Michael Sragow

In the strongest scenes, Ben Affleck gets his lead actors to extract the bitter juice from Lehane's wood-alcohol prose. The movie has its horrifying Gothic twists and turns, but it's never better than when it takes these two into places where the underclass goes to forget or be forgotten or get lost.

Uneven and affecting movie.

This chick flick never should have made it out of the incubator.

The movie never undercuts his brilliance and his unexpected charisma. No matter how high his degree of malevolence, he cuts a bigger figure after you see the movie than he did before.

The film's strengths can't be separated from its shortcomings. Despite its heavyweight supporting cast, Stone Reader mostly pays tribute to the enthusiasm and purity of the amateur.

An exhilarating movie about sadness and renewal.

Shallow and one-sided.

Webber's film offers painstaking reproductions of the town of Delft circa 1665 in all four seasons. That's just the problem: you feel every pain he took. Girl With a Pearl Earring is an art movie in the worst way.

Touching and insightful.

This movie is about the survival of the open-minded. As far as current American independents go, it's the fastest and the funniest.

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.

Contains a dozen winning moments of humor, uplift or exhilaration. But are they enough to justify a 154-minute running time?

As a movie, Heist is merely an amiable time-killer. But it presents a terrific argument for federalizing airport security.

The film is tense and engrossing. But it lacks exactly what the title advertises: the sense of inexplicable familiarity that should haunt you as the story unfolds and leave you all a-tingle when it ends.

Tautou's kind of talent: priceless.

Unfortunately, it lacks emotional lift or folkloric fervor.

This picture is absorbing -- and eye-filling -- whether the prose and the passion are connecting or running on parallel tracks.

For better and worse, the entire film goes by like a theme-park cyclone ride. It makes as much sense as it needs to when you're on it. All it leaves in its wake is a residue of vertigo and speed.

In real life, Bacon and Sedgwick are husband and wife. Their scenes mark one of the rare times an off-screen couple's intimacy enriches on-screen passion.

A Big Sleep with underage bozos, a Maltese Falcon where the stuff that dreams are made of rests in the lockers of a well-worn high school, Brick is a remarkable oddity, audacious and engaging.

The astonishingly versatile Kinnear proves note-perfect as a huckster who slowly rids himself of slime.

The movie's steady good humor and respect for character is pleasing - even energizing.

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.

Johansson bequeaths the welcome sight of a talent in full bloom to this wilted, dark whimsy of a movie.

The movie has dual strengths that silence most objections. Even more than "X-2" or "American Splendor," it is, in a good way, the most comic-booky movie of the year. It's also the human Winged Migration.

The whole film is about innocence and experience, and if it isn't a Blakean song, it is a sturdy and vibrant piece of prose.

Has nearly perfect pitch.

The performers are tremendous, particularly Deschanel, who can travel to the end of an emotional tether and then suggest the mysteries of change and growth that lie beyond.