Ray Bennett

Brutal but believable, the film in some ways harks back to early Hollywood, when Jimmy Cagney or Richard Widmark played callow villains out of their depth in everyday life.

The Coens' typically superior filmmaking sustains the electrifying mood for most of the picture, but they are undone by being too faithful to the source novel by Cormac McCarthy.

Shot on beautifully utilized film but employing images vividly from the Internet and mobile phones, it's an examination of the power that false ideas may have on people's imagination and beliefs when they are repeated over and over.

Owen carries the film more in the tradition of a Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda than a Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford. He has to wear flip-flops for part of the time without losing his dignity, and he never reaches for a weapon or guns anyone down. Cuaron and Owen may have created the first believable 21st-century movie hero.

The film is in the tradition of fighting-the-system stories drawn from real life such as "Erin Brokovich," and its powerful emotional appeal should draw a substantial grownup audience.

Affectionate, funny and action-packed sci-fi spoof.

The film is about vanity and pride, and the caging of beauty. Its elaborate fabrication has an intoxicating quality that captures the imagination like all good horror stories.

Boyne's tale is starkly cautionary, and writer-director Herman handles a difficult topic with great sensitivity, drawing splendid performances from his young actors with David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga and the other grown-ups reliably efficient.

The brutality of the fights and Schizo's growing ability to outfox his enemies make for a taut and exciting little picture.

Good-humored, illuminating and without cant, Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone's documentary South of the Border is a rebuttal of what he views as the fulminations and lies of right-wing media at home and abroad regarding the socialist democracies of South America.

Only the film's slow pace softens its powerful message.

Some of the metaphors are a bit too literal but the director largely succeeds with his story and the surprises are convincing. Best of all the film has a terrific sense of humor and the young actresses exploit it delightfully.

The new picture allows hardly any flourishes of style and character in the 007 tradition, but moviegoers seeking an adrenaline rush will be well pleased.

It's a sympathetic portrait of a complex man driven by an anger that still bubbles beneath the surface.

Phoenix plays the romantic lead with great intelligence and enormous charm, making his character's conflict utterly believable, and Paltrow positively glows as the radiant shiksa who dazzles him.

Clever and fast-paced thriller.

The film gets seriously weird as it goes along, but without losing its sense of direction or taste for offbeat humor.

The film belongs to Jarvis, however, and she makes the most of it with expressive features that convey Mia's mixed-up emotions from raging temper to sweet vulnerability. She will go far.

The performers are all good with Baquero poised and beautiful as Ofelia and Verdu vital and spirited as the rebellious Mercedes. Lopez gives an extraordinary performance as the bestial captain, an irredeemable villain to rank with Ralph Fiennes' Nazi in "Schindler's List."

It's an energetic and vivacious film that will appeal to fans of punk rock worldwide and should find its place in the pantheon of great music-film biographies.

Powerfully moving but laced with incisive wit, Don't Tell has terrific performances with a wise tone and polished look.

The film is dark, gloomy and without music, but it is also observant and highly suspenseful, with Mungiu using his often static camera to balance banal cruelty with simple generosity.

The director, who also wrote the script, achieves a keen-eyed view of the Turkish expatriates in this film while sustaining his remarkable ability to make them universal.

Jaunty and entertaining.

Fierce and tragic tale of lost hope.

Presented as a straight documentary about an American pop singer who had one U.K. hit in the 1960s as a member of a boy band and has gone missing ever since, but it plays like the slyest of spoofs.

Despite top-flight acting from Michael Caine and Jude Law, it loses its grip in the third act and let's the air out of what might have been a memorably gripping film.

Murphy's comic brilliance is at the service of the story and he positively shines with a number of diverse and zany impersonations, most enjoyably a Jesse Jackson takeoff.