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.