Michael Sragow

Goes down like a single-malt aged for 25 years.

Levinson's quirky caper is rich with laughs.

Turns the kleig lights around to produce a wry and dead-on commentary on the film industry and the journalists who cover it.

The glory of the movie is Depp, who achieves his own immortality.

A computer-animated burlesque fairy tale that generates more belly laughs than any live-action comedy since "Best in Show."

Original, unfailingly entertaining marital-breakup movie.

Takes 20 minutes to burst into fierce, inspired filmmaking.

What a relief to see a movie in which an audience responds with peals of laughter to subtle facial shifts as well as punch lines.

It overflows with a combustible blend of street sensitivity and testosterone.

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

A stinging elegy for lost American dreams.

This documentary could have been a simple downer. Instead, it's a giddy, manic-depressive roller coaster - because it brings us eye to eye with Gilliam.

Few directors are able to showcase actors with fast-cutting techniques. Hill is an ace at it because everything about his action is organic.

Brosnan turns his typical talent on its head. So does director Boorman, who forsakes his usual tingling virtuosity.

A delirious surprise .

The picture has immediacy, force and humanity. It's a muckraking work of art.

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.

An unconventional and engrossing French thriller.

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.

The result is an exciting, infuriating, combative experience.

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

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

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

It's one of the most ambitious biographical films ever made in this country, and one of the most unusual, moving and exciting.

This picture boasts a story about a yarn-spinning Southern father (Albert Finney) and a sober-sided son (Billy Crudup) that gives it ballast and staying power beyond anything in previous, precious Burton fables like "Edward Scissorhands" or "Ed Wood."

Experiencing this film is like hurtling down a verbal slalom.

Lightning in a Bottle has breadth, both in its multitude of perspectives and its spectrum of performances.

Gloriously funky in the good old meaning of the term. Its vulgarity may be offensive, but it's also pungent and real, and it fuels some ferocious humor.