Wesley Morris

It's debatable whether watching Huffman get dressed, take hormones, and learn to use a more feminine diction could sustain an entire movie, but the character is certainly a creation more original than a lot of the film itself.

Cannon actually is funny -- not to mention funny-looking. Plastic surgery has left her physically absurd, like a vaguely glamorous R. Crumb cartoon.

The film has sprung from the mind of the Frenchman Leos Carax and ought to be seen to be believed, on the largest screen you can find, and probably sober, too, since it becomes its own narcotic.

This intriguing story, like many tales of mid-20th-century American art, is fueled by testosterone.

Priceless.

The actor's (McConaughey) lovable exuberance is exactly what this heartsick movie needs.

This is extreme comedy, and it's amazing how director Jeff Tremaine, who along with Spike Jonze has been affiliated with this troupe from its outset, creates an environment where self-inflicted torture is uncontrollably funny without being morally offensive.

The movie is like an extra-strength episode of MTV's ''Diary,'' which is like ''A&E Biography'' in the first person. Only ''Resurrection'' has a subject who's been dead for six years.

The Oceanic Preservation Society doesn't change the world so much as call attention to something so very wrong with it. And in doing so, The Cove culminates with an image of political agitation that might be one of the most oddly effective public service announcements you'll see.

The film spends its first half explaining the song -- famously and vividly about the cycle of Southern lynching. Its better second half-hour unmasks its composer as a compassionate Jewish guy from the Bronx.

Very much a genre picture, relying on notions of suspense, surprise, and comeuppance. Indeed, at the center of this movie is a question of whether what we're seeing is really to be believed.

Rachel Weisz has become an exquisite camera artist. In a single shot, she can open up a whole movie. The Deep Blue Sea has a scene like that.

It's hard to blame Telfair for letting his celebrity go to his head. If I were on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the 12th grade, there'd be no living with me either.

The only thing missing from The Hoax might be a couple of songs. It's that breezy and fleet a movie.

While most of the scenes in Tony Stone’s peculiar Middle Ages art project look like a homemade educational reenactment, the film is actually more involving than it should be.

Makes the surprising and seemingly inarguable assertion that, if we're not all Brazilian, then, at the very least, Brazil is a state of mind.

A collection of arbitrary sketches, bits and improvs jammed into a locker room-style variety show masquerading as some semblance of a narrative.

The movie feels exhaustive in its loaded 90-something minutes, showing and telling us much while leaving the meaning of the tangles and twists in this family open to interpretation. For once, the tip of the iceberg is enough.

This movie could have been a nagging, preachy headache had either man exhibited a tendency for self-righteousness. But both are friendly, almost humble about their mischief.

Smoothly made and smart enough. It's not going for too much, but I laughed a lot.

Angry and tragic, Carandiru is finally, in its own way, uplifting.

Vigalondo is only partially capable of building suspense (the film's latter stages contain one knot too many); his achievement owes more to his imagination than his pop craftsmanship.

A screwball comedy that made me wish I were 13 again, because this is precisely the kind of movie I would have gone nuts for in the ninth grade.

The whole thing is as subtle as a watermelon in a bowl of Cheerios but necessary, nonetheless.

In this era of Apatow and Ferrell and Rogen and Wilson, of men monopolizing movie comedy, Baby Mama feels absurdly momentous, and even political. Fey and Poehler aren't just taking back control of their bodies. They're taking back control of their profession.

In Mamet's understanding, straight white maleness is the most powerful weapon such men have. It can also be illusory, which is why the last scenes of Edmond are so touching.

Swift, brutal, lurid, often overheated, and occasionally comical, but it’s also a serious, well acted, and unromantic exploration of the rise and demise of a terrorist gang whose radicalism ultimately reached beyond the young men and women who set it in motion.

Zeiger's movie is a timely salute to the risky and brave men and women who had the temerity not only to think for themselves but to speak their minds.