Lawrence Van Gelder

With top-drawer voice talent including Joan Plowright and Dick Van Dyke, original songs by Jack Johnson, and old-fashioned two-dimensional animation that echoes the simple colors and shapes of the books, Curious George is an unexpected delight.

While the animated characters, bright colors and an appealing Randy Newman score may keep the children content, Cats Don't Dance is no saccharine fantasy. Its Hollywood references and dark satire constitute its real strengths.

Notable chiefly for its eye-catching urban backgrounds and an eclectic score that ranges from jazz and country to classical and choral.

Harrowing yet hopeful film.

What makes the film worth watching are the extraordinary performances by the more than 250 children cast as orphans.

Lots of people will probably like The Kentucky Fried Movie, just as they like Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's hamburgers. But popularity is still no reason for deifying mediocrity.

Five-year-olds who have read their Shakespeare will recognize that Turbo is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Rather than seeming classic, Freeway appears to be another film maker showcase, a derivative apprentice work.

These tales of upward mobility seem at odds with Mr. Pérez-Rey's choice to include a clip from the 1983 remake of "Scarface," in which Al Pacino, playing a Marielito thug, introduces a machine gun as his "little friend."

Richly atmospheric and suspenseful.

Literate and handsome.

Though it could do with fewer talking-head interviews and more extended clips from these impassioned live performances, Young Rebels is essential viewing for anyone interested in rap music, free speech issues or the youth culture of contemporary Cuba.

An inspiring film about an inspired teacher. It should leave all viewers with an ounce of curiosity eager to hit the streets with Dobsonian telescopes of their own.

Sometimes amateurishly acted by the appealing younger cast but is nonetheless a neat blend of well-drawn major characters and drama, music, dance, romance and humor that generates considerable charm and achieves a heartwarming resolution of its generational conflict.

Manages to capture firsthand the danger, fatigue and sheer tedium of an arduous illegal border crossing from Mexico without ever becoming tedious itself.

The boys, particularly Mr. Webber as Pete, are astonishingly good, and Ms. Monaghan, who looks like a slightly more tomboyish Liv Tyler, makes a deep impression in a minor role. Mr. LaPaglia, of the television series "Without a Trace," brings a tender gravity to the shell-shocked Jim.

The film, at least 20 minutes too long, has too many competing story lines to succeed as more than an oddball mood piece.

It's easy to be seduced by this film's warmhearted, if slightly utopian, vision.

C.H.U.D. makes no pretension toward serious theses about government or the environment. It is meant to be light commercial entertainment, and in the category of horror films it stands as a praiseworthy effort.

Brims with understanding of the complexities of relationships, the frailties of humankind and the possibilities of joy.

Like Giuseppe Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso," Just One Look is a tribute to the formative power of cinema, a coming-of-age film that nimbly interweaves the adolescent hero's struggles with clips from the movies that shape his romanticized notions of life.

Astringent and unsentimental, it is a case study of losing, its clear eye focused unwaveringly on the realities of commerce and kinship.

Weighing in at almost exactly one pound and unable to breathe or eat on his own, Nicholas James Baba-Conn seemed doomed to a very short life; his chance for survival was calculated at close to zero.

The Time We Killed has the raw intimacy of a filmed diary, but as with reading a stranger's journal, it eventually gets dull.

Mr. Caan's debut film is not quite a whole thing, but it offers up enough promising fragments to make his sophomore effort worth watching for.

Where "Ringu" derived its power from the simplicity of its premise and the purity of its execution, One Missed Call staggers under the weight of its director's taste for baroque excess.

High-spirited entertainment .

The characters...are well cast, well directed and skillfully acted, if not a particularly admirable lot.