Michael Sragow

Greengrass and his tremendously smart and emotionally agile lead actor, James Nesbitt, paint their portrait of a good politician without illusion or sentimentality.

Pious, high-minded and bad history.

The comedy of manners becomes strictly a comedy of bad manners.

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

Like "Hairspray," it's not just a spinoff but a wised-up family comedy that's spirited and inventive. It retains the farcical belligerence of the TV comedy but also heightens the series' oddball warmth and expands on its Hellzapoppin' slapstick.

Forget chemistry: There's no biology to the star casting.

Gory but lifeless.

Quirky and enjoyable.

That's the problem of Downfall in a nutshell: It provokes insufficient emotional and intellectual responses to a grotesque and atrocious dictatorship. Instead of the banality of evil, it gives us the banality of banality.

The filmmakers capture kids and adolescents who haven't hardened their feelings into attitudes or molded their gestures into poses.

You don't want to look at anything else when Zeta-Jones is on-screen.

In every important way, Breach isn't just a solid thriller; it's also an ambitious and engrossing piece of narrative journalism.

Costner does something difficult: In the middle of a tepid comic whirlpool, he finds the humorous aspect of inertia.

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.

Mystic River wants to be a Bruce Springsteen-like anthem of life and death in blue-collar America. It's no more than a doggerel rendition of poetic injustice.

It's the ideal capper for a cop comedy with a refreshingly wry, adult and humane attitude.

A first-person documentary with the subterranean pull of a superb confessional novel.

It's so wispy that at the end you wonder: Exactly what runs in the family?

There's no irony within the film, but there's a whopping irony surrounding it. Just as Star Wars has finally ended, Rocky seems to be starting all over again.

Lacks suspense, momentum and visual panache.

Full of wit, charm and wonder. It's so hilarious, you might blow a gasket.

Manipulates the audience.

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

A sophisticated thrill. And incandescent Thandie Newton is a worthy successor to Audrey Hepburn in 'Charade.'

A Mighty Heart has the surface tension of a first-rate docudrama but neither the passion nor the vision to encompass its powerhouse subject.

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.

It's intelligent and emotional, not studied or sappy.

All the Coens come up with is a movie about bad things happening to limited people.