Shawn Levy

A spell-binding, engaging and often breathtaking work in which exquisite sets, costumes, photography and music combine with top-notch acting and out-of-this-world fighting scenes.

Lebanon isn't as resonant as the haunting mix of autobiography and animation in "Waltz with Bashir," which dealt with the same war. Still, the film's fresh craft promises more from a director who turns the tiniest possible of settings into a sobering metaphor for the madness of a larger world.

The few chuckles the film affords come early, and too often the script desperately tries to repeat them. By the end, it's not funny or happy -- just over. And you're glad for it, the one true emotion you feel in the whole two hours.

Tasteful, thoughtful fare that entertains without ever speaking down to the audience.

It has a dickens of a time telling a story.

It's smashing fun, nonetheless, made with razor wit and continual invention and far, far fresher than not only Hollywood buddy-cop movies but also Hollywood's own spoofs of them.

The combination of ideas and wit, lively characterizations, believable human dilemmas and a climax that both melts and braces you makes for a fine blend. A movie about ideas may sound like a drag, but this one packages them in well-earned emotions.

What the picture doesn't do is make sense of the world it tries to depict, or even, truly, depict it. Biggie -- and, for that matter, Woolard -- deserved better.

Noisy, garish, cluttered, simplistic and often dark in content, it nevertheless sings and preens and jokes and tugs at you with such persistent verve that, exhausted, you give in.

It's a handsome film with a palpable core of piety, but it isn't as successful in depicting secular events as spiritual ones.

A feature film has to be more than just an interesting theme; it needs something that constitutes drama -- conflict, journey, adventure, what have you. The Notorious Bettie Page is a perfect example of a film that has a subject but no story.

A lot of what happens is gross, puerile and gratuitous, granted, but Helms and Galifianakis are truly funny in offbeat fashion, and the script allows Phillips room for some brilliant slapstick. You will not be ennobled. But you will be entertained.

For all its bells and whistles, only when it lingers on Jones' dry wit and pained, rheumy eyes does this film about aliens ever seem alive, let alone human.

You need to accept the fact that practically everyone in the picture, particularly the leading lady, is a boneheaded nitwit.

It's no wonder that Polanski, himself an artist who has survived a series of nightmares, should tell it so naturally and powerfully.

Is it a great movie? Maybe not. But it is a great step forward in moviemaking. Shrug it off if that makes you feel better, but starting today you live in a post-Avatar movie world.

Clever and charming.

It's not great moviemaking -- it isn't as accomplished or funny as the best of the Farrelly brothers' films, say -- but it's got real appeal.

Such a treat for the eyes, ears and funny bone that you feel cheated that it clocks in at less than an hour-and-a-quarter.

It adds up to a chatty film of genuine visual interest and occasionally sharp acting but no visceral appeal or satisfaction. It's a movie that plays like a book -- that is, watching it is more like reading than a thriller should ever be.

If you're one of those fussy filmgoers who demands that a movie engage somewhat higher body parts -- the heart, say, and the brain -- you'll find only intermittent comfort and joy in this high-concept, low-wattage film.

The young guns on board are Wong Kar Wai and Steven Soderbergh, and it's sad to report that they massively outshine the nonagenarian Antonioni.

It's a crowd-pleasing, artful and convincing movie that just misses being great but nevertheless gratifies.

Dazzling to look at but dreadful to listen to, the film is a tug-of-war of coolness and dreck.

The storytelling -- the script is co-written by Verhoeven's old collaborator Gerard Soeteman -- is messy, and the result never feels real or human or vital.

The most striking thing about it is what it's not...a richly atmospheric film that races surefootedly through complexities of data and emotion like a spy movie and not at all like a sentimental sob story.

Like many things about Brick Lane, this story is dealt with in too cursory and pat a fashion. The film's heart can't be faulted, but its head is working in a regrettably low gear.

Despite a cast of solid actors and a director with one of the most exquisite visual sensibilities in the business, the film is too often flat when we want it to dazzle us.