Steve Simels

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

Let's be blunt: Bass can't really act.

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

It's too bad screenwriters Gough and Millar didn't have enough faith in their premise to play it straight; if they had, they might have produced a classic rather than a "Blazing Saddles" without the courage of its convictions.

None of this is any more fun as it sounds -- the cancer ward scenes are truly disturbing -- but to be fair, writer/director Lone Scherfeg (the first woman to make a Dogme 95 film) manages some black-humored laughs.

The truth of the matter is that, given the thoroughly manipulative, red-herring plot twists that get her to the happy ending, most audience members will have ceased to care about whether she lives or dies long before the matter is settled onscreen.

To be fair, this could have been worse.

Hallstrom's leisurely adaptation of John Irving's unconventional coming-of-age novel is so well crafted and intelligent that it feels churlish to point out that it's easier to admire than actually like.

Musically it's often breathtaking.

This fish-out-of-water buddy/action comedy is aimed squarely at undiscriminating 10-year-olds, and that demographic may well enjoy it.

If this were a more mainstream film with a shot at a wider audience, we'd probably be talking Oscar nominations for Futterman and Ball.

Entertaining -- if predictable.

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.

The relentlessly self-congratulatory tone is oppressive.

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.

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.

Saturday Night Live veteran Chris Kattan more or less steals the film as the racially confused Mr. Feather, a white supremacist bad guy whose speech patterns tend to get down and funky against his will.

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.

There's a certain built-in poignance to the end-of-an-era proceedings here, regardless of how frostily they're dramatized.

The film is at heart a look at a unique slice of Americana, particularly an opening montage in which we realize that football here is a cradle-to-the-grave proposition -- literally.

A creepily unpleasant study of race and class.

It's actually a sweet, often very funny story about a schlemiehl redeemed by love.

Vince and Cesar have been written to evoke equal audience sympathy, so there's no suspense whatsover in the outcome of their climactic match-up, the brutal realism of Shelton's staging notwithstanding.

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).

Mildly amusing and as obvious as it is good-natured.

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

This megastar mix of CGI animation and live action is remarkably faithful to the spirit of the original.

A kitchen-sink realist coming-of-age story in the venerable British tradition, with all the good and bad that entails.