Lisa Schwarzbaum

In watching the birds and the man with an affectionate, curious eye, the filmmaker builds a story of surprising emotional resonance.

While never slow, the film feels quiet and spacious, like a prayer.

The chemical energy between Bullock and Reynolds is fresh and irresistible.

The real feast is in the mix of characters, each so finely and unschmaltzily delineated in a script so confident and controlled that even the most passing of participants comes alive.

What could have been a parlor game becomes a surprisingly rich sketchbook, boosted by the work of fine actors.

Stunning, unsettling, beautifully written drama.

This outstanding work — so meditative — is clearly an affirmation of life (and never more provocatively than in the film’s unusual coda, in which moviemaking itself becomes part of the discussion). It’s also so grounded in the real emotional scope of ordinary people that the magnitude of the subject is answered in the most mysteriously matter-of-fact way.

Truer than the John Wayne showpiece and less gritty than the book, this True Grit is just tasty enough to leave movie lovers hungry for a missing spice.

Following 2009's "Bluebeard," French filmmaker Catherine Breillat continues her unique and psychologically, erotically daring deconstruction of classic fairy tales and the female condition.

As a horror picture, Blair Witch may not be much more than a cheeky game, a novelty with the cool, blurry look of an avant-garde artifact. But as a manifestation of multimedia synergy, it's pretty spooky.

Noyce honors the story best by standing back (and getting Kenneth Branagh, as a supercilious official, to stand back, too): Noyce lets the landscape and the untrained young actresses own the screen, particularly the naturally magnetic Everlyn Sampi.

Thrilling little epic set in the bewildering arena of the English language.

The trek is long, the direction (by Murray’s Quick Change colleague Howard Franklin) is soft, the script (by Roy Blount Jr.) is windy, and the occasional laughs are as heavy-footed as the thunking lead pachyderm herself.

An inviting international audience-pleaser.

The mechanical beauty and android possibilities of the future excite the filmmaker, and that's where Minority Report becomes an alluring postcard from the edge. But it's an edge over which Spielberg never seems to want to step.

The best thing about this long-awaited feature-length project, a classic Simpsonian interplay of family psychology, social commentary, and brainy visual and verbal jokes tossed off at rat-a-tat speed, is how relaxed it manages to be.

Traces the sport to its Polynesian beginnings, then zooms in on the genesis of 20th- century Southern California surf culture -- the boards, the bikinis, the laid-back cowabunga.

There's an adult life force in every frame of this luxuriously paced work, even in the sight of rain and a lady's stocking.

Something marvelous happens as the filmmaker, in his first feature, expertly metes out small scenes of communication between people taught, for generations, to be wary of one another: This Band swings with the rhythms of hope.

An ambitious debut feature.

Known for distinctive horror movies like "Cure" and "Pulse," inventive Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa finds just the right melancholy tone to suit a new and all too familiar kind of horror: economic downsizing.

The first great, mind-tickling treat of the new movie year.

Acompelling, cant free drama about clashing class systems and challenged family relationships that's all the more engrossing for its organic, near documentary style.

A stunning study of one desperate woman's conscience.