tubes as if on a water slide.

There are so many balls in the air in the cheerfully violent Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, you'll want to wear a helmet for fear they'll all come crashing down.

Moll clearly has looked to Hitchcock and Clouzot for inspiration. There are sexual undercurrents between characters, psychological quirks and a murky veneer like the surface of the pool in "Diabolique."

If the movie doesn't ultimately transport us to places The Wizard of Oz once took us, that may be partly because "The Sorcerer's Stone" is just the first chapter, with more magic waiting to be parceled out in the coming years.

It's a Master "Plan."

The movie elevated the basic gangster picture into what became known as the niche genre of poetic realism. And, aside from Garbo, never have key lights on a star's face caused so much swooning among fans.

Features an absurdist sensibility that ultimately melts your heart. It's certainly one of the stranger movies you'll see.

You can't look away, not only because the carnage is so masterfully photographed, but because the director sucks you into his bleak, poetic, even sensible vision of cosmic brutality. Not for the faint-hearted!

An immensely uplifting movie whose final, unforgettable frames come as close as anything to answering the big questions about why we bother in a dog-eat-dog world.

Even the hardest heart must melt in the face of The Story of the Weeping Camel.

It's an amazing slice-of-life story that will make you want to rush home and hug the kids.

It turns out that puppets can tell us more about who we are as a nation than the most meticulous documentary. In Team America: World Police, the potty-mouthed, crazily brilliant musical from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the result is hilarious, shocking and bound to offend nearly everyone.

If only there were a surefire way to describe Guy Maddin's films without scaring off viewers. The quirky Canadian is a genius who produces haunting, exquisitely droll movies that defy explanation.

The perfect sci-fi movie for a post-9/11 world, in that it tells us we're afraid of threats hiding in plain sight.

The white-knuckle center of the movie is Sean Penn, who gives an utterly raw performance as Jimmy, father of the dead girl. It's one of the few times that a parent's grief has felt real on the screen through all its ugly permutations.

A perfect blend of summer action, a big movie with a deeply personal story.

What fans want are good movies. This one isn't particularly funny or romantic, but it's gripping and tragic. It asks some nasty, yet profound, questions about human desire and behavior.

When director Stephen Frears worked with (Jack Black), he must have yelled "Let 'er rip!" instead of "Action!"

As gorgeous and gripping as it is faithful to the spirit of Patrick O'Brian's celebrated series of historical novels.

Boorman doesn't shy from showing Cahill as a complicated man who, in one famous incident, nearly crucified one of his own men for a minor infraction. But the portrait is a loving one, full of empathy for an oddly principled man who, in another line of work, could have made a difference and lived to enjoy it. [18 Dec 1998, p.72]

This romantic comedy is about a love that is destined to be, and it celebrates that warm huddle of caring and craziness called family.

No other mainstream movie has so openly tackled the subject of female sexual experience.

An impressive portrait of the migraine of teenage girlhood, and also works on the more modest level of teen romance.

The results are impressive. Maybe, as the U.S. falls abysmally behind other nations in the sciences, it will get kids interested in that field again.

Some of the simplest shots give you the full picture of the price these guys paid for their dreams.

Has a great deal of empathy for that excruciating limbo that is female adolescence.

A charmer with an attractive cast and an excellent soundtrack.

The vitality of the hip-hop scene serves as both backdrop and metaphor in a romantic comedy as sweet as its title.

The movie pulls off the trick of blurring the distinctions between romantic and platonic attractions across the generations.

Writer-director Danis Tanovic, a Bosnian who spent years documenting his homeland's turmoil, makes a bold feature-film debut with this funny, sobering message movie.

A welcome departure from typical movies about teens, wherein their problems are external (the prom, status). Mean Creek is an adult movie that just happens to star young actors.

A surprisingly genial and affecting comedy about the trials and tribulations of teenage rebellion during the Reagan '80s.

A delicately upbeat, even humorous celebration of love and sacrifice.

Refreshingly offbeat documentary.

Viard plays one of the most intriguing female characters in recent film from either side of the Atlantic.

Works on several playful levels. Most obviously, it is a horror movie in which life imitates art on a movie set.

This is not for the Merchant-Ivory crowd, but action fans will feel their pulses quicken.

The screen smokes with sexual heat. But what's really erotic is how much fun the actors seem to be having.

Simple, joyful and downright innocent movie.

Not since Cary Grant offered Joan Fontaine a gleaming glass of milk has a bedtime toddy looked as suspicious as it does in Claude Chabrol's wittily enigmatic Merci pour le chocolat.

This is another brilliant performance by Crowe, who is to body language what Meryl Streep is to accents.

Whatever substance there is of Ocean's Twelve fades faster than invisible ink. But it's not the kind of movie you watch for plot details. It's really about spending two hours on that Lake Como speedboat, relaxing with pals.

A deeply felt celebration of the life force, as embodied in Girard's fierce performance as a man who may not have done all he could, but had an enviably great time on the way.

The story is predictable, even bland, but the stellar cast, detailed set design and abundance of good humor elevate it from the typical feel-good movie. It makes for intelligent counterprogramming against some of the season's harder-edged fare.

Apparently Louis Kahn was not much of a father, raconteur or businessman. But he was a genius, and he left his mark on all the people whose lives he touched.

Dispels myths about the "gangsta" aura that clings to rap and shows this poetry of the streets in all its different forms: social protest, entertainment and aggression.

Silly, perfect fun.

A non-sappy and genuinely adorable confection. It wiped away the Scrooge in me for 90 enchanting minutes.

A natural successor to "The Blair Witch Project" in terms of its small suggestions of horror past and future.

Violent, cool and street-smart, Shaft supplies everything you want in a summer movie.

The script provides an excellent payoff, although action fans may not agree, because that payoff is the equivalent of a Cheshire cat's grin.

The direction is still slick, but Matchstick Men gets most of its thrills from the unknowable in human interaction. This could be the biggest "scam" Scott himself has pulled off.

Could easily serve as an instructional video for repressive regimes who have not yet learned you can get more with honey than with vinegar.

With his haggard good looks and bearish presence, Nolte is the main event in this colorful three-ring circus of a heist picture.

Amazing... There are only a finite number of filmmakers with the devotion, patience and ability to tease out these stories.

Sven Wollter and Viveka Seldahl give superb performances as the couple, a once-vigorous conductor and his orchestra's concertmistress. But soon ... well, you know the drill.

Has that same air of silly innocence, a rarity in today's movies.

Accomplishes two great things on what was undoubtedly a minuscule budget. It breathes life into a small story that has larger ramifications. It also shows that America, as represented by Jackson Heights, is still the promised land for people about whom movies are rarely made.

This is a sophisticated and unsettling documentary marred only by a voice-over taken from the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.

Pacino is masterful as the sharp-witted, seen-it-all detective.

That it all seems improvised on the spot (it was not) is testament to the power of a film that trusts its characters, its actors and its ultimate goal.

Delicious, intelligent thriller.

Billy Bob Thornton wrote, directed and stars in this compassionate, occasionally funny, character-driven movie about a mentally unstable man who takes the best interests of children very seriously.

One of the reasons the move is so funny is that it is only a few degrees away from real life.

It's a compassionate story about what makes people tick and what really matters.

Omar Sharif certainly doesn't disappoint in Monsieur Ibrahim. The casting alone promises something extraordinary.

Delightful and moving - although fanciful.

Earthlings beware: The dialogue and characters have less weight than bodies freed from gravity's grip.

A bouquet of snappy one-liners and disarming nuttiness.

It is a sweet, wonderfully acted cameo of a movie about the lengths to which a lioness will go to protect her cub.

It's too bad there's so little of LL Cool J as the secret object of Georgia's fantasies. He'd make a funny, nimble, sexy romantic lead with just a bit more screen time.

The result is a back-lot studio tour that's not exactly good-natured, but terrific fun and it gives the ensemble cast plenty of clowning opportunities.

Peregrym's performance as fiery, troubled teen Haley Graham is a triumph of charisma over technique.

Mostly pitched at a new crop of children who will detect the movie's mildly sarcastic, audience-winking tone with no problem.

An actress' dream.

An entertaining, post-modern mulling of the nature of truth, and whether truth is ever so fixed that it can be captured on tape.

The Cockettes epitomized a brief confluence of new possibilities, not so much in theater as in personal style, lending them a certain historical value that greatly exceeds their contribution to theater.