Maitland McDonagh

Though meticulously researched, well acted and filled with striking moments, the movie ultimately feels oddly disconnected.

A tabloid slice of tabloid life, ragged, vivid, awkward and punchy all at once.

It's lavish, clever entertainment, a welcome opportunity to laugh without shame.

A creepy, clever, film buff's delight of a fantasy.

Ribisi is painfully intense without being histrionic.

If he were a more subtle director, it would be a great film; as it is, it's an extremely good one, anchored by the subtly devastating performances of Penn, Robbins and Bacon. The supporting cast is equally good, and blue collar Boston's mean streets take on a beaten-down life of their own.

Propelled by a soundtrack as diverse as its international gallery of thieves, Jordan's cheerfully scruffy neo-noir caprice even lays on the religious imagery with a palette knife and sweetens Melville's ending without seeming terminally sappy.

The film's uniformly excellent performances are a delight, and fans of Irish actor Farrell (whose pitch-perfect American accent has served him well in Hollywood) can hear both his natural inflections and his singing voice.

Their doomed fling is oddly hypnotic and ultimately haunting.

Seductive, funny, whip-smart and ultimately tragic.

It's the kind of film Hollywood doesn't make any more, and a pleasant retro diversion.

Beautifully acted, minutely observed story.

The film's ensemble portrait of women caught between nostalgia for the tough and free-spirited babes they were (however much that freedom may have been illusory) and uncertainty about what their futures hold is almost painfully on target.

Thoroughly dotty and surprisingly endearing.

This intelligent, oddly aloof thriller is a worthy follow-up to director Steven Soderberg's "Out of Sight."

Brawny, he-man spectacle combined with a surprisingly solid story and buttressed by excellent performances.

Heir to a long tradition of apocalyptic scare stories, the film wears its influences proudly.

Often technically rough, but it's painfully compelling.

Alternately sweet and raucous comedy.

A tour de force and an utter delight, studded with priceless supporting bits by Miriam Margolyes, Maury Chaykin, Rosemary Harris and Rita Tushingham, each of whom steals at least one richly deserved moment in the spotlight.

Roos' sly, throwaway insights into the ways people deceive and undermine themselves are both ruefully funny and painfully on the mark.

This Australian tear-jerker finds more humor than you'd imagine possible in the story of a dying woman getting to know her adult children.

The film rests on Depp's evocation of Barrie's gentle, playfulness and deeply buried sorrows; it's difficult to imagine another actor so gracefully evoking Barrie's childlike qualities without seeming creepy or emotionally malformed, and only the hard of heart will come away dry-eyed.

Less a sequel than a variation on a haunting theme -- the nature and origins of humanity.

Would be funny if it weren't so horrifying.

Antal's debut is a sharp, blackly comic hugely entertaining thriller.

Gray doesn't condescend to his outer-borough characters and elicits pitch-perfect performances from his ensemble cast.

Above all, Jackson evokes an almost palpable sense of the will to power trapped within the ring. Without this evocation of the ring's insidious ability to sniff out the potential for corruption and capitalize on it, the entire enterprise would be precious drivel.

Moreno's subtly calibrated mix of intelligence, naivete, rebelliousness, charisma and practicality produces an unforgettable protagonist; even Maria's recklessness seems reasonable because it's so clearly rooted in desperation.

Its imagery is never less than breathtakingly beautiful, and is occasionally truly awesome

Serrau effortlessly navigates the tricky transition from ruefully comic chick flick to gritty crime picture.

Piercing, sweetly melancholy and acted with a breathtaking eye for nuance.

William Klein's film documents a turbulent time and an outsized personality, but the film's glories are in the details and its intimacy would be unimaginable in the rigidly spin-controlled atmosphere of 21st-century sports.

The framing story is pointless and almost insulting, even though it's part of former New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen's novel.

This amazing footage alternates with interviews that include more than a dozen surviving members of the troupe, whose recollections are by turn funny, touching and mind-boggling. What a time!

You don't have to be a chem-lab wonk to be seduced by the seven scientists who discuss their work and lives in this engaging film.

A rapt fascination with transcendent lunacy runs through Herzog's work, both fiction and documentary; while disdaining Treadwell's rhapsodically anthropomorphized vision of nature.

Steven Soderbergh's direction conjures an understated '70s vibe, striking an apparently effortless balance between grit and glamour.

Medem's stupendously gorgeous puzzle movie features strong performances from its four leads.

A very entertaining, hugely neurotic romantic comedy.

Enthralling, darkly funny, horrifying and hopeful.

One of the flat-out creepiest films ever released by a major American studio.

Romero isn't a subtle filmmaker -- the sociopolitical underpinnings of his DEAD films have always been brutally clear -- but LAND is alive with subtle touches.

A beautifully acted slice of intersecting lives defined and driven by the business of beauty.

A cut above the preposterous action spectacles that now pass for espionage films.

Overall, Owen and Law are more nuanced than Roberts and Portman, but Portman's dewy youth is 90 percent of Alice (the remaining 10 is an eleventh-hour twist), and Nichols uses the unkindly costumed Roberts so skillfully that her performance looks like a revelation.

This fast-paced entertainment is a surprisingly successful mix of spectacle and human-scale drama.

Though the specifics of the story may be unfamiliar to Western viewers, its broad outlines and underlying themes are universal, and Christopher Doyle's ravishing cinematography transcends language.

Tricky thriller relies on its smoothly unrippled surface, leisurely pacing and slightly awkward performances to create a false sense of security that sets up viewers for a shock when it takes an abrupt turn into Patricia Highsmith territory.

Utterly enthralling even for viewers unfamiliar with the Congo's complicated political history.

Frequently funny, generally fizzy and occasionally piercingly perceptive about the price love exacts.

Unlike Woo's successful but rather disappointing "Broken Arrow", this brutal, stunningly choreographed spectacle weaves together lyrical beauty, blasphemy, sadistic cruelty and grotesque sentimentality with breathtakingly smooth assurance.

In a story driven by questions of loyalty and allegiance, no candidate is identified by party. It's a bipartisan nightmare from which no one escapes unscathed.

This cheeky fable rests on the slender shoulders of Etel and McGibbon, and the lovely, natural performances Boyle elicits from them are the film's real miracle.

By turns enthralling, seductive and deeply disturbing.

This intimate, bittersweet romance is proof that a familiar story and the trappings of a done-to-death era can still seem fresh and engaging in the right hands.

It's both the shortest 3 1/2 hours you'll ever spend at the movies and spectacle of such magnitude that it's hard to imagine feeling you didn't get your time and money's worth.

Both informative and intensely moving.

Non-musical scenes that move the narrative forward are staged realistically, while the lavish production numbers reflect the star-struck imagination of one-time chorine Roxie, for whom all the world ought to be a stage.

Craig Brewer's sweaty, feel-good story about a small-time pimp and dope dealer making one last, desperate grab at his long-deferred dream is driven by longtime supporting player Terrence Howard's subtle, go-for-broke performance as Memphis mack Djay.

Anchored by Friel and Williams's exceptional performances, the film's power lies in its complexity. Nothing is black and white, starting with the girls' complicated relationships with their parents, which are simultaneously nurturing and fraught with psychological peril.

Despite its length, the film only starts feeling as long at the end -- or, more correctly, ends. Serious fans of the novels will be prepared for the serial codicils, but the uninitiated are likely to think the film is over several times before it actually is.

Whatever the complicated truth about PTL, Tammy Faye's homespun charisma is undeniable; if only the Lord would give her the strength to say, "Get thee behind me, false eyelashes!"

The result is truly a family film, not a kiddie time-waster that throws the occasional sop to adults; whether you like or love it is a function of how vividly the material reflects your own childhood fantasies.

Henry James's novel of social-climbing, forbidden love, friendship and betrayal, given a lush treatment that neglects neither the elaborate period trappings nor the story's intensely contemporary emotional underpinnings.

The main event is the Mamet-esque battle of foul words between vintage hard-case Ray Winstone and the seething sociopath played by Ben Kingsley.

A cool indictment of television's near-irresistible pandering to the inner peeping tom.

Such astringent details as a banjo player plucking a few ominous notes from "Dueling Banjos" when Ed first lays eyes on the Norman Rockwellian beauty of Spectre ensure that the story's fundamental sweetness never becomes cloying.

Story of small triumphs and everyday sorrows is never maudlin or sentimental.

Classic melodrama given a thoroughly modern, utterly Almodovarian face-lift.

Kusama's impressive feature debut is an affecting coming-of-age drama whose story is familiar without being hackneyed.

Generous, slyly tough-minded documentary.

It starts slowly, but this contemplative drama's cumulative effect is genuinely haunting.

Blanchett's quietly radiant performance anchors even the most outrageous plot developments, and she's well-supported on all sides.

The competition between man and machine is fogged by distrust and obfuscation. And for now, the result is a draw.

Hailed as a clever exercise in neo-Hitchcockianism, this clever and very satisfying picture is more accurately Chabrolian.

A scary, intelligent thriller that remains haunting long after it's over...features what has to be one of the creepiest first half-hours in recent film history.

So adorable you don't ever mind that the story's so slight it's in danger of shriveling up and blowing away, or that it drags a little in the middle.

A collaboration between the notoriously offbeat Coen brothers and thoroughly mainstream screenwriters Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, this piquant romantic comedy is both resolutely generic and bristling with barbs that go down with a delicious fizz and leave behind a refreshing blast of tartness.

Deville gently reveals that they're all simultaneously hauntingly fragile and amazingly resilient, their smiles as piercing as any resigned gaze.

Offbeat and ravishingly beautiful.

Rough around the edges but rock-solid in its sense of place and its depiction of real people overreaching their apparent limitations.

Diop Gaï's performance is equally beguiling: She's both bold and mysterious, a femme fatale bursting with life.

Mamet's jabs at Tinseltown's silken ruthlessness are quietly pointed, and the ensemble cast -- even the brittle and sometimes annoying Pidgeon (Mamet's wife) -- is brilliant.

This taut crime thriller is a welcome antidote to brainless action extravaganzas in which the mayhem is the message, and rests on two shrewd, perfectly modulated performances.

It's probably not the last word in WASP angst, but it's eloquent, witty, graceful and as sharp as can be.

Kassell's visual influences are evident -- she's clearly a fan of the down-and-dirty films of the '70s -- but the consistently fine performances smooth over the rough patches.

Like the original "Fantasia's" eight segments, the results are a mixed bag.

Spare and quietly heartbreaking, this French-Canadian feature uses a fine brush to depict a teenage girl in the midst of a quiet crisis.

If you ever wondered why they call it "the curse," this movie will enlighten as it entertains.

Its minutely detailed revelations work their way under the skin like slivers of glass.

The wonder of it all is how bitterly funny the complications are, especially as filtered through Dedee's monstrously self-centered voice-over.

(Fugate's) portrait of Valentine/Baker is rich and compelling.

Funny, thought-provoking and, yes, touching.

Both genuinely funny and authentically horrifying, it puts the average horror comedy to shame.

Eastwood's slow-building story of loss and deliverance is a fine, understated piece of storytelling that earns every emotional body blow it lands.

The film's measured pace may put off impatient viewers, but the brilliantly underplayed ending is worth the wait.

Roberts fans will, of course, be delighted to see her in a role that plays to all her strengths -- fresh-faced looks, charming gangliness, air of infinite approachability -- and neatly sidesteps her glaring inability to act by having her more or less play herself.