Maitland McDonagh

The result is so intoxicating, it hardly matters that you've heard it all before.

Though the ballets themselves are beautifully shot, they lean heavily in the direction of gimmicky and prop-heavy pieces; they're visually interesting but, by and large, they're not great dance.

The movie's performances, especially Lathan's, are strong enough to balance out the sometimes-clichéd script.

This tribute to old-fashioned hard-boiled detective fiction is laced with Hollywood satire and snappy, lightning-fast dialogue.

Feels soft without being especially affectionate, and only sporadically funny.

First written in the early '80s, Terrence Malick's fourth film in three decades is a trancelike take on the relationship of Native American princess Matoaka - better known by the nickname Pocahontas and English adventurer John Smith.

The person who can resist a formerly homeless senior citizen gradually restored to sufficient stability to the degree that he can take in his own "castaway cat" is hard-hearted indeed.

Billed as a dark comedy, brothers Jay and Mark Duplass' shaggy, ultra-low-budget tale of a tense New York-to-Atlanta road trip is more accurately a relationship-hell drama peppered with strangled laughs.

A beautifully acted, intensely felt story.

It unfolds in the angst-haunted shadow of the 9'11 terror attacks and teeters on a thin edge of sheer panic.

Though at heart a tightly-wound, bitterly bleak comedy of manners, Eyre's film is less funny than brilliantly squirm-inducing, a dissection of bad behavior via rapier-sharp dialogue.

Herzfeld's sophomore movie is one long howl of rage over the relationship between criminals, journalists and thrill-hungry audiences.

Despite the absence of dialogue -- the mice squeak and the oak creatures caw like ravens -- Cegavske imbues her scrappy little creatures with disturbingly complex personalities. And if the tale's moral is less than clear, its haunting images speak directly to some dark, preverbal corner of the heart.

The roots of Steve James's disturbing documentary lie in youthful idealism.

What could easily have been a sentimental, fannish exercise in musty nostalgia is in fact a lovely tribute to an era of feverish creativity that seemed as though it would never end yet now lives only in memory.

Fans of Lehane's Kenzie-Gennaro books will lament the fact that starting with the fourth book means losing the couple's extensive backstory, but the essence of their fragile, damaged bond comes through even if you don't know what shaped it.

The film's epic look is undermined by his narrow focus; in the end it feels rather thin and less than the sum of its handsome parts.

The fun is in the mayhem, and there's plenty of it.

The film's climax, which cuts back and forth between the 16-year-old Dongo (Silas Radies, whose younger brother plays Dongo as a ten year old) making his dangerous debut with the fly-by-night Aurora Circus and the 2002 competition that takes him back to Hungary for the first time in years is nothing short of riveting.

The first-rate cast is lost at sea.

Cynics may scoff, but the spirit of Woodstock -- not the 1999 debacle, but the 1969 original -- lives.

It's enjoyable poppycock.

Scruffy, loosely structured and piercingly perceptive about the ways in which technology that supposedly brings people together actually keeps them apart.

The film is relentlessly peppy, often quite funny, sometimes a bit too convinced of its own adorableness and ultimately as smoothly reassuring as a TV sitcom.

The movie's secret weapons are its stellar cast, whose performances go a long way to ameliorating Ross's ham-fisted use of foreshadowing and symbols, and its brilliantly shot racing sequences -- they're heart-stoppingly suspenseful even when the outcome is a matter of record.

Thalbach's passionate performance is the film's center, but she's aided by a strong supporting cast, Jarre's propulsive score and the gritty locations: It was shot at the very shipyard where real-life history was made.

Tries to be all things to all people and winds up a tedious muddle.

Don't hate him because he's beautiful, decent, awesomely powerful, modest and just plain good. That's the big blue Boy Scout package - take it or leave it.