Rick Kisonak

Not since the breakthrough days of Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler and the Farrelly brothers have two hours of movie comedy simultaneously felt so wrong but oh so right.

I'm not sure Sam Mendes' latest is a masterpiece as so many critics are exclaiming but it is very probably the most artful and earnest drama ever adapted from a comic book.

Manages to be impressively unsettling given the flaws in its foundation.

Costner sets course for one of the most stirringly choreographed shootouts in movie history.

Here's the sliver of hope: In contrast to everything we've been told, the people who run Al Jazeera turn out to be decent and level headed.

Movies about writers are almost always romanticized affairs but Starting Out in the Evening is the rare exception. It is at once an elegy for the vanishing generation of Bellow, Cheever, Mailer and Updike and a dead on indictment of our culture’s current state.

This is a tale of friendship, corruption, betrayal and desperation masterfully told without an ounce of filmmaking flash and with an unflinching commitment to realism.

Burgundy and Carell's Brick Tamland, by himself, would be worth the price of admission.

The final act is all but guaranteed to astonish and satisfy. See this movie.

Serves up heaping helpings of everything fans loved about the first.

Fascinating and heartbreaking film.

Watching the American nightmare of Must Read After My Death play out, it's impossible not to be both horrified and powerfully moved. Impossible as well not to feel profound admiration for the artfulness with which Dews has pieced these archival cries for help into a singular creation anyone who appreciates first rate filmmaking absolutely must see.

It doesn't disappoint. It gets the job done thanks in large part to the breakout performance given by Galifianakis. It's no "Old School," but it will do nicely until that film's anticipated sequel rolls around in 2011.

Bleak, weirdly witty at times and unrelentingly suspenseful, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is the cinematic equivalent of a perfect storm.

Tykwer makes of all this murder and madness a concoction of improbable beauty and rare artistry. "Perfume" is not just the finest film of his career but easily one of the past year's most accomplished.

I find Soderbergh's Solaris an eminently more satisfying experience than Lem's. This is a film as elegantly directed as any by Kubrick, one which is superbly acted and brilliantly scored, as spellbinding a work of cinema as we're likely to see for some time.

Yolande Moreau's most impressive costars are the extraordinary compositions of Seraphine Louis.

The only downside to this delectable third course? The regrettable likelihood that Lecter fans will have to make do without dessert.

There is no shortage of remarkable moments.

The picture ranks with the brothers' best mid level output-not as sublime as "Fargo" or "Barton Fink" but infinitely more satisfying than "The Big Lebowski" or "Intolerable Cruelty".

The portrait of traditional Indian life Chadha provides manages to mine laughs from characters without resorting to making them laughable.

Gorgeously shot, cleverly directed, smartly scripted and convincingly performed, The Dreamers is itself something of a movie puzzle.

From the performances of its first rate cast to the infectious score and Audiard's deft direction, this is one of the most accomplished movies you'll see anytime soon-old, new or, as is the case here, combining the best of both.

At once an astonishing feat of advocacy filmmaking and a white knuckle eco-thriller; think Michael Moore meets Michael Mann.

The two actors (Hanks/Seymour Hoffman) have terrific chemistry and riff off one another like partners in a veteran comedy team.

Breathtakingly inventive story.

Sublimely directed, scored, shot and performed, the picture misses greatness by a nose as a result of shortcomings in its script.

The odyssey that follows reminded me of the one Bill Murray’s character took in "Broken Flowers" - and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

We aren't talking Oscar here. We're talking truly fine performances and an unexpectedly hep John Williams score. We are talking a story that rollicks with the most rollicking of them. Not great cinema; just a great time at the movies and certainly a film well worth catching if you can.

A fine cast, understated treatment and tantalizing premise make for a movie well worth seeing even if you don't come away believing.

An achievement of this magnitude is a stunning and extremely pleasant surprise.

You aren't likely to see a film with more warmth and good humor anytime soon or one that does more to give feel good filmmaking a good name.

The film is a wonder and a joy to watch on any number of levels.

Each and every one of the movie's 125 minutes is a moment of searing truth.

By and large, reviewers have conceded that the picture is exceptionally gripping and suspenseful while deriding its moral subtext as a crock. The only explanation possible for such fuming pettiness, in my opinion, is the fact that Michael Haneke isn’t one of us.

In other hands with another cast, You Kill Me might easily have proven just another modest production indulging in mob violence and postmodern irony. There certainly is no shortage of those. Dahl’s latest, however, is something more than a modest production. It’s a small wonder.

For my money, the movie should have given us more of Macy the magical loser and less of Macy the stud muffin.

Jenkins' film ranks as one of the past year's very best. Like "In Cold Blood," "The Onion Field" and "Dead Man Walking" before it, her picture provides a mesmerizing portrait of the human side of evil.

Over all, though, the picture fires on all pistons. The globetrotting's a good time-I can't think of another spy film that's featured as delightful an assortment of seamy international undersides.

Over all though, this is a first rate caper piece elevated by Caine’s effortlessly elegant portrayal. The movie is wall to wall with pompous, sexist, greedy backstabbers and it’s a hoot to watch Hobbs mop the floor with the lot of them.

The combination of pen, ink and geopolitical strife have yet to yield anything quite like it.

There isn't another American screen actor who could have given this performance, not one who so deftly could have navigated the razor's edge separating the wiseacre and the wise.

Her beauty, independence, and stock portfolio notwithstanding, Chelsea’s tale is a timely, tragic one told with typical Soderbergh finesse, a sly, sleek merger of sex, lies and hi def video.

Eastwood tells the story at a pace well under the Hollywood speed limit, tosses in details so beguiling they seem about to sprout into motion pictures of their own and bathes his subjects in shadows as lovely as those in any Rembrandt.

It may not be great but you're guaranteed to feel great walking out the theater door.

Rare is the motion picture which grapples with issues this provocative and profound. Rarer still is one which does so this well.

The amazing thing about Venus is that it's brutally honest about all this but at the same time funny as hell.

Simultaneously offers priceless insight into the nation's past and a worrisome take on the future.

As an affecting work of compassionate craftsmanship, The Letter delivers.

Not bad for a mainstream suspensefest. Gere's good, Lane, as I said, is amazing in places and Lyne does some of his most assured work in years.

No End In Sight is the most important film of the year thus far and, more significantly, the most comprehensive, clear-eyed account of the Iraq debacle and the arrogance behind it that we have.

New territory for the Vermont director, and he shows every sign of feeling right at home in it.

On its own terms, Departures is a thing of rare and remarkable beauty.

Proved that cheerless, existentially unflinching literature can provide the basis for exhilarating cinema.

The score is appropriately ethereal. From the Paris skyline to the Great Wall of China, the film's locales on every continent are rarely less than breathtaking. Calling the camerawork stunning, of course, is an understatement.

Exceptional performances and unexpected twists of plot keep the story from descending into overwrought melodrama.

The movie gives us lovingly shot landscapes, portraits of extraordinary friendships, a great score, dialogue that only occasionally slips into history lessons, a number of memorably etched minor characters, a splendid performance by its youngest star and two mysteries.