Stephen Hunter

It seems almost disrespectful to weave in a provocative re-creation of the killings -- somehow a massacre of unarmed innocents that shocked the world should be more than just fodder for ginning up the tension at the end of a commercial movie.

The movie, though quite funny in parts, turns organically dark, and it refuses to paint a picture of a cotton-candy world. It prefers the real one.

You have to see this to believe it.

Stephen Frears's stunning Liam, -- a vivid, intense evocation of another British time and place.

Brilliantly played by Denzel Washington

It orders you to love it. It demands love, which is the best way not to get it.

The movie's surrender to banality is all the more dispiriting because it gets off to such a good start.

With its sophisticated psychology, its brilliant story structure and its riveting performances, The Duchess of Langeais feels very new, even if everything about it is old.

So insidey it's almost parochial.

Two hours and six minutes has never seemed so much like two and six-tenths seconds. It's pure pulp metafiction.

The acting is superb, particularly from the three principals.

It's the latest and one of the best entries in a genre whose highest philosophical expression is the whiplash realization that the universe doesn't play fair.

I had some trouble with the plot, but I'm not the only one -- so did the screenwriter.

An infectious (in a good way) documentary.

An exuberance, a celebration, a hoot, a kick and a half.

In its way, the film is a piercing indictment, though it makes its point without much screaming, hectoring or preening. It's quietly terrific.

While the music slops and churns and the ground-level bathos rises, the aerial stuff is occasionally stirring.

What we deserved was "The Island of Jeanne Moreau." That I'd pay to see.

It's funny, it's heartbreaking, it's scary, it's exhilarating. It's got love stuff and lots of laughs and cool gunfights. It's really long and it feels like it's over in 15 minutes. It does something so few movies do these days: It satisfies.

A brisk, entertaining and even moving exploration of the sometimes frayed intersection where Christianity meets homosexuality.

It's sad, funny, shocking and completely unlike any movie in a dozen years.

This is another unhelpful screed, uncontaminated by sense or perspective, that preaches loudly to the choir.

The acting in this ensemble is of such a high order that the movie simply takes you in and makes you feel these lives as real.

The Pixar people have an extreme talent for conjuring imagery that is both soaring in its majesty but also resonant -- it's a stylization but acute enough to carry emotional meaning.

It is a rabble-rousing cheerfest, based on a true story.

The director Vaughn has a flair not merely for action and ambiance but also for character.

This one has crossover hit written all over it.

It seems to celebrate him more for his attitude, his fashionably leftist politics, his fame and his friendships than for any meaningful accomplishment.