Michael Sragow

Valkyrie's political and military subjects may have sounded like sure-fire thriller material. Wilkinson alone proves that a suspense film thrives on intriguing characters struggling to survive. Nothing in Valkyrie is as compelling as watching tides of calculation crash across Wilkinson's face.

Paul Giamatti - that huddle of broiling instincts, out-of-control impulses and aggravated ardor epitomized in "Sideways" - you feel his soul's absence as dearly as its presence.

Will be hailed for its macabre imagination and inventive farce. But it also elegantly renders an archetypal teenage tale.

The desert is clean in Gerry, but it's also empty.

High School Musical 3 wore me out, but I'm not the target audience. My favorite high school musical was "Hamlet 2."

As a documentary, The Agronomist, in its excitingly fractured, modern manner, does what Lawrence of Arabia and The Leopard do: It traces the upheaval of a civilization in the profile of a magnificent individual. It's a 90-minute nonfiction film with the impact and the greatness of an epic.

In this film, Soderbergh appears to judge the actors by how well they spew or swallow bile.

Too soft on its lead character and too willing to chalk up America's drug appetites to the times-that-were-a-changin' in the '60s.

A lovely, mischievous Casanova that will sweep you off your feet.

Who Killed the Electric Car? makes you feel that no good idea, let alone good deed, goes unpunished. Only the exuberance of the moviemaking keeps your spirits high.

Nolte's gambler-bandit Bob Montagnet is a triumph of imagination, touched with electric existential poetry.

If, like me, you're both desperate to see new public-works systems in our own country and sensitive to the possible human and ecological damage, Up the Yangtze provides a devastating view of top-down, broad-stroke social programs.

Instead of exploding, it implodes.

A bit like a real-world horror film with "heart," right down to the trick ending.

You never believe that Paltrow's character is insane, even when she herself does. She has too sturdy a core.

This movie will be remembered not for the notorious Bettie Page but for its showcase of the burgeoning Gretchen Mol.

If you haven't had enough of Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan weepies like "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993) and "You've Got Mail" (1998), The Lake House gives us Mopey in Chicago and You've Got Snail Mail.

Is there anything more pathetic than a movie that will do anything for a laugh or a tear that doesn't get any laughs or tears?

Slumdog Millionaire dives headfirst into something greater than a subculture - the enormous unchronicled culture of India's mega-slums - and achieves even more sweeping impact.

The movie's own style is strictly an anti-style, all pre-packaged post-punk.

Here's my nomination for future grindhouse double-bill from hell: Pathfinder and "Apocalypto."

What gives Notorious its staying power is what happens before AND after its hero's death.

The first half of this 1997 movie suffers from abstraction. Still, it's a compelling erotic nightmare.

The movie's triumph is that we experience the ending, in which the three girls go mostly separate ways, not as a defeat but as a transition still open to possibilities.

The most refreshing thing about the original Men in Black was that it was relatively small - a modest, slapdash, 98-minute special-effects farce. The most refreshing thing about Men in Black II is that it is 10 minutes shorter.

Here's hoping Allen's static Hennessey is due to an extreme acting choice and not plastic surgery. It would be tragic to lose a natural smile to star in garbage like Death Race.

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

What makes the "Dolittle" movies stand out from this menagerie is the superb casting and matching of the animals and their human voices.