Shawn Levy

Stirring and haunting.

Watching The Queen of Versailles you don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Incendies was likely a crackling thing to read, but it's not quite so vivid as a finished film.

See Casino Royale for a Bond you've never seen before, and then imagine him in a film two-thirds the size. Here's hoping the writers of the next Bond movie employ the same personal trainer that Craig did to keep the script tight and lean.

Ultimately, a heart in the film to go with Rebney's considerable bile.

The snaky cinematography pulls you through even when the writing doesn't, and the best performances keep you hoping that you'll feel the next one or the one after that just as powerfully.

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.

A fine, straightforward and engaging film that restores the salt, fire and humor that Hathaway and company drained from their source, Charles Portis' wonderful 1968 novel.

Entertaining and informative.

It breaks so sharply from the practice of contemporary horror film that it requires us to return to the most basic understanding of what it is to be frightened by a movie.

The result is a film that outrages and fills the viewer with poetry that's at once epic and intimate, scandalizing and life-affirming -- a real work of art.

It's easy to imagine that some folks will find the film rapturous, but it's equally clear that there are others whom it will drive crazy.

The most compelling question dangling at its end is, "Didn't Steven Spielberg used to know how to bring a movie to an end?"

It's amusing enough and breezy enough not to disappoint. But it never dazzles or challenges or truly delights. And that leaves me fairly certain that whatever Bart Simpson would say about it probably couldn't be printed in a family newspaper.

A charming little film built of bits of music, romance, cultural conflict and the simple human need to connect.

Coogan makes tremendous sport of himself, taking on a role as an adulterous, vain, anxiety-riddled, alcoholic and truly comic creep. Brydon is exquisitely droll as the straight man to this ugly comedian act.

An unusual and absorbing, if somewhat preachy film.

When it all comes to a head, what seems ordinary blossoms into something deeply complex and emotional.

For its sheer visual gusto alone, Coraline is a wonder.

A painful, funny and fresh comedy.

While Stallone likely hopes to go out with a bang, this small, manipulative movie doesn't have any real punch to it.

The result is a totally absorbing and entertaining film, one of the best historical dramas from Hollywood in many years.

Not a masterpiece, but still fabulous.

Some aspects of Siddhartha seem terribly dated: the '60s-ish nude sequences, the wispy music, the big-eyed earnest acting. But it is a lushly beautiful film. Shooting largely in natural light, Nykvist creates a poetry more beautiful than Hesse's prose and as profound as the author's message.

A murky, turgid work that is no doubt exactly the film Malkovich wished to make but is so indirect and affected as to border on incoherent.

In some ways, Senna is as pure and clean as the man's sport: as actor/racer Paul Newman liked to say, the winners of auto races are determined, unlike movies, by objective criteria. And although it's a subjective judgment, it's hard to see how anyone wouldn't be absorbed by this fascinating film about a formidable driver and man.

It's a good movie, mind you, with great bits in it, but it still falls short of rapture.

The film that results from Jacquet's application is gorgeous and even inspiring, a tale of loyalty hard-tested and hard-earned, a sumptuous travelogue, and a reminder that some of the critters with whom we share the planet are, in ways, as complex in their feelings as any human being.