Steve Simels

Musically it's often breathtaking.

Visually dazzling, touching and funny.

Most of the music is as fine and fierce as you could want.

This is one of the most infectiously joyous celebrations of musicmaking ever committed to film. See it and be ennobled.

A very sweet, very funny coming-of-age story, featuring Kiss as the Great White Whale of adolescence.

A triumph of genre filmmaking.

A delightful surprise, a tightly written, savvy slapstick comedy with genuine heart.

Stone handles his huge ensemble cast extremely well.

An occasionally surreal meditation on coping with loss, and a love story with a dark side the size of Montana.

A genuinely heartbreaking, romantic film based on a true story; frankly, if it doesn't make you cry, we don't want to know you.

A moving, gorgeously filmed look at one of the Civil War's more obscure chapters, the quasi-official combat that divided friends along the Missouri-Kansas border.

One of the sharpest and emotionally resonant romantic comedies in what seems like years.

It's especially nice that all the songs on the soundtrack are heard in their entirety, even if the accompanying video footage is sometimes drawn from performances of different vintage.

Meanwhile Baldwin (bulked up a la DeNiro and playing totally against type), is a revelation, funny and touching.

As a director, La Salle manages to sustain a mood of looming menace almost throughout, and as an actor he gets the film's best joke: When his Satan fills out his hospital admission form, he gives his social security number as 666.

Not only one of the most spectacular cartoons ever made, but also a reasonably adult piece of sci-fi.

The cast is aces, and Peter Morgan's screenplay is both very sharp on male sexual politics and crammed with enough comic twists and turns to keep you interested.

One conclusion is inescapable. You have really seen something you don't see every day.

Has an interesting look, several sensational performances (notably from Kyle MacLachlan and Liev Schreiber) and in general works far better than it has any right to.

Has a giddy silliness that's thoroughly endearing.

Stylish, exciting and an occasionally poignant sci-fi adventure spectacle.

A very funny superhero spoof.

Cudworth's script gives the characters more depth than is the genre norm, and the ensemble acting is terrific.

A charming, technically sensational version of E.B. White's children's classic.

But there's a vaguely self-congratulatory tone to the screenplay that's a bit off-putting.

A smartly stylized hoot.

The acting is similarly accomplished across the board, though it must be noted that Currie nearly walks off with the film: He's the funniest preppie seducer since Tim Matheson in "Animal House" (1978).

Glacially slow going.