Ruthe Stein

It grabs you from a symbolic opening scene of gang members rolling the dice -- the odds, it soon becomes clear, are stacked against them getting lucky -- and never lets go.

Like a soap opera, but most of what glitters is gold.

The title is all that's boring about director Michel Gondry's latest mind bender, as trippy as LSD.

By focusing on one family's dilemma, the movie brings home the messy Middle Eastern situation in a way easier to relate to than the headlines and opinion pieces.

The ending is predictable to anybody who's followed the trajectory of outsourcing. Outsourced humanizes those affected by it - even if the story sounds familiar.

I'm not denying that a 40-year- old woman might be self-conscious about going around with someone this young. But the subject isn't interesting or provocative enough to sustain an entire movie.

There's a manic quality to the film that may wear you down. But at least you won't be bored.

A very human story.

A disturbing drama about the dehumanizing and humiliating effects of war.

The movie is one big in-joke. It's watchable, but eventually wears you down with its over-the-top cleverness.

The biggest puzzlement about "What'' is what it's doing in major movie theaters around the country when it so clearly belongs on one of those small cable channels given to peculiar programming.

For all its dazzling computer-generated sequences, "Museum'' wouldn't be nearly the delight it is without the talents of some of the best comedians in the business.

Fascinating and impressively balanced documentary.

Woody Allen's strongest and most mordantly funny movie in years, even if it is also his bleakest.

A potentially great movie winds up buried inside a just OK one.

Entertaining in a pulpy kind of way, like the fight films of the 1930s and '40s, and more accessible than most of Mamet's movies.

Adapted from a French play but never seems stage- bound.

As moving as some parts are, it's muddled by a script that tries to pack in too much. There's sufficient material for a couple of films and a sitcom.

Richard Jenkins gives the standout supporting performance, worthy of Oscar consideration, as Josey's father, a miner unable to conceal his anger at his daughter for having a child out of wedlock and, now, creating dissension at his workplace.

Mate swapping is so '70s. But Alan Rudolph, who wrote and directed Afterglow, avoids making it seem dated by presenting the menage a quatre as accidental.

A peculiar little film -- grim and disturbing yet perversely riveting.

I don't claim to have seen every entry from around the world, but it's hard to imagine five better than this deliciously offbeat comedy, as wildly inventive as anything Billy Wilder ever conceived.

There's an edge to this exemplary family movie, just as there is in the story.

A bit of fluff expertly made and a hoot to watch.

Revelatory as well as unsettling.

It's doubtful that audiences go to animated features to hear movie stars talk. They go because a film sounds like fun and something their kids and maybe they themselves might enjoy. Bolt is all that and more.

Overly long and not especially enlightening film.

The casting, at least, is magical. Plowright shows both her character's strength and her heartbreaking vulnerability, sometimes at once.