John Patterson

Ramsay has made a movie in which a universe of hopelessness and decay is penetrated by shafts of light that remake these bleak surroundings in strange and beautiful ways.

Culkin, a revelation here, mines every last nuance of the confusion and anger that results. Bursting with grenadelike one-liners and full-bodied performances, particularly from Sarandon (batty) and Goldblum (creepy) -- Igby Goes Down inaugurates a career that should be well worth following closely.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

The result is an intelligent, moving and invigorating film, just the thing for adults bored with the shock-horror posturing to be found in the work of so many young European directors.

It goes straight to the top of the class. O can there be such a thing as too keen a guilty pleasure, particularly when the whole genre is knowingly pitched to audiences as a trashophile's delight? No, there cannot.

Very much a fully realized cinematic experience. John Turturro, even if you have to act less, be sure to direct more, and often.

The inventive, often comically horrible fight set pieces will have you standing on your seat cheering like a Viking, and the result is a supremely kinetic and amusing guilty pleasure.

Immensely rich, clipped and precise, with a sly, sardonic sense of humor.

It's a strangely stirring experience that finds warmth in the coldest environment and makes each crumb of emotional comfort feel like a 10-course banquet.

Breathtaking stuff that freezes the toes, harrows the soul and turns the viewer's seat into a foot-wide ledge over a yawning chasm.

A scrupulously even-handed account, free of ideological or tribal partisanship, based on eyewitness accounts by survivors and the anonymous "Paras" themselves.

Indulging his taste for Grand Guignol and the stylistically baroque, Schwentke never quite overplays his hand, though his occasional lapses into visual extravagance can be irritating, and the result is a nasty, intelligent and complex thriller.

Aranoa's bleak yet warmly humanistic Princesas deftly and sympathetically ponders the interlocked destinies of two Madrid prostitutes.

One of the sweetest comedies in a long time, which doesn't mean it's sugary or fey.

Remarkable energy and wit, and is probably the most purely enjoyable entry in Kaufman's suboeuvre of literary excursions.

A bracingly sarcastic political comedy -- it opens on a bound copy of Mexico's Constitution, stuffed with cash -- possessed of a baleful satiric eye for hypocrisy and greed, a delicious anti-clerical bent, and pitch-perfect comic timing.

A refreshing antidote to those E! True Hollywood Story documentaries on adult-film figures like John Holmes, Savannah and Traci Lords.

The result is the niftiest Bond movie in years -- fresh, funny, and jammed to the rafters with demented stunts, Boys'-Own gadgetry and brazen promiscuity.

Proves that it's possible for a movie to be reckless and adventurous merely by being sedate, unhurried and contemplative.

Immensely exciting and funny.

Equal parts big-house B-feature, hammer-down road movie, post-feminist consciousness-raiser and rock & roll pipe dream.

It's a rare pleasure to see these senior citizens given so much screen time, droopy butts and all.

An accomplished miniaturist's documentary -- 80 finely wrought minutes in alternating increments of wonder and loss.

Babenco's kindly, concerned eye seeks out the humanity in even the worst of his characters, and by the time he re-creates the massacre, with shocking power and force, one has been equally captivated and appalled at the world he shows. The result is one of the richest prison movies in years.

Any movie offering a Muzak version of the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop"warrants an immediate and unqualified recommendation.

One of the sturdier superhero movies of the last couple of years, with monsters and effects and diabolical baddies to spare, a heart as big as a house and a love story that actually gets its hooks in you.

Despite its flaws, Arlington Road romps home as an absorbing, unpredictable thriller.

Full of clever reversals, brief triumphs and bitter setbacks, Wolf Creek is consummately well-crafted, unapologetically vicious and leavened with moments of humor that merely intensify the horror.

What's left is "Masterpiece Theatre," a very clean, straightforward adaptation of a beautifully constructed play, faithful to a dead man's classical virtues -- harmony, proportion, balance -- if not to the director's own, more iconoclastic ones.

Profound and joyously silly at the same time.

Writer-director Alex de la Iglesia's bouncy, swaggering satire of ethics-deficient, survival-of-the-fittest free enterprise, peopled by broad grotesques and hysterical caricatures, adds Chabrolian callousness to a cartoonish worldview reminiscent of Frank Tashlin or Joe Dante at their most frenzied.

The movie belongs quite rightly to Wendy, the most enchanting little girl in English fiction, and to the untrained actress, Rachel Hurd-Wood, who plays her.

It's clever, vulgar and fully committed to making us howl with laughter. If only all sequels were this much fun.

An even richer, smarter, funnier sequel.

It's a pleasure to report that Scream 3 is an absolute riot, jammed with spicy cameos.

Rough-hewn, improvisatory and contentedly lo-fi, the resulting documentary should prove warmly encouraging to embattled progressives of all stripes, and incidentally offers the best political date-movie of the week.

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan lets the tension rise slowly, leads you everywhere you don't expect, doesn't rip you off and totally freaks you out -- all without stale effects or gore.

Filmed only with direct light and sound, Bush's stunning camerawork adroitly captures the majestic landscapes and icons of Buddhism: its murals and artworks, monks and nuns.

Fleming's more than passable, often extremely funny remake.

Overall Sheridan keeps both "Oirishry" and sentimentality in check. He captures the book's evenhanded sense.

Inspirational...unfolds gently with an evenness and rural patience.

Inspirational stuff, and often hysterical to boot.

Noyce has made a good-looking, intelligent stab at the novel, mildly undermined by a tendency to seek contemporary relevance.

It sure comes through on the belly-laugh front, from its animated in-flight, safety-manual credits through to the very last blooper ('ooligan Vinnie Jones' breathtaking, obscenity-filled rant against the "fahkin' Eye-ties").

Worth it, though, for the conviction and ramrod-erect bearing that pros Jackson and Jones bring to their roles.

Looks like no other recent release...certainly rich enough to warrant more than one viewing.

Although not quite as uproarious or as wickedly subversive as Pedro Almodóvar's more substantial body of work, Queens is content to scamper gaily in the wake of his achievements -- and to offer one more reason for old Franco to roll anew in his grave.

The movie has a rambunctious and likable energy that compensates for its unsteady, only intermittently amusing narrative.

It's dirty and delightful, if a tad on the slight side.

The formula, with its comforting arrangement of familiar elements, is what we're after, and The World Is Not Enough certainly comes through on that front.

It's grim stuff indeed, but somehow the horror never quite overwhelms Nelson's sure-footed approach to raising all manner of frankly unanswerable questions -- in particular, what would or could one have done in such circumstances?

Holds its potentially problematic ingredients together remarkably well, summoning outstanding performances from Morrow and Linney, while never dipping into sentiment or patronizing the ailment's sufferers.

There are scenes here that fill one with rage or bring tears to the eyes.

The small-town Irish feel of the movie is infectious, and McGrath uncovers some great supporting players.

The movie lover in you will recoil; your inner sophomore will rejoice.

Helgeland strips the material back to its pulp origins and overlays it with a patina of glib motifs familiar to devotees of Hollywood’s 1970s renaissance.

The film's sheer likability and very impressive gag-to-giggle ratio derive more from sweetness and sharpness than from shit jokes.

Crowe's undeniable gifts -- his well-crafted individual scenes and his love for his characters -- are more evident here than his flaws.

While the film has the feel of an illustrated radio play, it teems nonetheless with pleasing ambiguities and subtle doubts, and its elusive qualities force the viewer into active and rewarding participation rather than simple passive spectatorship.

Relentless, infantile and impossible to dislike.

Sadly for dramatic purposes, Jones' achievements seemed effortless, and the movie could really use the odd Ty Cobb wig-out.

It all feels rather laddish and belabored, but it will eat up 90 minutes of your time without making you regret the loss.

Schwentke handles the claustrophobic environment efficiently enough, though he dallies too long before letting anxiety give way to action.

Relentlessly positive and optimistic, the film is also likable, in the most chaste way imaginable.

What enrich the film are its layers of detail -- moronic racial protocols, turf wars, pecking orders, men as livestock -- the authenticity of the dialogue and the rich range of characters.

Despite its dry wit and compassion, the film suffers from a philosophical emptiness and maddeningly sedate pacing, and, in the end, the only aspect of the movie that truly commands attention is Jagger's desperately inexpressive acting, which hasn’t improved one iota since "Ned Kelly."

We spend too much time with the kidnappers - a veritable Geek Squad of undifferentiated techies - as each successive escape attempt is foiled and our eyes are warped by abundant shots of computer screens and grainy surveillance-camera footage.

If as much thought had been expended on character and consequences as was lavished on bell-bottom diameters, collar widths and soundtrack selection, Blow might have been a richer, more intelligent experience, and much more Demme's movie than a carbon copy of other people's.

If the contrast between Marine life and blue-blood luxury sometimes pulls the film in awkward directions, Anselmo's perceptive fondness for all his characters -- parents, children, grunts, even drill sergeants -- more than compensates.

Nauseating, tasteless and offensive -- but in all the best ways.

Genially moronic, Road Trip will tide you over until the next slice of "American Pie" comes along.

Without a well-delineated political or social framework, Union Square offers little that we didn't already know.

Gossip is trash, but it's well-written, slickly directed trash.

A schizophrenic outing from habitually hysterical director Tony Scott (True Romance, The Fan), Man on Fire is a movie of two unreconcilable halves.

Into the Blue is a likable bimbo of a movie, all surface and -- despite breathtaking underwater photography and a marked resemblance to Peter Yates' "The Deep" -- zero depth.

The drawback is Tyler, who lacks the vigor and energy her part requires in order to transcend charges of misogyny.

Whenever Green shows up to do his semi-improvised, non-acting shtick (detaching pit bulls from testicles, kamikaze wheelchair rides, etc.), this otherwise sprightly and intermittently amusing movie suddenly feels like a ship dragging its anchor.

Whether Quitting will prove absorbing to American audiences is debatable: After all, it's not like we don't have enough rehab stories of our own, and Jia often comes across as a sullen, unreachable brat.

The characters are flat creatures of duty, and the film is more a tale of the collective will of a state than of the rugged individuals behind it.

At once over- and under-written, and peppered with tiresome coincidences and misunderstandings, Goldberg’s mechanical, joke-one, joke-two, joke-three approach to ensemble screenwriting soon betrays his TV-sitcom roots.

There's more than a hint of self-pitying male-castration fantasy in writer-director Jeff Franklin's portrayal.

There’s something entirely ridiculous about rating a movie like this NC-17: Why should sniggering, infantile, adolescent humor be denied its natural core audience of snigger-ing, infantile adolescents?

An intermittently gripping, good-looking movie.

Roth can obviously direct actors sympathetically, and he paces the movie adroitly.

A solidly filmed great play.

Iguana runs hot and cold, being engaging and dull by turns depending on the plausibility of the character before the camera.

Despite good performances from Gregory, Considine and especially David Morrissey, the movie's true merits are all on the surface: its uncannily authentic period reconstruction and its successful use of stressed and textured film stocks. The filmmakers care more about this than about their characters, and it's hard for us not to feel the same.

Even the relatively successful pairing of neckless maestro of anxiety Stiller with the indomitably effervescent Black gets bogged down by Steve Adams' aimless screenplay. Would the Barry Levinson who once made "Diner" please wake up and pull himself together?

Yet another unfunny buppie sex comedy in the manner of "The Brothers," "Two Can Play That Game" and "Deliver Us From Eva."

By the time it hits you, you're worn out by all the dead ends and false trails the movie has put you through.

Even more problematic is the script's clumsy, sprawling architecture, Sheridan's clubfooted sense of pacing and his grubby, indistinct visuals. The only upside? The Chieftains aren't on the soundtrack.

A coercive script by James Kearns, and some middling direction by Nick Cassavetes, can't rob the movie of an undeniable, headlong crowd-pleasing power.

Although its lushness and penchant for melodrama are the cinematic equivalent of Billy Sherrill's syrupy string arrangements for George Jones, Tammy Wynette and Charlie Rich circa 1973, the movie deftly manages to remain sweet without becoming saccharine.

Jolie hogs the spotlight as usual, leaving romantic interest Ed Burns struggling to register and only Shaloub -- fetid, dirty, soulful -- with his dignity intact.

Jackson and Levy strike only damp sparks off each other, and they seem to have been introduced to each other --without benefit of rehearsal -- mere moments before the director cried "Action!"

Remarkably, it took four writers to concoct this tin-eared, slighter-than-slight farce.

Disfigured by flabby dialogue (“You can't put a number on my dreams!”), unfunny pratfalls and criminally slack pacing.

Richer and cleverer than any Merchant Ivory movie in memory.