Ken Eisner

Overall, thoroughly delightful tale is stronger on character and texture than on plot, with Miyazaki’s masterful use of quiet spaces and expansive moods (especially in flying segs) offering a fresh contrast to hyped-up Yank toons.

One-liners and dry sight gags still abound, but the ennui-sodden formlessness of "Slacker" doesn't fly as well in this $ 6 million, smoothly lensed package, which calls for shapelier narrative and resolution.

Combo of gorgeously shot Western settings (mostly in snowbound Idaho), memorably mismatched characters, and light-touch social commentary.

With its masterful grasp of comedy, pathos, social commentary and mystical weirdness, Tokyo Godfathers takes anime to a whole new level.

Superbly crafted documentary is strong enough to make believers out of non-metalheads, and inside enough to get the devil's-horns salute from the most diehard followers.

Riveting and timely.

An important and smoothly mounted meditation on moral choices within the entertainment biz.

Fun, if finally too silly.

A seemingly esoteric subject -- the launch of Russia's Sputnik satellite -- is exhumed and made exciting in this important slice of you-are-there documaking.

Third outing for prairie auteur Gary Burns is his most ambitious, and most uneven, effort yet.

A fine cast, speedy pacing and playful direction make this a solid contender for the Austen sweepstakes.

David Koepp's writing-helming bow is a bleak, highly stylized view of modern civilization. While The Trigger Effect maintains a potent mood of postmodern dread, even its proponents will be wondering what all the queasy fuss was about.

A thorny subject is handled with care in this meticulous reconstruction of life inside the East German police state, as boiled down to the experiences of just two ex-inmates -- one man and one woman --- of a notorious Stasi prison. Overall effect is poetically thought-provoking, not depressing.

Queen Latifah proves an amiably authoritative narrator, and is allowed more personality than most script readers.

Educational value aside, pic is exciting for its extended performance sequences, with the most notable finding Traore and Farke strolling with guitars through the acoustically amazing atrium of an abandoned mud schoolhouse.

More a tribute than a remake, Steven Soderbergh-approved take on Argentine hit "Nine Queens" isn't quite as sharp or surprising as the original, one of the best scam pics of the past decade.

In the end, helmers have some nifty tricks up their verite sleeves.

There's a stunning rags-to-rags morality tale hidden in this two-hour mess of a movie.

Minnie Driver gets a showy workout in The Governess, a beautifully crafted, if ultimately opaque, study of art, sensuality and outsider status in early Victorian England.

Hurt is quietly affecting as Dave Purcell, a fine chef but a lousy businessman whose sticksville cafe, the Auk, is named after a rare, possibly extinct kind of duck.

Well mounted, frequently gripping.

Rambles into unexpected places, some more interesting than others, but it stays on track long enough to take auds somewhere special.

Track record of helmer Barry Alexander Brown, and scads of clever writing from scripting producer Dan Harnden, should help this little gem find a home, although it is probably too intimate and original to win more than a cult following.

Starring an excellent Paulo Costanzo (late of "Joey") as a twentysomething uberslacker who is nonetheless willing to fall into accidental success, pic is seasoned with fine perfs by JR Bourne as a charismatic, creepy hustler and Steph Song as Constanzo's sexy potential love interest.

A relentless excoriation of the School of the Americas.

A fascinating portrait of an era, as well as of a unique public servant.

Encapsulates the turbulent times of the Students for a Democratic Society.

Consistently amusing, candy-colored sex romp -- about romantic match-ups in Madrid that go both wrong and right.

A visually opulent but dramatically undernourished prequel to the 1979 hit of almost the same name.

When Sordid Lives does what it does best -- showing Southern gals in the full flight of rabid self-denial -- it's as screamingly funny as this subgenre can get.

A soundtrack in search of a movie, Empire Records is one teen-music effort that never finds a groove.

Bottom-drawer plot of a South Boston bad boy returning to tie up loose ends reads like every other "Mean Streets" knockoff in the past decade, with no scene, development or performance standing out from undifferentiated din.

Actors who can't act, musicians who can't play, and storylines that go absolutely nowhere.

Watchable only for camp value, Deadfall is at its best when cameo-laden anarchy reigns. As a tribute to film noir, it won't make it to the late late show.

The helming debut of thesp Fisher Stevens, who mixes swell ensemble acting with eye-popping animation for a witch's brew of good sex, bad timing and very funny dialogue.

An ill-conceived effort that starts OK but quickly goes off the rails.

A promising concept is gradually run into the ground in Sex and Death 101, a would-be black comedy that lacks both laughs and gravity.

Intelligent, low-key suspenser.

Well-acted, sharp-looking pic seems more interested in sitcom diversions.

A leisurely and lovingly observed character study about a detective, his home life, and a crook who plays cat-burglar-and-mouse with the cop.

Thoughtful, surprisingly fast-moving documentary.

Lovingly rendered talking-heads effort puts emphasis on basic tenets on basic human connection, not on sexual orientation or social attitudes.