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.