Michael O'Sullivan

A handsome and effective-if over-long-tear-jerker about thwarted love between grown-ups who should know better.

More tasteful, sensitive and original than you might imagine.

Sweet and wise little film.

Shelton's harrowing and compulsively watchable morality play.

What keeps Phone Booth going, despite its premise, is the acting and the writing, both of which are top-notch.

A compelling, exquisitely acted drama about the shock waves emanating from -- and toward -- a single act of almost inexplicable violence.

Haunting little film, whose chaotic universe is churned up by the conflict between the haves and the have-nots.

A poke in the adrenal gland -- obeys the first law of action movie-making by quickening the heart and dazzling the eye.

New Suit is devilishly good fun.

Utterly delightful fable of romantic destiny.

Pure David Mamet is an acquired, but delicious, taste.

One big, fat, honking comic book of a sci-fi-martial-arts adventure flick.

It's enough to make your head spin, but Almodovar, whose mastery of the medium has never been more assured, gives you plenty to think about, ultimately grounding the dizzy whirl of his idiosyncratic fictional world in a story that feels not just true but universal.

It's still pretty darn good, despite its smarty-pants aura.

Wonderfully empowering to watch Petula and Dorothy turn the tables on their testosterone-crazed tormentors.

Michelle Williams turns in a performance that is seamless, canny and artistically mature.

This is high-carb filmmaking at its finest. When it's all over, you'll have a knot in your stomach.

The documentary makes an effective and rather chilling case that there is an almost unbroken chain between Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein.

In its small, achingly beautiful way, this is the lesson that Osama teaches us: When one human being suffers, it is all of us who share her pain.

Nurse Betty is this year's "Being John Malkovich"-an utter original with a little something to say and a way of saying it that manages to be at once delightful and bilious.

Disturbing, darkly beautiful.

It's in this final chapter that the director states his message, which is handled so lightly, almost incidentally, you might miss it. But it's a profound one. For what the girls learn is that the way to get what they want -- no, need -- isn't by hoarding something, but by letting go.

It is Carandiru's ability to humanize its central characters ... that gives the movie its wrenching, tragic power

Crudup gives a performance that is by turns scary, heartbreaking, grotesque and funny as hell.

Overflowing with madcap visual flair and following a rambling thread of a plot that seems, at times, more the product of free association than an actual script, The Triplets of Belleville is a triumph of animated style over substance.

Simple without being slight, and profoundly moving without dipping into mawkishness.

A confection that is ultimately better because of its bitterness.

It's over-the-top. It's wild. It's filled with outrageous behavior all around.

The comedy is funny as hell. And yes, I mean hell, not heck.

But the real treat is seeing Big Daddy Bruce playing the papa bear part to the little lost boy. Sure, he loves his handgun, but for once Willis seems to enjoy his nurturing side as much as his Glock 19. [3 Apr 1998, p.N53]

Far filthier and a good bit funnier than Trey Parker and Matt Stone's sophomoric cable TV show ever dared to be.

Jarmusch's use of yin/yang, dark/light and good/evil symbolism makes glorious if goofy sense.

First-time feature director Harald Zwart has a real flair for farce, and he keeps the outrageous high jinks of the script lively yet grounded in reality.

Shot with a shaky hand-held camera, Wonderland is a sentimental fairy tale with a gritty documentary feel.

An okay movie made nearly great by one great thing: the bravura, mercilessly watchable performance of Charlize Theron.

As channeled by the extraordinary Hoffman, Dan Mahowny is less a freak than a nerve-deadened Everyman with the courage to search for something that makes him feel alive.

Shaolin Soccer really loves what it mocks, after all, and that grandly goofy affection -- nay, joy -- for all things chop socky is purely, utterly contagious.

A taut, escapist legal thriller.

May not change the world, but it's deeply creepy and richly satisfying.

Like the TV show, The X-Files movie is stylish, scary, sardonically funny and at times just plain gross.

Sweet without being saccharine, sad without being maudlin and funny without being forced.

More honest than any conventional morality tale. Here there are no heroes and no real villains; the good guys are all flawed and even bad guys are sometimes capable of the noblest of acts.

It's a film about culture clash, the generation gap and the loss of tradition that inevitably accompanies the arrival of anything new.

It's daring, deliberately offensive and, for a comedy, it has far more ideas in it than actual laughs.

Zigging and zagging serenely between the extremes of deadpan, postmodern comedy and the antic, Max Sennett-style japery of yore.

Returns to the wicked mix of transgression and positivity epitomized by "Pecker" and "Hairspray."

Engrossing, educational, amusing and disturbing. And who could ask for more than that from a film?

Apart from the deja vu all over again, Lucky Break is no worse a film than "Breaking Out," and "Breaking Out" was utterly charming.

Fascinating story.

Powerful yet ambiguous.

It's a world where every emotion feels like the earth moving, and where the shifting tectonics of young lust and friendship, along with the lifelong lessons of a broken heart, have never felt more real.

Works as both historical allegory and moving family drama.

This is the lightest, brightest and tightest film confection to come down the date pike in quite some time.

It's a story of jaw-dropping chutzpah, grim, mostly hindsight-based humor and more stomach-churning drama than you could find in 10 screenplays.

Feels like a song you may have heard before, but one whose aching beauty makes it endlessly listenable.

Could hardly be more suspenseful if it were scripted.

Where it succeeds best is not in describing how Luzhin got broken but how love fixed him, albeit temporarily.

A two-hour pleasure cruise.

Modest but nonetheless devastating documentary.

The sprawling cast, the naturalistic, overlapping dialogue (here by screenwriter Jenny Lumet, daughter of director Sidney) and the swirling action: it seemed pure Robert Altman.

Poignant, heartbreaking proof that, sometimes, love is just not enough.

Like its Southern California setting, the sunny semi-autobiography is tempered with just the right touch of Jenkins's smoggy cynicism.

It's just more wry than funny, more a gently subversive comedy of modern manners than the simpering date movie it seems to be masquerading as.

With its wise understanding of the magnetic pull (and invisible polarities) of family, Junebug is an auspicious debut for Morrison.

A wondrous, funny and moving little film.

Hilary and Jackie plumbs the cistern of family dysfunction and musical genius to profound and haunting effect.

A touching and unusual road movie-cum-buddy film.

Not everyone's cup of tea, but it's actually rather beautiful.

The wisecracks fly fast and furious

A mostly unsentimental little gem.

Sorry, stinging fire ants couldn't make me reveal the outcome of this witty and, yes, surprisingly suspenseful adventure.

The film is a small study in the dignity of letting go.

There's nothing stodgy about these court jesters or their humor, even though their act is a decidedly grown-up affair.

Wickedly funny.

Very, very funny, in that morbid sort of way that makes you laugh even as you shudder with horror.

It's also sweet, sentimental, rather funny and, as John Waters films go, surprisingly gentle.

It is, as with any cinematic joy ride, not the destination that matters, but the rush of getting there.

Hilarious.

Carrey is so gifted a physical comedian that even mediocre material shines in his talented hands, not to mention his talented feet, face, elbows, ears, hair and, ahem, derriere.

An enormously entertaining visit to planet paranoia, but its escapist pleasures titillate only in direct proportion to the degree of persecution complex that you bring into the theater with you.

Moodysson's cornball sentimentality about the many shapes of the human family is tempered by his honesty about personal frailty and the silliness of utopian living experiments.

Sweet without being saccharine and funny without being forced, the closely observed romantic comedy treats the culinary arts as a metaphor for personal healing.

A raunchy and frequently hilarious follow-up to the gifted Korean American stand-up's "I'm the One That I Want."

May, at times, be deadpan to the point of stiffness, but it's far from dead.

The movie may leave its audience feeling a little battered (some might say betrayed) as well. Still, the film's honesty, along with its refusal to pander to Hollywood happy endings, is well worth the beating.

A sweet, true and, at times, universal love story it is.

Strangely moving film.

Startlingly erotic and surprisingly moving.

Yes, it's essentially a remake of a sequel, albeit a sequel that happens to be one of the greatest horror movies ever made, but it more than surpasses the original.

Is Spartan a perfect, or even a great, movie? Probably not. But in its prickly irascibility and deeply unsettling intelligence, it makes for a very, very good one.

Super Size Me is an anti-junk-food screed that manages to entertain even as it informs and alarms.

Good old-fashioned movie storytelling that steadily builds, over the course of nearly three hours, to a white-knuckle conclusion that satisfies on nearly every level.

A blend of gentle comedy and poignant drama.

Little Voice may be more of a confection than a square meal, but it's proof of how good a dish can be when the ingredients are of the highest order.

The spare and unsparing tone of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead makes it as existential -- and as original -- a whodunit as they come.

As exhausting as it is exhilarating to watch, the film in the end is less than fully satisfying.

Deliberate disorientation keeps the audience constantly off balance, and it's brilliantly effective.

It also has heart and soul, two commodities all too often in short supply in the field of garden-variety cinema verite.