Michael Sragow

The gritty heist picture The Bank Job has everything adult action fans could want, starting with a grand, fact-inspired gimmick.

Kasi Lemmons' movie is called Talk to Me, but what it really does is sing to you, in the argot and cadences of soul, jazz, rock and rhythm and blues.

Norton is brilliant in Lee's so-so 'Hour.'

The movie conveys the drama of the moment but eschews context. The result is an arresting yet frustrating experience.

Divided We Fall has a lot going for it, but its Places in the Heart ending, sentimental and incongruous, helps ensure that it will not find a place in a demanding audience's heart or mind.

The enthralling documentary Crazy Love is about how a high-flying lawyer's obsession with a young beauty blinded her, metaphorically and literally.

For all its pretensions, Changing Lanes, ultimately, is about nothing more profound than one foul day.

It's a courageous, moving, organically funny picture.

It bears roughly the same resemblance to the Bennett Miller-Dan Futterman-Philip Seymour Hoffman masterpiece as the now-forgotten "Valmont" did to "Dangerous Liaisons."

At best, North Country just inspires you to read the book.

Light, engaging documentary.

But even those who succumb to his primitive, survivalist vision may resent the way he presents every kind of atrocity at least twice without illuminating any of the exotic details once.

Both handmade and souped-up, it beautifully renders two types of camaraderie: the bonds among eccentrics and the fellowship of speed.

The only thing that tops Cave here is Cohen himself at the end, singing "Tower of Song" with U2.

What's missing is what Pixar never fails to provide: The kind of storytelling heart that is inseparable from imagination.

Handsome and well-acted, yet it can't hold a pawn to Nabokov's harrowing and moving character study.

This flight of fancy stays aloft on the power of its acting and its atmosphere.

It's the whole constellation of relationships that Winick and company create in and around the barn that brings the movie its kaleidoscopic charm.

Emily Dickinson wrote, "Hope is the thing with feathers." When Woody Allen published his second collection, he called it Without Feathers. Guest is as sharp and original as Allen, but he hasn't lost hope. For Your Consideration -- disillusioned but also fresh and ticklish -- is a thing with feathers, too.

In Hustle & Flow, a star is born playing a star who's born.

Russell's conviction is so total that it tingles the spines of the audience.

The Bourne Identity keeps you in a state of nervous excitation from the opening shot to the fade-out and has a thread of deadpan humor that vibrates alongside the main action like a third rail quivering next to a hurtling train.

It's a topical, iconoclastic documentary with the warmth and pace of a first-rate personal essay.

Captures the feel of a first-rate comic book. It puts the pop back into Pop Art: It blows viewers away with a blast of kinetic energy.

Queen Latifah, the star of Barbershop 2 and Beauty Shop, and thus our reigning monarch of big-screen beauty stylists, should fund and narrate a sequel. Because The Beauty Academy of Kabul is good enough to make you want to know how they do.

A pop masterpiece.

It pulls together diverse residents of the city, from produce vendors to academics, and trains a loving eye on their unique environments and the urban landscapes they all share.

The fascination, humor and poignancy of Departures, this year's winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, rests in the Japanese ceremony of preparing bodies for their caskets.