Jami Bernard

There's a thin line between smart-stupid and just plain stupid, and Super Troopers walks it with ease.

While this is not exactly a hopeful movie, it's a polished exercise in the kind of social commentary that can wake people up.

Thanks to Grant's script and direction, the exotic Swaziland location (a film first) and an engaging cast, this smartly crafted drama radiates a gently comic pulse.

The segments are introduced with little clichés or homilies, like "Ignorance Is Bliss," but the fierce intelligence of the script reminds us that sometimes a cliché is the only way to express the ineffable.

Pretty thin feature-film subject. But the silliness is so contagious that it doesn't matter.

The suspense is as tingly as jalapenos on the tongue.

A stately and deeply affecting look at the human condition, told in something like a series of snapshots.

Tense, fiercely optimistic movie.

Although rife with comic possibilities, The Personals develops into a somber tale of personal identity.

Any which way you describe this uncompromising movie, it will never sound palatable. Still, it features one of the most spectacular physical transformations by an actress hungry for a meaty role. I haven't used the term "tour de force" in all of 2003, but now it is time.

Annaud is a filmmaker who often works with a bare minimum of dialogue. Yet his storytelling is so strong and emotional that words are barely necessary.

A standout feature of the movie is its representation of female friendship.

This challenging, inventive movie from Thailand is not for everyone.

For all its folksy jocularity, the movie inspires a sense of global patriotism. In the big picture, every little dish counts.

Shangri-La is in your own backyard.

A lyrical, subtle, chaste and nearly wordless romance.

A perversely enjoyable entry in that new genre, the biopic of the tawdry TV personality.

A smart, old-fashioned spy thriller in which the weapon of choice is brainpower.

What is unusual and exciting about the movie is the assemblage of raw talent in the cast.

Among the many skills required by a documentary maker is the ability to make reticent people blossom. Michael Almereyda has done that in This So-Called Disaster with several of the film industry's most notorious iconoclasts.

Holm is dazzling as the grubby little misfit, just a little brilliant and a little insane.

An enjoyable, gorgeously photographed aquatic adventure whose stars are blissfully bodacious.

The movie tells you right up front you're going to get what you came for: big stars, winking inside jokes and a spin on something so familiar it doesn't matter that you don't buy it for one minute. You're not meant to.

The mere fact that Shakespeare can teach hardened criminals to search their souls gives hope that forgiveness and redemption are possible.

Any woman who wears more than a size 12 -- and that would be the majority of adult females in the United States -- will get buckets of self-esteem from Real Women Have Curves.

Garcia's somber narration is a turnoff, but this plucky little diatribe gets you thinking about the larger implications facing future generations.

Here's one movie you'll want to see with an audience of squealing, excited, terrified kids, their arms extended greedily to grab, squish or ward off all things exoskeletal and beady-eyed. It's gross, but in the nicest way (meaning no roaches).

Kinetic, sexy and full of meaningful coincidences and intertwined fates.

Has a simple but exceptionally powerful and uplifting emotional lure.

The movie turns choppy in the final third, but it is a monumental achievement nonetheless.

A gentle, soulful comedy about everyday dreams and what it takes to make them come true.

A solid action story with inventive battles (one on the Statue of Liberty) and satisfyingly gooey special effects.

With a cast of mostly non-actors, the film seems rough-hewn, like something you'd find rusted along a road. But it's actually a sophisticated blend of crime thriller, coming-of-age story and social realism.

Rock School celebrates music, family, hard work and, yes, Paul Green. Best of all, it shows the flexibility of children to learn and adapt -- even when their teacher is nuts.

This rousing story of the comeback colt comes close to a modern-day Frank Capra film without the pandering or mawkishness. Yes, it's a bit hokey, but if you fight the movie's gait you'll miss the excitement of the race.

A story about people learning to know themselves through relationships to others -- delivered with gentle, offbeat humor.

A pleasant romp through the land of Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction.

Has all the tense crackle of film noir and the molasses drip of irony that is the trademark of movie-making brothers Joel and Ethan Coen.

A cat's cradle of creepy childhood memory oozing unreliably from the mind of an aging, desiccated, paranoid schizophrenic, played quite amazingly by a mumbling, stooped, shifty-eyed Ralph Fiennes.

It's the first mainstream gay movie that feels totally comfortable in its shoes.

Thrillers have become so gnawingly generic that The Bourne Identity wakes the senses without leaning on cliché and soundtrack.

Brisk pacing and a remarkable cast achieve the sleight-of-hand effect of making you forgive some implausible twists and a sanitized ending.

Does an uncommonly good job of summoning all that goes into a masterpiece - erotic tension, financial considerations, even the sensual, elaborate grinding and mixing of paint colors as per 17th-century requirements.

Excellent, troubling social commentary based on a true story.

Makes a fine date movie...thanks to its life-affirming view of friendship, love and honor.

Like a Hollywood buddy-cop movie gone through a multi-culti blender. It holds up a funhouse mirror to that familiar scenario in which a maverick cop breaks the rules.

Not without missteps and the occasional mouthful of sugar, but it grows on you.

You'd never guess this just-off-center movie was directed by indie hero Gus Van Sant. Maybe, like Will, he's casual about his gifts and feels no need to trot them out.

Hugo Weaving, weaving deftly beneath a fixed plastic grin and Prince Valiant wig as the mysterious avenger in V for Vendetta, both chills and amuses throughout this enjoyable - if occasionally irresponsible - comic-book thriller.

Unlike Patch Adams, Sy is not lovable. But you wind up feeling for him, much as you feel for Sy's pet hamster on that endless wheel.

Perhaps not since Truffaut's "The Story of Adele H" has thwarted love been rendered so compassionately on the screen, its psychology laid bare.

Has something to add about the toll Western society takes on spiritual values, and the ugliness of consumerism.

It's a smartly surreal little movie, and again shows why, whenever there's a role that calls for an actress who can speak volumes without much dialogue (as in "Minority Report" and "Sweet and Lowdown"), the call goes out to Morton.

An update with a jolt of sheer exuberance.

May actually appeal more to women than men because of the steely heroine, the pitting of love of family against love of filthy lucre -- and the mom-fights-back plot.

The filmmakers' decision to go with prosthetic enhancements rather than CGI gives the snouts, fangs and snapping jaws a refreshingly tactile look.

Basinger gives one of her best performances as a woman too young, poor and overwhelmed to handle motherhood. And the uncommonly self-assured Murphy proves again that she is a cut above other actresses of her tender years.

Implausible yet enjoyably diverting thriller.

Some segments are anti-American, but to concentrate on that is to miss the variety, depth of opinion, and fierceness of the emotions that drive each director.

Take the Lead hits all the marks you'd expect of a movie like this, but it's done vibrantly and with warm-blooded characters.

The information here isn't necessarily new, but it is packaged in an acid-tongued way along with powerhouse visuals that drive home the filmmaker's nakedly political views.

A fascinating movie that explores grief from an emotionally truthful angle rarely seen in movies.

Presents a refreshing appreciation of Chaplin's work in the context of comedy, political and social satire, and history itself.

Its social satire is so dead-on.

Furiously paced.

A rare window into the apparatus and limitations of glam-rock.

Satires like this tend to throw a lot of stuff at the wall, and in Undercover Brother, a surprising amount sticks.

Absorbing, operatic.

This South Korean political satire might not have historical resonance for American audiences -- it's loosely based on the 1979 assassination of dictator Park Chunghee by his own people -- but it takes the same comically dim view of governmental power and procedure as "Dr. Strangelove."

This is a lyrical art movie with admittedly limited commercial appeal, but worth seeing for cinematic explorers.

A poetic and somber film that underscores the bum deal women usually get in any restrictive society.

Disturbing, visually stunning thriller.

Cannibalizes "Saturday Night Fever" for everything from structure to plot, but does it adorably.

This one uses sweeping compositions of nearly solitary figures as a reminder of what individuals stood to lose, and an auction scene is horrifying -- some livestock and a basket of everyday items are exchanged for a man's future.

The strong script (with updated flourishes by "Bad Santa" writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa) and some of the vibrant child characters pull it through, with the comically reptilian Thornton egging them on with one inappropriate shocker after another.

This heavenly sequel, again directed by "McG" (aka Joseph McGinty Nichol), is infused with an irresistibly joyous spirit that simply cannot be faked.

Uses social and historical perspective to explain what happened then and, perhaps inadvertently, what's happening now.

Yet another deceptively simple, supremely moving film from Iran.

After a moment's adjustment, it works amazingly well, because the emotions that drive teenagers like Jim to seek their places in the firmament transcend eras, fashion, even animation styles.

An adorable family movie.

Wolfgang Becker's premise is absurdist and makes great sense as political satire.

If it doesn't shed much light on the violinist's personal life, it certainly conveys how personally she relates to her work.

An intelligent, old-fashioned nail-biter.

Once in a very long while, a truly memorable romantic teen comedy comes along. The Girl Next Door is one.

When it comes to cute, this baby is off the charts.

A thorough, gutsy and appropriately scuzzy-looking documentary.

Ya-Ya Sisterhood is so divine. It offers a world where friendship is forever, the half-empty glass is refilled and the men are perfect.

Blood, grotesquerie and humor mix equally in the first two, but the full combo makes a savory witches' brew for Asian-cinema cultists (or Halloween lovers in need of a gore fix).

With Chomsky as its star, this documentary cannot go far wrong, even though filmmaker John Junkerman intersperses Chomsky footage with some really bad Japanese pop music.

The result is a galvanizing mix of intellectual discourse and guillotined heads.

Carrey gives an otherworldly, possessed performance as Kaufman.

There's a sensational, highly original performance by Swinton.

Crushingly realistic.

What makes it work so well is superb chemistry and a light touch. The spray-painted cat scene doesn't hurt, either.

The humor is simple but far from dumb. The dueling "walk-off" between rival male mannequins is inspired, as are the sly juxtapositions of the male model's faux physicality with such real-world demands as coal mining.

A richly inventive, slightly eerie animated movie from Japan.

The movie is fast and fun. Best of all are the actors, who likewise seem to know they've lucked into a rare good gig.

In keeping with the unrefined spirit of the '70s, the movie is deliberately haphazard and proudly retains all its mistakes, including narrator Sean Penn going up on his lines.

Armed with a witty script, Winick and the actors so confidently ply the Oedipal waters that the comedy seems sweetly chaste.

As pat as some of its conclusions may seem, this low-budget effort has charm, fine acting and one of the few realistic screen depictions of the awkward dynamics of a family trying to circle its wagons.

In addition to the strong script, the ensemble performances are topnotch, with no one hogging the limelight.

The best performance is by Rampling. (The) camera hangs on her, knowing that nothing escapes those wise, sad-lidded eyes.

Best of all, and worth the price of admission, is Cedric the Entertainer.

Slick entertainment.

In a hilarious bit of actorly sleight-of-hand, Holm (who is not new to the role of Napoleon, having it played it twice before) slips effortlessly from emperor to impostor.

The daring, funny and quirkily erotic Secretary examines power exchanges between consenting adults in a way that other movies have not managed without turning off swaths of the squeamish.

Unflinching in its depiction of racism, anti-Semitism, violence and jailhouse politics.

Of them all, only McCartney looks out of place, perhaps mistaking the venue for Vegas. There in a nutshell could be the answer to why the Beatles broke up.

What could have been a run-of-the- mill story becomes a superb policier in the hands of writerdirector Joe Carnahan.

Like most Iranian films, it's a shaggy-dog story that builds so slowly you don't see the quietly shattering climax coming.

Forget the awful trailer that makes the movie look like chalk screeching on a blackboard. The Banger Sisters is sheer fun, and a great showcase for Hawn.

This is a quieter, more psychologically dense movie, where the payoff is sometimes no payoff at all - for instance, Tim Roth plays a cut-rate divorce lawyer whose own weirdness (he seems to live out of his car) is never explained.

The triumph here is the natural, fluid way the characters interact, many of them displaying real-life, quirky senses of humor you don't often find in screenplays.

Pai is resourceful and in harmony with the natural world in a way that will charm and enthrall young viewers.

This movie is not as intricately rewarding as Zhang's others. But because it is so Westernized, it could do even better at the box office. [21 Dec 1995, p.60]

Soldier's Daughter is at its best when alluding to the quasi- romantic attachments and undefined crushes that develop in small groups and keep the engines whirring. The inchoate longings go round and round, as subtly as befits the movie's rather smallish canvas. [18 Sep 1998, Pg.57]

Without excusing Stevie's behavior, the film makes a compelling case for how a child molester can grow from the bitter seeds of neglect and abuse.

A delightful comedic twist on Martin Scorsese's "King of Comedy."

A fine example of how a character-based story can be so compelling you don't miss the frills.

A beautifully composed tone poem about unspoken group dynamics in an isolated community. It is also, in its way, about how love endures.

Enjoyable, intelligent little heist movie.

Fun and frivolous, packed wave to wave with gorgeous young creatures reveling in their physical prowess.

The movie may be set in prewar Japan, but it's pure 1940s Hollywood. There's costume, pageantry, melodrama, the feeling of a sweeping epic without the bother of too much accuracy, equal doses of heartbreak and uplift.

The real highlight is when Bateman and his co-workers compare custom business cards in a grueling, ego-shattering game of one-upmanship that is so linked to their sense of self it might as well be Russian roulette.

Director David Kane handles the sprawling cast with aplomb as his characters learn some new steps in this life-and love-affirming movie.

Cho is funnier — and raunchier — in this, her second concert film, than in 2000's "I'm the One That I Want," even if she doesn't break any new comedic ground.

A guilty pleasure, right up there with "The Water Boy."

A brilliant example of the genre -- with romantic subplots to boot.

It's a sad, rich story, full of misunderstandings, bad bargains, odd parallels.

Petersen's speculative reenactment makes for gripping summer entertainment -- if you don't mind a little corn floating in your brine.

Its leisurely pace and surreal poetry won't break box-office records, but will surely serve to introduce Mendelsohn as a major new talent.

An amusing and unusually compassionate look at today's corporate culture.

A worthy addition to what must take up a whole section of the video store - the heartwarming comedy that reaffirms the power of personal choice, while also promising to love and to cherish even the most hidebound cultures.

Matt Damon's performance isn't bad, but it pales in comparison with Law's.

Along with "The Others," -- represents a welcome diversion from loud, senseless Hollywood extravaganzas.

A no-frills, homespun documentary that gives so much more than its humble technical credits would suggest.

Time of the Wolf is grounded so deeply in the reality of society gone awry that the anxiety faced by Isabelle Huppert's character as she struggles to keep her family together transfers onto the audience and never leaves.

A merry romantic comedy in the screwball tradition.

It revives an innocently pleasurable genre - shades of Burt Lancaster and Errol Flynn - that combines lusty adventure, humor, the great outdoors and satisfying storytelling without having to concoct it in a special-effects lab.

Santa Claus and the Snowman stage a scaled-down "Star Wars"-type battle for the rights to Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve in the pleasantly goofy, irreverent Santa vs. the Snowman.

The result is an undeniable and effective authenticity.

Most of the movie's rewards are in watching Morton.

If you're seeking transcendent love this season, skip the morose "End of the Affair" and go with Anna and the King.

It stands apart when it comes to its extravagant humor and non-judgmental '70s-era reality (smoking dope, hitching rides, playing Frisbee, hanging out).

Scary, all right, but not for the reasons the Dallas church had in mind.

Busch lovingly and meticulously channels such grand dames as Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck and Norma Shearer in a way that surpasses imitation, camp and drag show. He captures their essence, and therefore the essence of cinema itself.

The supporting cast, including Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne and gorgeous Maggie Q, is underused, but the movie delivers the goods.

Stoked supplies a unique perspective on the hazards of rock-star fame that went with the sport's explosion for a band of rebels who didn't see it coming -- or going.

Knowing that the director is Robert Altman gives you a good idea of what to expect: a demimonde of locker-room chatter, catty sniping, backstage politics, high art and low self-esteem. Altman constructs the movie with the same cross-currents of his other ensemble movies.

Offers only the smallest glimmer of hope that the two sides can work things out through ingenuity and compromise.

A marvelous cross between "Secretary" and "Lost in Translation."

Don't let the slow, deliberate pace fool you. A lot is going on in David Cronenberg's masterful A History of Violence, and you'll miss it if you blink.

The startling documentary Daughter From Danang cautions once again to be careful what you wish for.

There was no burning need for a remake, but this one is respectful of its predecessor. It incorporates the technology and acquisitiveness of the intervening quarter century since Romero's vision. It even features a metrosexual, something unheard of in 1978.

The combination of the ancient tinted footage and Butler's crisp, sweeping vistas of the same areas provides a breathtaking recap of one of history's most stirring rescues.

With its cheerful hailstorm of anachronisms and classic-rock soundtrack, there's nothing medieval about it.

Nachtwey's pictures tell a tale of grief and suffering, and Frei's you-are-there approach gives those photos startling immediacy.

A psychosexual thriller that treads a thin line between art and exploitation. The mere fact that it manages this queasy high-wire act is what sets debut director David Slade's slick mind game apart from the drooling pack.

With its intriguing relationships and sacrificial acts, Alice is a good alternative to happily-ever-after fluff.

What a treasure - a funny, tart, romantic comedy about tweens suffering the pangs of first love. It makes the cityscape an essential part of the romance, like a junior, vintage Woody Allen.

The plot is formula all the way, but Lawrence has found a way to incorporate the physical techniques of the great silent stars with his standup comic's arsenal, and it's a pleasure to watch him at work.

A remarkable second feature from writer-director Yesim Ustaoglu.

A plague of child kidnappings in Italy during the '70s provides the background for this chilling, deceptively simple tale of a rural boy who unearths terrible family secrets and rises to the moral challenge they present.

O'Connor plays Fanny with an appealingly direct, unflinching gaze.

The production is fantastically funny, high-energy camp, punctuated by Trask's infectious score and by Mitchell, dressing in a succession of wigs twice the size of his body.

The remarkable footage includes damning evidence of how the media, the people and the army were manipulated. Which leads to that eternal question - if it's not on TV, did it really happen?

Sometimes veers off into preciosity. But it offers something rare in the bond between Andrew and Sam.

A farce nearly as cracked as his previous "The Dinner Game."

With its colorful embroidery, Monsoon Wedding feels pleasurably grounded in a reality about which most Westerners haven't a clue. This may be their only engraved invitation.

A fascinating, somewhat frightening documentary.

The jokes are wild, raunchy, surreal and dead-on.

It's a wonderfully silly family movie that holds its audience in high regard.

Seems like a genteel "Psycho."

Gentle, funny and full of the lessons one expects from the scions of the late Jim Henson.

A satisfying chick flick that follows all the usual rules of the modern romantic comedy except one - it's not stupid.

A comedy hit, but its secret is that it delves deeper than the usual summer fare.

Jacques Audiard's amusingly stinging A Self-Made Hero toys with the subjectivity of historical truth by presenting one Albert Dehousse (Mathieu Kassovitz), loser, cipher, liar. But a brilliant liar. [12 Sept 1997, p.44]

Forces the audience to rethink the riots in new and difficult ways, to find empathy and revulsion where it might not have known they existed.

The movie raises questions that are on plenty of minds right now, including whether and how much the rules should be bent to wage a war (in this case, on drugs) that cannot be won conventionally.

Winterbottom uses effective imagery to establish the horror and absurdity of war. [26Nov1997 Pg.39]

Work was never funnier.

What the movie cannot take from the book is its dreamily descriptive prose and interior monologue. Perhaps because of that, the movie changes the focus from Ingrid, the more fascinating creature, to Astrid, whose clay is more malleable for the big screen.

This movie is not of a style that will speak to general audiences. It is nearly wordless, spare to a fare-thee-well.

Career Girls reaches a little too often and unconvincingly for convenience... But Leigh remains one of the few film makers today to make movies that are solely character-driven, in which personal insight is its own reward. [8 Aug 1997, p.46]

Although "Jam" is clearly a marketing tool with not much to say beyond "be the best that you can be," it strives to preserve the humor that made Looney Tunes so popular among adults.

Michael Jackson is an alien? Tell me something I don't know.

A comedy that successfully plays with stereotypes, both racial and personal.

High spirits and colorful hissy fits go a long way toward masking the inexperience of this cast of mostly nonprofessionals. It's a charmer.

Like all blond jokes, Legally Blonde is basically meanspirited, and that's when it's funniest.

The result is a bit of a mess: sometimes delightful, sometimes tedious, always creative.

The movie's pleasures are spare, and will appeal mostly to die-hard Rivette fans and viewers with slow pulses.

This languorous art movie is somewhat like "Memento," with its narrative fragments and memory mixups. It never explains itself, which means that the audience, like the protagonists, must take a leap of faith.

With one exception (hint: Faye Dunaway), the actors seem remarkably at home in their milieu.

The movie exaggerates a common dynamic between men and women.

Many of the right elements -- the '40s look, the melodrama, the love that transcends reason.

A magnificent looking and occasionally very silly Chinese Western.

Who knew a drama about numbers could be so thrilling?

Graham is lots of fun to watch, but it's hard to reconcile the split halves of her character.

The movie is so nervous about offending anyone that it's hardly any fun. Hanks delivers a few solemn speeches meant to deflect criticism. Meanwhile, he and Tautou barely hit it off. At least Mr. and Mrs. Smith got hot while doing their jobs.

The girl's blindness may have been meant to symbolize a trusting populace, but she's the one character who clearly sees what's what and who is trustworthy.

Visually, Robots is fun and imaginative. The wow factor is enhanced in the IMAX version, also opening today.

It's a triumph of the human spirit that so many people in deadly jobs are able, nevertheless, to marry and have a few happy moments despite lives of hellish labor. Glawogger's intrepid camera finds both the shame and the grace in it.

As junky as the movie is, you've gotta love its immersion in the preposterous and its naive hope that street credibility and attitude, along with a need for speed, are all that's really necessary in this big, bad world.

Bai Ling plays a resourceful prostitute from a Malaysian refugee camp who grows harder and more alienated by the day. Nick Nolte, Tim Roth and Temuera Morrison offer strong supporting performances.

The movie does have one very perplexing major flaw. It throws in some minor-character narration toward the end, as if test audiences had lost their ability to concentrate, and this was the filmmaker's only solution for getting us back on track.

The sepia-tinted palette of Ask the Dust drips, reeks and creaks of the seamy side of a city that takes more often than it gives.

An unexpected delight.

It's a virtual clip reel of grandly comic moments that remind us what a good actress can do when parts are scarce.

The actors are unknowns, but Ryan does a lot with her little downturned mouth. There are as many shades of anxiety as there are shades of blue in the sea, and Ryan manages to find them all.

This genteel confection skews toward older audiences - those who go for "Calendar Girls," "Ladies in Lavender" and "Mrs. Brown."

A crowd pleaser, even if it is unremarkable.

Unleashed serves two masters, each one disappointingly: It's a brutal series of over-amped fights, and it's a touching story of human nature at war with itself.

What Possession reminds us more than anything is that love is more exotic at the safe remove of history. The irony is that LaBute is more at home chronicling the present, yet that's where this movie falls apart.

Funny, yet appalling.

The requisite set piece, which will remind you of the treetop sequence in "Crouching Tiger," involves a fight atop a forest of burning poles, exactly the kind of thing you want in a movie like this.

A lush, panoramic, dizzyingly portrait of the many-tentacled entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Unfortunately, though it may finally gain an Oscar for director Martin Scorsese, it is not his best work. The movie is disappointingly flat.

Best of all is newcomer Justine Clarke playing a dour illustrator. Clarke's fascinating features register emotions at war, but always governed by a sense of self-deprecating humor.

The movie mostly sustains its excitement of the hunt. But the real star is the panoramic, beautifully composed cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond. Whether he truly loved the African locations or is cursed with "a gift" doesn't matter; the dynamics of the story often flag, but the visuals lend a palpable excitement. [11 Oct 1996, p.49]

Sophisticated in that European way and predictable in that Hollywood way.

After a few movies in which Paltrow was in danger of becoming a caricature of herself, she's back in rare form.

Alnoy's unnerving mood piece is spare and atmospheric, even funny. The movie is accomplished, but gets hung up on arty composition.

There's magic afoot, even if the movie is more serviceable than magical.

Wood is compelling, but Charlie Hunnam ("Nicholas Nickleby") is the one to watch.

Nolte, at least, delivers his lines with laser accuracy, and gives The Golden Bowl the life that so much cogitation could have drained from it.

Horror fans will still find it worthwhile. The ending is also a nice twist on the slasher genre.

Phenomenal acting, plus intelligent direction and themes, put The Ballad of Jack and Rose above other indie films about loss of innocence. At the same time, there is something garish about watching a father and daughter struggle with the snake of incest in their ill-advised Garden of Eden.

"Sixth Sense" fans will be intrigued at first, then disappointed.

The title-character's redemption comes very slowly. But if you have patience, this is a stately, beautifully composed story.

Varda injects her sprightly personality into the film, a seasoning that sometimes overwhelms the stew.

Belongs to an intellectually stimulating subgenre that examines the thin line between documentary maker and subject.

One of the small pleasures of the movie is likely to escape American audiences. The bank robber is played by Johnny Hallyday, a pop icon of great magnitude in France, and the old man is played by Jean Rochefort, an acting staple of that country's cinema. The mere juxtaposition of these two personalities forms a comic set of expectations.

Smart, fun and mildly subversive, but it rides the wave of its joke a little too long.

In its unleashing of relentless, cosmic retribution, The Operator is not unlike the recent "Joy Ride."

Turns out to be less than the sum of its wonderfully silly and bizarre parts.

It's a poignant, realistic depiction of the ­elderly, far from the typical view of them as quaint and useless.

It's hard not to feel empowered by Nathalie Baye.

A charming runt of a movie. It's not all it could be, but it's the best the pound had to offer this week.

A daring feminist movie that, while straightforward to a fault, is a rare opportunity to sample a female point of view from Iran, where such a thing is usually a veiled subject.

It's not the best "Little Mermaid" movie - it's totally predictable and its trio of tweeners squeal at a pitch that could break glass. But it's also a bubbly confection about best friends, crushes on preening lifeguards, grrrl power and shades-of-blue fashion tips.

Rough around the edges, but effectively presents the quandary of women during the repressive religious regime.

All this frenzy, all these "quotes" from other movies, and yet Vol. 2 is strangely static - a dulling experience that can safely be admired from afar without it ever engaging the senses.

A hit-and-miss romantic comedy.

The group in Portraits Chinois is a little too diverse and unwieldy to keep emotional track of.

Amusing and good-natured, but necessarily thin.

Popcorn-buyers, beware: This is no "Shrek," with raucous adult humor sailing over the heads of wee ones. This is "Sesame Street"-level, with white hats, black hats and simple moral messages.

A terrible movie by all reasonable standards -- yet it leaves a sweet taste.

Here’s a British spin on the familiar struggle of the couch potato who plans any minute now to get off his duff.

Grand passion, secrecy, world politics and mortal danger provide a heady mix for this spectacularly beautiful movie. If only the accents were as reliable as the azure of the sea.

This Canadian film is extraordinarily low-key, considering the explosive secrets the sisters unearth, but that is part of its strength.

This is not challenging filmmaking by any means, more like a comfortable old slipper. But it's a perennial that's guaranteed to please.

The film paints an affectionate portrait of a wry, somewhat addled man whose hard-partying past was in stark contrast with his later life - a fluffy cat nestles in his guitar case while he explains his nickname.

There is a very sharp, funny critique of ambition and self-made gurus in The Mystic Masseur, but it is obscured by a softening bloat.

Modest and polite. That's not a ringing endorsement of Michael Showalter's good-natured comedy, but there are enough laughs in it if you're willing to settle.

A well-acted and surprisingly thoughtful treatment of the same old, same old.

Union is a brilliant spitfire, though one wishes the script had been run past an English major. But the movie's flaws are smoothed over by a rousing soundtrack, some excellent comic performances and the star-making moves of LL Cool J.

Alana De Roma is going to be a tremendous star.

The movie suffers from tipping its hand too easily and hating its subject so much.

There's something sweet yet chilling in When the Sea Rises. If it had explored more of the chill, it might have turned into a knockout, absurdist thriller.

Oughtta be much bettor.

The co-stars genuinely like each other, and their pleasure is infectious.

Little internal logic and too many signposts. It's easy to see who in the neighborhood knows more than they're letting on, even without X-ray vision or ESP.

As a love story, Wimbledon is a washout. As a meditation on sports psychology, it might help improve your game.

Beneath the noisy, farcical surface of John Turturro's Illuminata is a thoughtful and unusually mature meditation on love.

Movies about junkies are often brutal to watch, but Jesus' Son has such a light touch, you have little to fear. Little to gain, too.

A silly buddy caper that should delight the adolescent at heart, even if some of the jokes have been sitting too long in the desert sun.

There's something uniquely gratifying about watching nonprofessionals deliver totally natural performances.

"Grimm's Fairy Tales" were pretty grim, but Criminal Lovers crosses the line and sexualizes your worst fears.

A brilliantly pitch-perfect sendup of a particular type of cheesy movie.