Peter Travers

A brilliant piece of nasty business that races on a B-movie track until it switches to the dizzying fuel of undiluted creativity. Damn, it's good. You can get buzzed just from the fumes coming off this wild thing.

The film is most riveting in its early scenes, when Soderbergh's digital cameras locate germs everywhere – don't touch those peanuts!

Warrior aspires to myth. It's Cain and Abel battling it out in the face of a decidedly ungodly father before humanity goes down for the count. Strong stuff.

Chastain (a nifty match-up with Mirren) is a live wire, and her scenes with Csokas and Worthington have a spark the later scenes lack. No matter. The Debt holds you in its grip.

Farmiga expertly guides a large and gifted ensemble cast and proves as fearless a director as she is an actress. She lights up Higher Ground and makes it funny, touching and vital.

With Del Toro's name in the credits, standard chills aren't enough. We want imagination to run riot.

Our Idiot Brother comes off as a blueprint for a smart script no one really made. Now that's what I call dumb.

Amigo is combustible filmmaking, something that stays with you long after the final credits. In an entertainment universe of escapism and short attention spans, Amigo is a rousing antidote and a cause for celebration.

This tear-jerking twaddle, adapted by David Nicholls from his 2009 bestseller, is nearly as bad as Anne Hathaway's British accent, which is heading for infamy.

Menace and mirth can cancel each other out. But the combo clicked in 1985's Fright Night (banish the 1988 sequel), and it clicks again in this frisky 3D remake.

The cheap thrills wear off way fast, and we're left with atrocious acting, feeble writing and clueless directing (from first-timer Steven Quale). The horror! The horror!

The movie plays like an evangelical prayer meeting, though I'd hold the hallelujahs. The characters we came to admire as vulnerable misfits hit the stage like visiting royalty and with a nonstop perkiness that makes the Von Trapps look like manic-depressives.

Fleischer isn't much on details. It's all about the zigzagging rush of the ride. Fair trade.

A deeply touching human story filled with humor and heartbreak is rare in any movie season, especially summer. That's what makes The Help an exhilarating gift.

The film swings from melodrama to sermonizing, both blunting the human drama that needs to come to the fore.

Here's a movie that starts in your face and, amazingly, keeps coming at you. That's a good thing.

No matter Bateman and Reynolds make The Change-Up seem a lot better than it is. Each earns a star in my review. The movie would be literally nothing without them.

The movie rises and, at times, even soars. This is all - and I do mean all - thanks to what human actors in league with computer technology can now achieve to bring the apes to life. No more guys squeezed into monkey suits and talking in posh accents. Performance-capture makes all the difference.

This is a breakthrough star performance from a terrific actor getting a chance to let it rip.

It's hot, fierce, funny, vicious and ready to bite, baby.

What makes Crazy Stupid Love a cut above is actors who let pain seep into the laughs. Here's a comedy you really can take to heart.

It looks slick, pricey and starry – Indiana Jones teams up with James Bond for a gunfight with space demons. But even Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig can't save a movie that's all concept, no content.

Another Earth offers imagination and provocation to spare.

Here's the funny thing: Despite all the Captain America rah-rah in costume and indestructible shield, the movie is at its best when the story sticks with skinny Steve.

Their banter is fun at the start until it becomes relentless.

What an exhilarating gift to watch Harry and Company go out in a blaze of glory and amazing grace.

Larry Crowne is more than a missed opportunity. It's alarmingly, depressingly out of touch.

Here's a hit-and-miss farce that leaves you wishing it was funnier than it is. Why? Because it wussies out on a sharp premise.

The dialogue is witty and spiked with delicious malice. At least it is when Pierce delivers it.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon - high on any list of the worst blockbusters ever - is a movie bereft of wit, wonder, imagination, and any genuine reason for being. Watching it makes you die a little inside.

This movie will get under your skin.

Lasseter is back behind the wheel, and you can feel his love for all things automotive in every frame. No humans blot this anthropomorphic romp. Cars do all the talking.

Bad Teacher keeps running away from its combustibly nasty premise. Damn shame.

Page One is a vital, indispensable hell-raiser.

Hal claims that a Lantern's only enemy is fear itself. The thought of a sequel to this shamelessly soulless Hollywood product scares me plenty.

This movie, a true beauty, will put a spell on you.

Blazing performance will burn in your memory. Same goes for the film.

Ayoade, the British comic making a remarkable feature debut with his adaptation of Joe Dunthorne's 2008 novel, blends mirth and malice with deadpan brilliance.

McGregor goes bone-deep in a performance of shining subtlety. And a never-better Plummer is simply stupendous, refusing any call to sentiment as he shows us Hal's resonant lunge at life. Mills works the same way. Beginners is one from the bruised heart.

In this cheerfully perverse origin tale of Magneto, Professor X and their mutant team, Vaughn delivers a fireworks display of action, smarts and fun, plus a touch of class from actors who can really act.

Like its predecessors (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World), Tree delivers truths that don't go down easy. No one with a genuine interest in the potential of film would think of missing it.

How could a 2009 raunchfest that slapped a grin on my face I couldn't unglue degenerate into a cold dish of sloppy seconds?

What's fresh about Midnight in Paris is the way he (Allen) identifies with Gil's idealization of the past, of the Paris that represented art and life at their fullest.

Marshall deserves props for putting the "show" back into the Pirates business. But face it, he's polishing a giant turd.

As played by the spectacular Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hesher is the id run rampant.

Ferrell delivers a performance of implosive intensity that rings true in every detail.

Kristen Wiig is an indisputable goddess of comedy. And this rowdy fem-friendship movie she stars in and wrote with Annie Mumolo is infused with the Wiig brand of wicked mischief.

The half-star rating goes to John Krasinski for heroically rising above this vile dung heap of a movie.

Moralists, beware. Hobo looks like a garish cartoon puked up by a filmmaker overstuffed with cheap thrills and celluloid scuzz. What's not to like?

The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster from a script by fearless first-timer Kyle Killen, is operating on a plane far above multiplex formula. This flawed but heartfelt movie has the power to sneak up and floor you.

Hemsworth, an Aussie actor with a vocal command to match his heaving brawn, doesn't just play the role, he owns it. I'm expecting both sexes will feel his impact.

Fast Five will push all your action buttons, and some you haven't thought of. So what if you hate yourself in the morning.

Prom has its modest delights, chiefly its young cast.

A devastating mystery thriller from Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve that grabs you hard and won't let go.

A brightly-colored, dizzying pinwheel of 3D animation in which nothing much happens. Sounds like summer is here early.

Spurlock says he's not selling out, he's buying in. I'm buying into Spurlock. As ever, he makes you laugh till it hurts.

It's all in the telling. Gruen provided grit and pungent detail. The movie settles for gloss.

Between a diabolically funny start and a surprise climax, Scream 4 offers nothing more than a series of gory deaths that grow tiresome with repetition. The rating is a hard R, but Craven and Williamson keep it soft at its core. "Scream 1" is still the only keeper.

Who's the idiot responsible for this fiasco? You can't blame the Tea Party, an organization of 9 million that the film's producers are exploiting to get butts into seats. There's an object lesson in objectivism for you.

The film pivots on McAvoy's powerfully implosive performance as a man trying to grow beyond his own prejudices. His scenes with Wright, under Redford's nuanced guidance, give this film its timely resonance and its grieving heart.

Reichardt has crafted a haunted dream of a movie to get lost in.

Nothing works. Nothing.

Gordon, who died shortly after the first Arthur, never had to see the luckless 1988 sequel that made his beloved characters seem like strangers. The new Arthur, insipid when it should be infectious, leaves the same deadly impression.

As Hanna confronts her past, the movie becomes like nothing you've ever seen. I'd call it a knockout.

An emotional powerhouse.

Working from a tight script by Ben Ripley, Jones creates scary, hairy, high-octane tension. Disbelief? Suspended, until the logic lapses kick in later. It's a small price to pay for a ride that starts at wild and accelerates from there.

Here's a better than average spook-house movie, mostly because Insidious decides it can haunt an audience without spraying it with blood.

The performances are uniformly terrific, finding the specific details that create a universal truth.

Looks aren't everything. Case in point: Sucker Punch, a dazzling visual design that goes tone-deaf every time it opens its dumb mouth or makes claims to profundity.

Rogen is a nonstop hoot, but it's the byplay between Frost and Pegg that roots the laughs in characters we care about. That's right: characters. No anal probes.

This is rock-solid entertainment. McConaughey, a cunning mesmerizer in the courtroom, steers this Lincoln into what could be a hell-raising franchise. More, please. Soon.

It's a wet dream for anyone who's ever dreamed of getting an edge on the information highway. The worst side effect is that you won't believe a word of the damn thing in the morning. Fair exchange.

This movie wins you over, head and heart, without cheating. It's just about perfect.

Fukunaga, son of a Japanese father and a Swedish mother, is a filmmaker to watch. He has reanimated a classic for a new generation, letting Jane Eyre resonate with terror and tenderness.

Even wild man Gary Oldman, as a priest ready to eighty-six the wolfman with silver nail polish, can't liven up this humorless hogwash. And it's just sad to see the legendary Julie Christie stuck playing the grandmother.

One raucous night, one raunchy party, "American Graffiti filtered through "Dazed and Confused" and the Shermer High films of John Hughes.

Rango is like nothing you've ever seen.

What Dick rendered potent, Nolfi renders preposterous.

As Joe blurs the line between reality and the supernatural, his haunting and hypnotic film exerts a hold you don't want to break. It's a beauty.

It's a lame trailer, but the movie itself is much, much worse.

Patrick Lussier is listed as The Director, though I saw no evidence of anyone in control.

ignore the pileup of implausibilities and Unknown becomes a diabolically entertaining con game. Does it jerk you around? Yes. Suck it up. The ride's worth it.

Cedar Rapids had me smiling at hello.

It's the perfect Valentine's date night movie, but only with someone you hate.

What we do see is mom, dad, Braun, Usher, vocal coach Mama Jan Smith and the burgeoning Team Bieber claiming they only want the best for the boy as he goes through a punishing 84-date concert tour. Group hug.

The movie ultimately reveals itself as a pretender with no balls. Creatively, it's all wet.

Sucks bad, real bad.

Araki constructs the hot-blooded Kaboom as a high-wire act without a safety net. Go with it.

It's hard to deny that The Rite is guilty of sins against its audience.

The result is just good enough to pass as an action flick you watch with the forgiving gaze that comes from too many beers and too little sleep.

The director, 66, brings his passion for precision to every frame of the film, refusing to hype or Hollywoodize the detailed richness of the story.

What's in this cliché grab bag for moviegoers? Well, Portman and Kutcher are a cute mismatch. She's short to his tall, sassy to his sweet, etc. I dried up here. So does the movie.

Rosamund Pike is perfection as Barney's true love, and Dustin Hoffman makes magic as Barney's randy dad. It's acting heaven.

Miles below the Woodman's class. It's possible that a more astringent script could have provided fuel for the actors and A-list director Ron Howard.

The Green Hornet doesn't suck. But don't expect it to hang together either, what with the clashing tones and melting logic.

At one point, Black puts out a fire by pissing on it. It's my job as a critic to piss on this dumb excuse for a movie. Consider it done.

This lame-ass chick-flick sampling of "Crazy Heart" is more like country Kryptonite.

The real plague is the movie, a sci-fi hodgepodge of bad history and worse special effects.

Shot hand-held with a poet's eye by Rodrigo Prieto, the film is relentless but as riveting as the world a remarkable actor lets us see through Uxbal's eyes. Bravo, Bardem.

Just watch the magnificent Manville, in a raw and riveting award-class performance that exposes a grieving heart under siege. Her last scene is quietly devastating. So is this intimate miracle of a movie.

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams give two of the most explosive and emotionally naked performances you will see anywhere. Just know you're in for a workout.

Upchuckingly unfunny.

Wells is a wonder with actors - Cooper and Jones earn top honors - and a filmmaker with an instinct for the emotions that bleed between the lines. This haunting movie hits you hard and right where you live.

As in "Lost in Translation," Coppola keeps an eye out for the broken places. That's when Somewhere is really something.

What makes True Grit a new classic for the Coens is the way the brothers absorb the unfairly unsung Portis into their DNA, like they did with Cormac McCarthy in "No Country for Old Men." True Grit is packed with action and laughs, plus a touching coda with an older Mattie, but it's the dialogue that really sings. Great filmmaking. Great acting. Great movie. Saddle up.

Spacey holds center. He's a bonfire.

Nicole Kidman is just astonishing in Rabbit Hole - subtle, fierce, brutally funny, tender when you least expect it, and battered by the feelings that hit her when she forgets to duck.

Bridges has a fine time playing with himself, so to speak. Add Garrett Hedlund as Flynn's son Sam, the rebel who zaps himself into the server to find his lost dad, and director Joseph Kosinski has a recipe for adventure that should delight gamers. Non-techies are on their own.

Director Tom McGrath keeps the action spinning and trips lightly over the bummer spectacle of watching a bad boy go good.

Recipe for nutso fun: Mix Zach Galifianakis with Robert Downey Jr. Apply the same mold John Hughes used for "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." Have Todd Phillips stir with wack-ass abandon. Don't worry about missing ingredients, like plot. Serve to an audience ready to lap it up.

a bang-up ride that means to wring you out. Mission accomplished.

Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal are hotties with talent. And they maneuver through the daunting maze of shifting tones and intersecting plots of Love and Other Drugs like the pros they are.

It's the work of a filmmaker with a stunning future.

Two men alone create an epic landscape of feeling in one of the very best movies of the year.

In a year of craptaculars, The Tourist deserves burial at the bottom of the 2010 dung heap. It offers talented people trapped in creative inertia. A microscope and a search party could not discover any trace of chemistry between Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.

I found myself wishing that Taymor would turn off the sound and fury and let The Tempest speak for itself. My wish wasn't granted.

The Fighter, its heart full to bursting, is an emotional powerhouse that comes close to spilling over.

Disney's spirited re-telling of Rapunzel in 3D animation turns out to be a dazzler.

It could have been the 21st-century Showgirls. I wouldn't have missed that for the world. Instead, Burlesque, starring Cher and Christina Aguilera playing drag queen versions of themselves with all the vitality of Madame Tussauds wax dolls, is a bust that lacks the pizzaz and bugfuck nuttiness of Paul Verhoeven's 1995 trash epic.

Hamilton manifests her vision of what politics can do to individual thinking with subtlety and sophistication. Remember her name. She's a genuine find.

The result is a potent and provocative movie that will keep you up nights.

It's one crazy love story, but Carrey and McGregor make it work by making us buy the romance as the real thing. There's something about these Marys that pulls you in.

Portman's portrait of an artist under siege is unmissable and unforgettable. So is the movie. You won't know what hit you.

Sally Hawkins is just plain irresistible in this funny, touching and vital salute to women in the work force.

It's damn hard to enjoy a thriller when you don't, won't, can't believe a word of it.

A tart, terrific comedy that gives Harrison Ford his best and funniest role in years.

Like the A.R. Rahman score that drives the movie, the triumphant 127 Hours pays fitting tribute to Aron by being thrillingly alive.

Spends too much time covering ground well known from the headlines. But the scenes of the couple at home with their children and friends are uniquely fascinating, if not, in Wilson's words, "very 007-ish."

The actors and admirably sensitive director Jake Scott (son of Ridley) can't compensate for Ken Hixon's long slog of a script.

Hornet's Nest is talky but indisputably terrific, and it ends in a dazzling display of courtroom fireworks. Rapace is hot stuff in any language. Oscar, take heed.

If you're looking for wicked fun this Halloween, Paranormal Activity 2 is the best goosebump game in town.

Sam Rockwell has yet to find a movie as good as he is (Moon comes closest). He's still looking.

Hereafter, set to a resonant Eastwood score, truly is haunting.

Hunt's flat delivery is mercilessly cruel to Wilde's delicious epigrams. That sound you hear is Oscar spinning madly in his grave.

Winkler's script creaks with melodrama, especially in the scenes with Merrill and his ex-wife, Ruth (Annette Bening), though Bening gives the role spine. Director Winkler fails to modulate the performances.

The problem for Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, who also co-directed Beauty and the Beast, is turning a tale of violent love and death into a family film with a happy ending.

The acid comedy of Grant's performance carries the film. It helps also that newcomer Hoult is that rare child actor who mercifully underplays the pathos of his role.

Miller's wake-up call is meant to be ours. Too little and too late? Maybe. But even in this Bourne Zone, Damon and Greengrass haven't shirked their duty to enlighten and entertain.

Turns into a bogus drivel courtesy of a sitcom monster.

Eddie Murphy is funny again. Sadly, he lacks the guts to follow through on the cathartic self-satire that gives the film its distinction.

It's a blast.

The film belongs to Jolie. She won an Oscar for 1999's "Girl, Interrupted," but this is by far her best performance.

No one interested in the power and magic of movies should miss it.

It's the work of a major talent. Apatow scores by crafting the film equivalent of a stand-up routine that encompasses the joy, pain, anger, loneliness and aching doubt that go into making an audience laugh.

It's the classic American tale of the family man triumphant, and Howard makes sure that it hits you right in the heart.

Madden directed Paltrow in the play on the London stage, but he does his "Shakespeare in Love" goddess no favors by filling the screen with big close-ups that betray the theatrical origins of the piece and drain the movie of life and urgency. Proof hasn't been filmed at all -- it's been embalmed.

It's warped and wonderfully effervescent. Ditto the songs by Danny Elfman, who sings the role of Bonejangles, the frontman for a skeleton jazz band at a swinging underworld club. Best of all is the love story.

Fierce, funny and finally devastating, Tanovic's superb film offers a timely look at the roots of civil war and acts of terrorism on both sides that can be exploited by political and media hypocrites alike.

A sinfully scrumptious bonbon.

Ferrell makes the damn thing work. Even though he can't get naked or use naughty words, there's a devil of comedy in Ferrell, and he lets it out to play. Director Jon Favreau has the good sense to just stand out of his way.

The fierce and funny film version has been directed by Texan Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise) with rare grace and compassion.

Steve Carell, best known as a team player on "The Daily Show," "The Office" and such movies as "Anchorman," earns top-banana status as Andy. He is flat-out hilarious.

A cheerless exercise.

Just for starters, no movie about the Dutch Resistance during World War II has any right to be this wildly entertaining, not to mention this provocative and potently erotic.

The haunting, heart-piercing Elah isn't perfect. It's something better: essential.

It's all a blur, except for the music. That's workin'.

Lee offers no reassurance, no uplift, no call for all races to join hands and spout liberal platitudes. What he does offer is a devastating portrait of black America pushed to the limit, with the outcome still to be written. There’s only one way to do the wrong thing about Do the Right Thing: that would be to ignore it.

Jamie Foxx gets so far inside the man and his music that he and Ray Charles seem to breathe as one.

What links the two films in fun and ferocity is the big game, a ripsnorter that is irresistibly entertaining.

Screenwriter Robert Towne has certainly not challenged his gifts -- the script is loaded with stock cars and stock characters -- but he does deliver what's necessary: a workable setup for exciting NASCAR racing footage shot on sixteen Winston Cup tracks from Daytona to Watkins Glen.

For those who don't believe that truth trumps fiction for whacked-out depravity, mark this shockingly fierce and funny spellbinder as Exhibit A.

Susan Minot’s resplendent novel of a dying woman…stumbles on its way to the screen.

When a chick flick goes wrong -- and this one hits a dead end in hell -- it's a wipeout.

Blending humor and heartbreak in a performance that makes a small movie a richly satisfying one, Caine truly is magic.

Shrek 2 may be computer-generated, but its innate heart and glorious sense of mischief make it one of the best and most humane movies of the summer.

This seriously funny movie, artfully photographed by the great Roger Deakins, is spiritual in nature, barbed in tone, and, oh, yeah, it stings like hell.

Dalton has training in classical theater; he has pedigree, looks, class. But as Bond he is – face it – dull as dirt. Too much spoofing is bad (see Moore), none is deadly (see Dalton).

Writer-director Roman Coppola is trying to capture a time he's too young to remember, when the French New Wave reinvigorated film art.

Killer-funny documentary.

Irresistibly silly.

Coppola gives Suicides a haunted quality that is undeniably affecting, a feeling intensified by a wonderfully funny and touching Dunst.

It's a feast of smart, sexy, glorious talk. The Oscar for best foreign film belongs right here.

Brimming with humor and heartbreak, Slumdog Millionaire meets at the border of art and commerce and lets one flow into the other as if that were the natural order of things.

Rifkin has conjured up a new low in cinematic ineptitude.

Only Vince Vaughn registers hilariously as John's boss.

Green has created a work of startling originality that will haunt you for a good, long time.

Director Richard Eyre has struck gold. Twice. Dench and Winslet are a riveting matchup.

Overheated, underdone farce. Race for the exit.

I laughed, then I wished it was funnier, then I just wished it would end.

Credible? Not really. But Cage and Rockwell play off each other with devilish finesse. And Lohman (White Oleander) is on fire -- she's a comer.

Tom Cruise starring in the fact-based story of a plot to kill Hitler by Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg sounds like Oscar bait. It isn't. And the sooner you accept it, the more fun you'll have at this satisfying B movie.

Never comes as close as spitting distance to a laugh.

Tepid.

Primed to keep your pulse racing so your brain will stop thinking, "WTF!" Go with the illogic or you'll miss the fun.

Small jokes are buried under elaborate setups. Sight gags are repeated to the point of exhaustion — a woman’s shoe steps in gum, then toilet paper, then . . . you get the point. Most painful of all, serious actors strain to be funny.

Immensely entertaining and provocative.

A top cast, guided by actress Bonnie Hunt in her directing debut, mixes comedy and corn with savvy.

A dreary film that's damn near torture to sit through.

Just when you're ready to puke, the old Bill Conti theme ("Gonna Fly Now") kicks in -- are you feeling it? -- Stallone steps in the ring and every day is Christmas. All together now: Rock-ee! Rock-ee!

Environmentalists are up in arms. "Where did the shit go?" they want to know. The answer is painfully obvious: into the screenplay.

It's stale, like something you wrap in yesterday's newspaper.

Say the word, girl (Lopez), the next time you're offered one of these barrel scrapers: Enough!

There's not enough here to sustain a half-hour sitcom, but Reese Witherspoon shoulders the burden with star shine to spare.

You may have doubts about which side to choose, but there's no doubt about this mind-bender. It'll pin you to your seat.

Tone-deaf but thunderously exciting.

Kudrow's Michele is a deadpan delight as she joins fellow misfit Romy (a deliciously funny Mira Sorvino).

The film is a sham, with good actors going for the paycheck and using beards and heavy makeup to hide their shame.

Smash acting debut of Combs, who brings ease and charm to a crime lord.

There's no code to decipher. Da Vinci is a dud -- a dreary, droning, dull-witted adaptation of Dan Brown's religioso detective story.

McNaughton has made a film of clutching terror that's meant to heighten our awareness instead of dulling it. At the end, Henry is still out there among us. And he's no B-movie monster in a hockey mask. He could be the guy next door. This film gives off a dark chill that follows you all the way home.

Plot analysis is useless, since the film's fate rests with MTV comic Shore in his feature debut.

A shock ending may be the best hope for this film, a convoluted mystery that thinks it's way smarter than it is.

You'll laugh till it hurts at Cold Souls.

Here’s a powerhouse of a documentary that makes you feel mad as hell and unwilling to take it anymore.

When E.T. debuts on DVD, you can choose between the new version, which better matches E.T.'s words to his lips, and the sweetly clunky, digitally deprived version redolent of penis breath. I don't need to phone home to know which one I'm buying. [2002 re-release]

But this is Washington's show, his Scarface, if you will, and his smiling, seductive monster is a thrilling creation that gives Training Day all the bite it needs.

Allen, who stays behind the camera, brings too little wit and too much contrivance to material that quickly dissolves into warmed-over Dostoevski.

In not knowing who it needs to please, I Want to Believe pleases no one.

By the fourth clone, played as a babbling simpleton, Keaton has exhausted the gimmick and the audience. I’d trade a dozen Dougs for one Beetlejuice.

The film is technically raw, but the sight of Van Peebles playing his father at a defining moment in movie history exerts a potent fascination.

If you're like me, diluted Smith is still better than no Smith at all.

Self-importance sinks this one like a stone.

Chockablock with things we're not supposed to notice: that Roberts is wasted; that she and Cusack have no characters to play, so it's virtually impossible to understand why she loves him or vice versa; that the script provides comedy without bite and romance without resonance.

Levinson wants nothing less than to capture the hope and despair of the American dream through the saga of one family — his family. It’s a grand ambition. But the film, though exquisitely crafted, lacks the political, spiritual and sociological depth to realize it. What Avalon does offer are rich period details, abundant scenes of humor and heartbreak and outstanding performances.

Like the best filmmakers at Sundance 2001, Nolan leaps into the wild blue and dares us to leap with him. Go for it.

It's the Bay touch you feel in the way actors register as body count, characters go undeveloped, and sensation trumps feeling. A nightmare, indeed.

An erotic thriller with flaws.

Guy flicks can be just as galling as the chick variety. Here's Exhibit A in how to lose an audience in ten minutes.

Director Andrew Currie is better at laughs than scares, but he can’t sustain either as Fido runs out of steam in the final stretch. Till then, it’s fiendish fun.

Araki gives his hypnotic film a raw intensity heightened by a surreal landscape and a jagged score from the likes of Braindead Sound Machine, KMFDM and Coil.

A dynamite film that ranks with the year's best.

You leave WALL-E with a feeling of the rarest kind: that you've just enjoyed a close encounter with an enduring classic.

Appaloosa is gripping entertainment that keeps springing surprises.

Cyrus, the summer's best, most original and crazily inventive comedy, is potently funny and painfully real.

It's a one-joke premise that ultimately wears thin, but Krueger works some playful variations on a theme.

Part of the miracle of Robert Altman's triumphantly fierce, funny, moving and innovative Short Cuts is that you can't get this movie out of your head. You keep playing it back to savor its formula-smashing audacity, its peerless performances and its cleareyed view of blasted lives.

Murphy looks comatose delivering the played-out poopy jokes.

This is a Ferrell you've never seen before, nailing a role that calls for breakneck humor in the final race against the clock and touching gravity in the love scenes with Gyllenhaal.

When the script, by Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz and John Logan, doesn't sabotage the images, and the great cinematographer John Toll turns action into poetry, The Last Samurai emerges as a haunting silent movie.

At its best, De-Lovely evokes a time, a place and a sound with stylish wit and sophistication.

A joy to behold.

The best hip-hop film of all, taking on obvious targets (misogynist lyrics) and sacred cows (political rap) alike.

This unnervingly funny and quietly devastating film -- director Todd Field's first since his smash 2001 debut with "In the Bedroom" -- pulls you in like a magnetic-force field.

Malkovich weaves something delicate and devastating.

Aussie singer Natalie Imbruglia gets to play the babe, nothing more, but she does that brightly. The rest of the movie is a dim bulb.

If you're gay and/or eight years old, HSM3 is the movie event of the year.

Nil By Mouth is a shockingly intimate portrait of entrapment that may leave you wincing. It’s Oldman’s Raging Bull.

A thunderous spectacle.

Inspired funny business that allows Martin to hilariously torpedo Hollywood's corrupt heart.

The film, which is literary to a fault, includes an earthquake, but if the earth moves at all, thank Hayek, who gives the tale a smoldering life that finally lifts it from the page.

Down in the Valley is a wild thing that sticks with you long after it's over. You know, a real movie.

They turn what could have been an acting stunt into an intimate and compelling study of bruised emotions.

Ang Lee, a world-class director working at the top of his elegant form, has done something thrilling. For all the leaping action, it's the film's spirit that soars.

Here's a true S&M date movie. Only sadistic men and masochistic women could love it.

Whatever Works feels like something out of time and, worse, out of step. Hell, Allen wrote the script back in the 1970s for Zero Mostel.

Hungarian director Istvan Szabo (Sunshine) overplays his hand and traps Bening in a role that's all emoting, no emotion.

It's a mesmerizing spectacle.

Off the shelf after two years to capitalize on the popularity of Vin Diesel, Seth Green and Barry Pepper. It should have stayed there.

Abounds in pleasures.

Witherspoon -- though miles from the keen satire of "Election" -- stays one sharp cookie even as her film crumbles.

It's the spirit that Biggie Smalls, born Christopher Wallace, put into inventing himself and his music that ignites Notorious, a biopic that sees the flaws in the man but can't help accentuating the positive.

Even when the drama gets overcooked, Lymelife sends off sparks.

The infuriating cop–out ending reduces the premise to mush. I wanted to scream. Here goes: Arghh!

Glorious entertainment.

Director Fernando Meirelles and screenwriter Jeffrey Caine put a human face on John le Carre's novel of sex, lies and dirty politics in modern Africa. Prepare for a thrilling ride.

Too crude for the kids and not crude enough for connoisseurs of the "Something About Mary" school of hair jism and balls caught in zippers, Osmosis Jones seems doomed to fall between the cracks.

Robbins’s debut as a director is exceptionally accomplished. He shrewdly balances his sense of purpose with a flair for mischief.

It will hook you good and keep you riveted.

The Hangover ain't art, but Phillips has shaped the hardcore hilarity into the summer party movie of all our twisted dreams.

How can a film look so radiant and be so hollow?

That the performances are uniformly outstanding is a tribute to Rob Reiner, who directs with masterly assurance, fusing suspense and character to create a movie that literally vibrates with energy.

It's a modern horror story that gets you where you live.

Glorious, a colossus of rousing action and ferocious fun.

So why oh why is The Expendables such a limp-dick bust? Because Stallone forgets to include non-spazzy direction, a coherent plot, dialogue that actors can speak without cringing, stunts that don't fizzle, blood that isn't digital and an animating spirit that might convince us to give a damn.

Wait till you get a load of this babe from hell in scenes that are sure to put the gorgeously lurid Romeo Is Bleeding on the Moral Majority’s shit list. The rest of us – those who believe it’s children and not adults who need protection from movie mayhem – will be too busy relishing the riveting fireworks display from Olin and Oldman in this scorcher of a thriller. Director Peter Medak (The Krays, The Ruling Class) keeps the action stylish, sexy and fiendishly funny. The film rarely makes a lick of sense, but it’s compulsively watchable.

Phantom, still running on Broadway after sixteen years, is a rapturous spectacle. And the movie, directed full throttle by Joel Schumacher, goes the show one better.

Sonnenfeld deftly orchestrates the intricate two-part harmony, and Smith and Jones -- a powerhouse comic pair -- make it all look easy.

The movie is marred by overkill, especially in the brutal and bloated allegorical ending, which feels lifted, clumsily, from The Godfather. State of Grace is most powerful and gripping when it stays true to the emotions of its characters.