John Patterson

One of the great movies about childhood innocence accidentally violated by adults...Reed, an often inconsistent filmmaker, handles the brutal mechanics of the plot superbly, with the marbled interiors of the embassy contrasting sharply with his almost neo-realist outdoor shots of postwar London.

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

Lurches from one set-piece stomach-lurcher to the next with nary a nod to narrative coherence.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Inspirational stuff, and often hysterical to boot.

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.

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.

Richer and cleverer than any Merchant Ivory movie in memory.

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

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

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

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.