Todd McCarthy

Although arresting in spots, it falls far short of bringing out the full values of the play, and doesn't approach the emotional resonance of Franco Zeffirelli's immensely popular 1968 screen version.

While modest in intent and gentle in feel, Local Hero is loaded with wry, offbeat humor and is the sort of satisfying, personal picture that is becoming an increasingly rare commodity these days.

An astonishing work of studio artifice, A Little Princess is that rarest of creations, a children's film that plays equally well to kids and adults.

All but stealing the film is Cooper, who seizes a rare opportunity as an extroverted, rather than buttoned-up, character to bust loose like an uncaged alligator.

With no through-story or strong continuity to hold it together, the film does go on a bit and becomes repetitive; it's hard to remain stimulated by the same techniques, however imaginative, at such length without some connective dramatic tissue.... Still, for cinephiles and aficionados of the singular, The Forbidden Room represents a very particular kind of feast.

Emerges as the best in the overall series since "The Empire Strikes Back."

This narrative directing debut by Sacha Gervasi remains absorbing and aptly droll despite a few dramatic ups and downs and, led by large performances by Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren.

The film's style, paradoxically both precious and rough-hewn, positions this as the season's defiantly anti-CGI toon, and its retro charms will likely appeal more strongly to grown-ups than to moppets; it's a picture for people who would rather drive a 1953 Jaguar XK 120 than a new one.

A strange international odyssey that becomes more complicated and loony by the moment. Some viewers will undoubtedly tune out early, others will follow as far as they can -- and a privileged few might make it all the way.

A study of the urban dope-dealing culture and its toll on everyone who comes in contact with it, the picture has an insider's feel that is constantly undercut by the filmmaker's impulse to editorialize.

Ultimately, the pic will be noted and remembered not for any inherent drama or analysis but for its simply having so thoroughly documented a strange place most people have never seen and never knew existed.

Wallace was clearly a very ambitious, capable and confident man, but the film, as absorbing as it is, is two-dimensional.

The pleasure is doubled in Spider-Man 2. Crackerjack entertainment from start to finish, this rousing yarn about a reluctant superhero and his equally conflicted friends and enemies improves in every way on its predecessor and is arguably about as good a live-action picture as anyone's ever made using comicbook characters.

Tightly made and populated by a uniformly larger-than-life cast of characters , pic is a total delight for every second of its running time.

Avatar is all-enveloping and transporting, with Cameron & Co.'s years of R&D paying off with a film that, as his work has done before, raises the technical bar and throws down a challenge for the many other filmmakers toiling in the sci-fi/fantasy realm.

A fabulous and passionate love letter to the cinema and its preservation framed by the strenuous adventures of two orphans in 1930s Paris.

Lacks an edge of danger or excitement that might have brought the subject alive in more than a cerebral way.

The timing in the Clooney-Farmiga scenes is like splendid tennis, with each player surprising the other with shots but keeping the rally going to breathtaking duration.

Brolin's work is superlatively expressive of the inchoate impulses roiling inside his sorry character. But good as most of the cast is, the show belongs squarely to Penn.

Originally conceived as one film, the two-parter that has finally emerged can now be seen as a truly epic work.

Lee and his writers have thrown as many logs on the fire as they’ve been able to find to signal the persistence of racial injustice; they have also endeavored, and mostly succeeded, to entertain.

More pictorially arresting than intellectually coherent.

It's a dramatic tale loaded with all manner of dynamics, political and personal, and Spielberg charges out of the gate at a brisk clip, extends his hand and all but enjoins the viewer to grab hold and be swept along for the ride.

By getting Tyson to open up as he has, Toback has succeeded in illuminating one of the most polarizing, complex and -- the film almost forces one to admit -- misunderstood figures of our time.

A superbly wrought yarn set in the milieu of first-generation Russian mobsters in London that is simultaneously tough-minded and compassionate about the human condition, Eastern Promises instantly takes its place among David Cronenberg's very best films.

Jewish and academically inclined audiences worldwide will respond to numerous aspects of this unusual drama, although it is paradoxically both too broad and too esoteric for the general art house public.

Both sharp and fleet, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street proves a satisfying screen version of Stephen Sondheim’s landmark 1979 theatrical musical.

An animal, kid and family picture of the first order, "Fly Away Home" marks an impressive return to form for Carroll Ballard, his best work since "The Black Stallion" 17 years ago.