Shawn Levy

In many ways, a smashing success. It's built not only on a casually clever script but on two expertly balanced performances.

It does a splendid job not only of introducing newcomers to a vital artist they might have missed, but of reminding rabid fans of Earle's stripe why they were infected to begin with.

Moon doesn't arrive with a train of ballyhoo, but its quiet charms easily drowns out the clatter of bigger, dumber pictures.

Johansson, fittingly, is the focus. In her face, as in the faces of Vermeer's handful of captivating subjects, the viewer intuits whole stories and worlds.

The film is a pleasure that doesn't rank with Allen's best but satisfies far more than most American comedies.

Until it goes off the rails in its final 10 or 15 minutes, Wendigo, Larry Fessenden's spooky new thriller, is a refreshingly smart and newfangled variation on several themes derived from far less sophisticated and knowing horror films.

The result is a true conundrum: You can't say for sure if a scam is in play or if a genuine genius is being smeared. And the brilliance of the film is that it doesn't let you feel secure in choosing either side.

You can learn about the grand shifts of history from Persepolis, but you learn about a handful of lives as well.

It's a goofball of a movie and a throwaway, but it's also completely free of self-import and the slightest hint of sentiment -- a perfect light entertainment that's guaranteed to launch itself as a franchise.

You come away with an appreciation of the abstraction, scale and daring of Ai's art and, even more, a sense of the living man in his courage, humor and restlessness. It's an invigorating experience.

Gets its hooks into you in ways that are hard to explain or to ignore.

If you might wish the film got deeper under the skin of the characters, you also feel grateful for the fact that you'll never get closer to them than watching it.

Moves with terrific energy, alternating riveting action sequences with intimate material in a manner that's pure Woo.

Stirring and haunting.

A kick to the heart, and Swank is a marvel. Any problems in the storytelling are more than balanced by her wholly committed work.

Icy and elegant, complex and gripping.

It's a bit insidery, yes, but isn't it a treat to be brought inside a hidden world by a movie?

The acting is superb across the board, and the film moves dreamily yet with razor-sharp precision, building to a sequence of deeply felt climaxes.

Having heard tell of its wonders for decades, I found the actual movie less transporting than I'd been led to expect. It's clearly a brilliant debut.

Sometimes a movie can defy rational logic, yet still make sense emotionally in a way that pulls you through. Bee Season is one.

Frighteningly, grippingly real.

It's no insult to the rest to say that this is one of those films that sells itself on the strength of a single performance.

One of those gratifyingly nostalgic works of art that accept the present day but remind us, as well, that the past wasn't necessarily worse.

Funny and appalling, doting and possessive, petty and selfless, raunchy and righteous, Jeannie is the pivot of the charming, garish, somewhat overwritten Australian comedy Introducing the Dwights.

Wonderful performances and the director's continual inventiveness make Junebug a particularly promising first feature.

Effortless fun: It plays like a giddy horror movie with its laughs wrapped in couture gowns.

There's much to enjoy in the lively, fun and fresh documentary Comic-con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope, but chief among them may be that its director, Morgan Spurlock, is nowhere to be seen.

Balanced precariously between a horror film and a war movie, but it's so sly and assured that you can't dismiss the allegorical, even satirical undertones that Cortés teases out of Sparling's conceit.