Kirk Honeycutt

The key to its success lies in the determination by everyone involved to play the damn thing straight. Even the slightest goofiness, the tiniest touch of camp, and the whole thing would blow sky high. But it doesn't.

The movie features a great finish, where three movies' worth of subplots and characters dovetail into a breathtaking climax and final confrontation that is positively soul satisfying.

An engrossing, highly intelligent reimagining of the legend of Arthur.

Pure's lively and colorful cinematic style turns a "downer" story about grim lives and desperation into a powerful love story.

If there is a disappointment, it is this: The anticipation may have exceeded the realization. It's a damn good commercial movie, but it is not the film that will revive the musical or win over the world.

A pitch-perfect ensemble comedy that burrows deep into the mind-set of white, upper middle-class Angelenos, anxious to strike the right balance among career, family, love life and money but never quite pulling it off.

In retelling the still-astonishing story of the political career of Eliot Spitzer, a shooting star whose spectacular crash might forever obscure his accomplishments, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney has all the ingredients for a potboiler: greed, corruption, sex, power, overweening ambition and jaw-dropping hubris.

A prime example of a solid romantic comedy.

The film never is less than intriguing, right from its tour de force opening sequence, and often full of insights into why people long for answers, sometimes with great urgency.

Life in a Day is an experimental project driven by the Internet at its best, where connectivity among the planet's population has become a reality.

A wonderfully vivid and engaging theatrical experience.

It's entertaining with a crafty mixture of action, humor and drama.

The film has a winning combination for all sorts of platforms as the story is highly intriguing and the music speaks, or rather sings, for itself.

The madness of Holocaust survivors is here played mainly for dark comedy. The film's dazzling central performance in a mental institute finds Jeff Goldblum in the role of his career.

Hugely satisfying entertainment that will attract a broad spectrum of audiences around the world. Zwick fully exploits the star power at his disposal, pairing off Cruise and Japanese star Ken Watanabe as two larger-than-life warriors.

Brooks is solidly in charge of this feel-good fairy tale as he gets terrific performances from everyone including two super-talented child actors.

Christopher Rouse's rapid-fire editing nervously stitches the stunts, chases, fights and confrontations together. It's a remarkable film.

It's all here: the ingenious, obscenity-laced language, the double crosses that turn into triple crosses, the swaggering characters so in love with themselves. GottaLove RocknRolla!

The weapon wielded by Cohen and Charles is crudeness. People today, especially those in public life, can disguise prejudice in coded language and soft tones. Bigotry is ever so polite now. So the filmmakers mean to drag the beast out into the sunlight of brilliant satire and let everyone see the rotting, stinking, foul thing for what it is. When you laugh at something that is bad, it loses much of its power.

The two most hilarious characters, played by Spain's two most famous actors, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, are nothing if not cliches about tempestuous Latin lovers. But, boy, does Allen have fun with those cliches.

This animated all-penguin musical is terrific fun.

While a bit unwieldy at nearly three hours and at times slow going, the film is absolutely fascinating for anyone who shares De Niro's passions.

For all the work that went into the whimsical creatures and painterly palette, the voice actors more or less steal the show.

Painfully funny satire of British and American bureaucrats in the days leading up to the Iraq War.

The result is an insightful, exuberant, probing, long-winded and even exhausting look at what it takes for a performer to have a life in the theater.

The film deliberately works against most cinematic expectations.

Blanchett gets everything right -- the accent, her German dialogue, the weary sexuality (deliberately reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich) and the amorality her character has embraced.

In this film, everything comes down to the acting. Chris Cooper, one of our finest screen actors, gets inside the mysterious traitor. Ryan Phillippe has just the right gung-ho determination tempered with a touch of naivete as O'Neill. Meanwhile, Laura Linney nails the role of a career agent.

It's caustic, irreverent, constantly amusing and a tiny bit rude. Not a lot, though. This isn't the "Beavis and Butt-Head" or "South Park" movie. It's almost -- dare I say it -- charming.

In watching this film, it's best not to worry much about the film's fidelity to history but rather simply lean back and enjoy one great jam session on film.

Reunites one of the best voice casts ever for an animated film to create a shrewd entertainment that again successfully aims its jokes at various age groups.

The always surprising Coen brothers have finally made a very serious movie with A Serious Man. It's about God, man's place in the world and the meaning of life, so naturally it's one of their funnier movies.

A documentary about autism that's nearly perfect in doing what an advocacy documentary should do: show rather than tell, entertain rather than preach.

Hits on all cylinders -- a smart blend of acting, direction, editing, design, costumes and effects.

Reiser has written his characters with an indelible sweetness and vulnerability, which allows the cast to deliver performances with some depth.

Singer has crafted a fine film. One just wishes for greater details -- and a different ending.

At the heart of the film is a powerful performance by the beautiful and most promising Hao Lei as its tempestuous, complex heroine.

The film is nothing if not provocative.

The vigor and pace is electric, and the movie features three showy performances by Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon.

Amusing dark English comedy produces its share of chuckles.

Good Neighbors is a film of acquired taste. If one is willing to accept humor in a movie about a serial killer, if one likes a thriller than emphasizes character over thrills, if one is susceptible to a cast of characters that includes three cats, then the movie has found its very selective target audience.

Director Jean-Francois Richet shows a career in crime with pulse-pounding moments of pure cinema, then lets you decide what to make of this homicidal sociopath.

The loggerhead turtle's journey is indeed incredible. But you would rather the narration, delivered intelligently by Miranda Richardson, didn't feel a need to remind you of this fact so frequently.

A "soft" epic, a film touching on childhood fantasies with sturdy, unwavering characters driven to evil or good. More "Harry Potter," in other words, than "Beowulf."

For a man apparently making his first film, Woolard carries the movie like a pro. Cross your fingers that this is no fluke, for this guy could be a real comer.

A high-wire act that almost slips as it edges perilously closer and closer to the edge of improbability. But it never does.

Director Robert Zemeckis not only deploys 21st century movie technology at its finest to turn the heroic poem into a vibrant, nerve-tingling piece of pop culture, but his film actually makes sense of Beowulf. In Zemeckis' hands, it's an intriguing look at a hero as a flawed human being.

A thoughtful and reflective love story about the impact of time on true love.

If you're going to make a weepy, there's no reason you can't make it with intelligence and insight as the makers of My Sister's Keeper have done.

Women will love this, and men won't mind the eye candy either, so it looks like this Screen Gems release can't help becoming a hit.

A real audience pleaser, so long as that audience is mentally agile and adult, for it comes at you from odd angles and features three distinct story lines and 10 main characters.

His heart -- and musical soul -- is in the right place, but the film makes you at times uncomfortable with black and Southern stereotypes that may hinder some from fully enjoying an otherwise benign and cheerful tall tale of the Saturday night when rock came to rural Alabama.

Arguably Eastwood's most ambitious film since his multi-Oscar winner, "Unforgiven." But it lacks the power and depth of that film's dynamic script by David Webb Peoples.

Stripped for action without a moment wasted on unnecessary dialogue, exposition or nuances.

A sprightly musical revue built around Cole Porter songs and a few biographical tidbits culled from his extraordinary life.

Documentaries have been coming down on humanity so hard in recent years -- from "An Inconvenient Truth" to the latest Oscar winner, "Inside Job" -- that it's refreshing to bask in a bit of optimism coming from a nonfictional film.

The film is unusual in that it is a co-production with the Chinese. Whatever difficulties this imposed on the Western filmmakers, the reward is a period film that feel authentic to its time and place.

Joel and Ethan Coen clearly are in a prankish mood, knocking out a minor piece of silliness with all the trappings of an A-list studio movie.

Zokkomon gives Indian youngsters not only their first super hero but, even more tantalizing, he is a young boy "terrorizing" susceptible adults in a small village to the increasingly delight of the town's children.

How To Live Forever is less about how to delay or defeat death than a film about what gives life meaning.

Could develop a cult following. But it is hard to envision repeat viewings or any great number of people willing, even vicariously, to undergo the couple's ordeal.

This is a minor film from a master, which is disappointing, but nevertheless it has its charms, most notably in the acting by a cast of stage and screen veterans.

Hopkins' performance flat-out works.

Hoffman emerges as a confident film director with visual flair and, no surprise, a remarkable ability to maximize his fellow actors' work.

Edward Burns' best riff yet on guys trying to sort out their feelings about women.

The issue of sexual politics so dominates the story that it's a relief when an emotional showdown involves family rather than workplace issues. Not so surprisingly, these are the movie's best scenes.