Michael Sragow

Although it's in the same genre as "The English Patient," it's a vastly better movie --more surprising and original, more rigorous and sympathetic. This film is oddly shaped. It is also heartbreaking and exhilarating.

Spielberg's inchoate attempts at cultural observation stretch the movie out and dilute the giddiness instead of adding a pleasurable spike. When the movie doesn't feel inflated, it feels soggy.

An unconventional and engrossing French thriller.

The only reason to see Nights in Rodanthe is to check in with Diane Lane.

Maya Rudolph's subtle, lyrical portrait of a patient wife and expectant mother enlivens and elevates Away We Go, an erratic couple-on-a-quest film.

What Phoenix and Witherspoon accomplish in this movie is transcendent. They act with every bone and inch of flesh and facial plane, and each tone and waver of their voice.

Penelope Cruz is sensational in Volver - she's its lifeblood, its raison d'etre and its meaning.

Deep Water is a movie that will connect to anyone whose private fantasies and creative plots have landed them in hot water.

Penn, with curled hair and wire-rims, makes a brilliant, slippery high-end shyster; his modulated hysteria is amazing. So is Brian De Palma’s direction. Few films actually made in the disco era can match the kinetic allure of this 1993 production, which has a bluesy undertow all its own.

Unlike Nicolas Cage in "National Treasure," Hanks lacks the game for it. The surface seriousness of these Dan Brown movies obstructs his affability and easy, attentive way with romance.

Brand's script is a puzzle without a satisfying solution. Even at its supposedly heartfelt conclusion, it's more ironic than emotional, more of an art thing than a suspense movie.

The good news is that Schwarzenegger is more entertaining than ever as the Terminator T-101 cyborg.

This movie is as wrenching as it is eruptive. Hitchcock never went further beyond pop than he did with Sabotage.

Darger made art as if the lives of his subjects depended on it. That's how Yu has made her movie.

Fellowes sets the screen for a tale of subterfuge in the upper crust, a la Agatha Christie.

Poses as the story of a wild, eccentric love match but is really about a match made in limbo.

It flows like fast-moving lava to a climax filled with pyrotechnics. And for once in a summer blockbuster, the fireworks are both emotional and physical. The movie leaves you sated, yet wanting more -- just what you want from a series with two entries left to go.

A madcap milestone. Not since Disney's 75-minute Alice In Wonderland (1951) has an animator filled the screen with dazzling flights of random invention that manage to hook up into a swift, brief narrative.

The most appealing aspect of the movie is that the guys and gal at the center of it don't just love the Star Wars saga for its own sake. They love the way they feel about each other when they're escaping into its universe and sharing all the wonder and the trivia.

Since that gifted, attractive performer is Hayden Panettiere, who has already won a wide following for "Heroes," it's a wonder that the studio hasn't been more heavily promoting her appearance in this decent, genial youth comedy. After all, she does play, ah, Beth Cooper.

The compositions evoke a kind of open-air claustrophobia, whether in overhead shots that pin the characters in the landscape or in tableaux of men, women, and children staving off the chaos of the wide-open spaces with their weary fences and weathered towns.

The whole thing turns into trash with flash.

It's still the Holy Grail of crazy comedy.

Director Gillian Armstrong drains all the emotional energy out of the people who dot her movie's lovely landscape.

By the end, Pootie Tang feels as long as Kevin Costner's "Wyatt Earp."

Few films even try to render the full range of emotions and sensations in female sexuality as the aptly titled Lady Chatterley, directed and co-written by a Frenchwoman, Pascale Ferran.

Shyamalan has said he wanted to create the best B-movie ever made, but it fails to be the best C movie of the month. (Stuck or Zohan are better C movies.)

The result is an exciting, infuriating, combative experience.

As sweet and hopeless and silly as a doting dad framing his second-grader's latest finger-painting and calling it a Matisse.

Too bad you can see this sort of thing done more amusingly every week on ABC-TV and Comedy Central.

Some of the movie's sunniest moments arrive as Chappelle ambles through Ohio. He's an observational comic with a drawling syntax that's almost as sly as Mark Twain's.

The most refreshing thing about Man of the Year is its mingling of comedy and suspense with common decency. Levinson asks his countrymen not just to know their limits, but also to reach them.

The whole movie swings broadly from slapstick and mock suspense to song. But the film develops a strong amorous undertow; Kelly's script neatly allows for all the potential couples to get the fate or comeuppance they deserve.

Luhrmann steals good ideas, fair ideas and terrible ideas - anything that once moved him when he was a little boy. He's turned Australia into a more-than-you-can-eat buffet of colorful kitsch.

Watching The Gospel of John is like listening to a religious audiotape while working a picture flip-book of the Bible.

If the movie has a flaw, it's that the working out of Vincent's psychology is too perfect.

You won't believe the story director George Clooney and his goofball TV host are trying to sell. Really.

Pearce makes you see why Edie found Warhol as irresistible as he found her. His otherworldly eyes focus on both who she is and what she represents. He sees her as a star.

Uneven and affecting movie.

The whole narrative is too hollow and rickety as well as gimmicky for Muccino to breathe much life into it.

Despite the cunning mixture of live-action footage and animatronic effects in Two Brothers, there's more imagination and wonder in a good old Sabu picture like "The Jungle Book" (1942). Two Brothers is more like a tacky jungle comic book.

A terrific social drama, the work of an artist, not a pleader.

With everything this film has going for it - humor, intelligence and a splendid ensemble - Richard Linklater's nightmare drug movie, A Scanner Darkly, should be continually compelling. But it loses its fizz after a strong series of pops.

Seabiscuit revives the sweeping pleasures of movies that address and respect the mass audience, raising the common denominator instead of pandering to it. This crowd-pleaser rouses honest and engulfing cheers.

A scary movie that's also funny, touching and good for you.

It's the pushiest film around - "in your face" is still in-your-face, even if the dancers are in white-face.

Plays like Abbott and Costello Meet Conan the Barbarian.

The movie, brief though it is, feels as padded as a travelogue.

On the plus side, the casting is superb - and the acting, too. Although the context is overwrought and the moviemaking over-the-top, Washington acts from the ticker out.

The movie is a monument to egomania - and I don't mean Alexander's.

When it comes to what's great about King Kong, it's not the harum-scarum. It's the girl.

No matter how good-natured, The Holiday ends up a glutted farce.

In its peak moments, the movie delivers, all at once, genuine street wisdom and psychology and wrenching expressions of family and friendship.

The first half is diverting and inventive. But the filmmakers use the second half as a box-office insurance policy. They fill it with the conventional super-heroics and heartbreak that they spend the first 45 minutes gleefully deconstructing.

It's disconcerting to see Ferrell, a master of macho psychosis, adopt the stop-and-go dithering of Woody Allen-style neurosis.

The film is hapless. The gap between the moviemakers' ambition and their wit is dizzying. It's as if they thought they were filming The Importance of Being Unimportant.

Himalaya does for yak caravans what "Red River" did for cattle drives: it sees them as the stuff of epic conquest.

The unearned air of moralism that wafts through 15 Minutes pollutes its entertainment value.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon makes Bicke suffer the greatest indignity: it turns him into a relentless bore.

Les Mayfield doesn't know how to stage showdowns and chases so they're exciting or funny.

A masterpiece of psychological suspense.

Takes a chaotic moment in the long history of "the Troubles" and turns it into a keening, air-clearing epic.

Enough flair and conviction to keep the movie buoyant even when its plot is abrupt and its emotionality conventional.

The movie's generosity of spirit and artistry swamps its flaws.