Lisa Alspector

It's a heady mix of the earnest, the grave, and the frivolous. Wizardly director Kevin Reynolds even manages to condense into a single shot, with a wisp of humor, several of the hero’s long years in a dungeon without making them any less grueling.

In a perfect marriage of player and part, Reese Witherspoon is Elle Woods.

Subtly profound love story.

One girl's melancholy (beautifully expressed by actress Kerry Washington) is a response to a fractured romance.

A text that provokes thought more than directs it, which should fascinate new and repeat viewers for a long time.

Director Ron Howard's deftness in suggesting the subjective experience of Crowe's character, who's later diagnosed with schizophrenia, makes for inspirational narrative.

Surprisingly, this didactic and self-consciously clever romantic comedy isn't annoying -- it's refreshing, moving, and at times quite funny.

Solid formula comedy.

Eventually writer-director M. Night Shyamalan neutralizes Willis's star presence with impressive plotting that's a fine excuse for the powerful atmosphere.

Transcendently kitschy, trippingly funny fairy tale, which has a surprising amount of psychological insight and a dance number to die for.

The tone -- a combination of earnestness and gallows humor -- is strangely appropriate.

Dizdar inventively examines bigotry, combining daring humor and hyperbole, dark realism and shining idealism.

Scenes of ingenious slapstick violence.

Director Simon West hits just the right note between self-conscious silliness and real dramatic intensity in this 1997 action thriller, which uses typecast actors to make the characters' one-liners and predictable behavior resonate.

Quaid's buoyant earnestness complements the stunning, low-key performance by Caviezel, whose close-ups give new meaning to the idea that still waters run deep.

A delicate balance of fantasy and realism, caricature and character study that isn't driven primarily by its plot or even the development of its protagonist.

Jensen's use of the conventions of documentary making -- and his undermining of them in ways both bold and subtle -- seems too canny and consistent for the form. Yet the harder I try to decide whether this is a documentary or a parody, the more I wonder why it matters.

Mesmerizing dark fable, which also contains moments of comedy and action that don't disrupt its oddly earnest tone

Provides glorious escapism without asking you to turn your brain off.

The blend of animation techniques somehow demonstrates mastery modestly, while the special effects are nothing short of magnificent.

Maya Angelou?s very deliberate blocking of the actors charges each movement and line of dialogue with emotion, and the expressive combinations of colors and textures in the settings convey a palpable sense of the environments in which the characters undergo big but believable changes.

One problem leads to another, but because the children's points of view are so powerfully rendered, the plot of this elegant and lightly magical-realist 1997 drama never seems merely coincidental.

Rodriguez's unironic directing brings out the complexity of characters painfully aware of the stereotypes they represent and allows this gripping, scary, and romantic movie to offer more than factoids about other movies the filmmakers have seen too many times.

The imposing performances in this chess game between pointedly black and white criminals (Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne) and police detectives (Victor Argo, Wesley Snipes, David Caruso) are as impressive as ever.

Spheeris, who includes her offscreen questions, evidently sympathizes with her subjects, though this doesn't stop her from pointing out their hypocrisy.

The movie's no roller-coaster ride, but there isn't a boring moment either.

It's not supposed to be a revelation--just a pleasant rendition of a teen-comedy trope

The script by Brannon Braga and Ronald Moore provides all the background necessary for viewers unfamiliar with the characters' previous movie and TV-series exploits, but not so much as to annoy fans.