An absorbing glimpse not only at the phenomenon of punk rock but also at British social history and the rock star mystique.

This military courtroom drama is full of questions, but woefully short of answers.

The real strength of Return to Me is Hunt, who knows just when to retreat from the film's overriding sweetness and inject a cynical moment or two.

The less said the better.

The one thing most sorely missing is movie magic.

The movie is, to borrow Rob's phrase, unassailably cool.

The script is drippy, humor-free and old-fashioned:

Gordon deserves credit for at least attempting to deal with political themes, and the tension isn't bad either.

A film that immerses its audience in the Indian culture while telling a universally appealing story of grace under pressure.

There's a movie opening today that is so indistinctive I can barely remember its name.

Characters are manipulated and lives made whole in ways both satisfying and unexpected.

Just don't think about what's going on, and you should be OK.

The kind of movie that gives mainstream Hollywood star vehicles a good name.

What the film does, brilliantly, is provoke the intelligent fan to wonder if there's a limit to how far the proceedings can go.

Fitfully thrilling.

Plot-wise, this is strictly paint-by-numbers stuff.

A film that really has no idea what it wants to be, so it tries a little of everything, and does nothing very well.

A carefully conceived and earnest movie that announces its many points just a bit too carefully and earnestly.

A bawdy, brainy sex comedy geared toward smart people with a sophomoric streak.

A thoroughly absorbing, even transfixing, journey to a future that may already be upon us.

A murder caper that could have been written by Agatha Christie during a pub-crawl.

Of Madonna's considerable talents, making the camera love her isn't one: The screen seems to go dead every time she's on it.

With a wistful look at the wages of ambition and the failure of promise, Wonder Boys finally celebrates self-awareness, ending on a muted, quietly moving note of triumph.

The out-of-control plot doesn't unfold gracefully or organically; it simply speeds along with no regard for anything other then getting to the next plot twist.

Possesses moments of fleeting grace, pathos and beauty, even if it ultimately doesn't amount to much.

A gigantic mess.

Ends up being more about her hair (Meg Ryan's) than anything else.

Filled with delightful sequences.

(Perry and Willis) are blown off the screen by Amanda Peet and Natasha Henstridge.

Blessed with some outstanding performances, among them Ribisi's.

A plot that seems stretched for the big screen.

In this day of overstuffed action flicks and dumbed-down "comedies," (Snow Day) is kinda refreshing.

For all Quek's insistence that she was seeking to ennoble women by helping them gain control over their sexuality, Lewis' film shows that all Quek really wanted was be famous.

Terrific looking in the extreme, The Beach is the movie equivalent of vacation reading: no more demanding -- and no less satisfying -- than a sandy paperback left on a damp towel.

Even if Scream 3 lacks the punch and verve of the first two installments, it manages to wring some ironically metaphysical comedy from the movie-within-a-movie motif.

It's a clear-eyed, unsentimental portrait and indelible for that very reason.

A hackneyed psycho-sexual thriller with enough awkwardly executed Hitchcock references to qualify as a bad DePalma knock-off.

Romantically nostalgic, a love letter to growing up in simpler times.

If John Witherspoon is among the funniest men in America, as many of his fellow comics say, why is he so painful to watch here?

Jewison's focus on the Canadians' dogged do-gooderism might have actually prevented a good movie from being a great one.

Benefits from an amiable chemistry between Harrelson and Banderas, and Davidovich always makes a good tough-as-nails dame with more smarts than any man will give her credit for.

Taymor conjures images that are as indelible as they are wordlessly articulate.

The only thing missing from this rich production is an emotional charge, which Highsmith could create on the page but which Minghella doesn't quite capture on screen.

A kinetically charged gridiron drama that is enormous fun to watch.

As with so many recent literary adaptations, it was the writing that was the art, not its infrastructure of plot and character.

Actually moves, whisking the audience on a funny, sad and extraordinary journey through a singularly compelling moment in American pop culture.

Ultimately groans under the weight of its own quiet gorgeousness.

It's as if the book itself has been locked up and institutionalized, forced to conform to a system that all but obliterates its own unique personality.

Will remind filmgoers that one of the chief pleasures of going to the movies is a good old-fashioned swoon

This isn't your father's Stuart Little, but youngsters will be delighted. Mostly.

Must be among the most blatantly manipulative movies ever made. It's cold, calculated and treats its audience like its robotic central character.

A bit hard on the posterior, it is definitely easy on the eyes.

There is undeniable power in Magnolia, in which small moments of truth are given epic gravitas, not just by Anderson's adroit cinematic style (no one's camera is more restless or inquisitive), but by the wisdom and compassion of the characters he creates.

The Cider House Rules is about many things -- chance, passivity, free will and self-invention -- but ultimately it comes back to Larch, who emerges as a toweringly noble figure even in his weakest moments.

The movie's best moments belong to Bill Murray,

With a grating combination of naivete and arrogance, The Green Mile consistently overplays its melodramatic material, including a portrait of a black man that is as breathtakingly offensive as it is earnest.

Surprisingly funny, a deep-down-good-hearted take on that oldest of comedy conventions, the ill-prepared rube caught up in a situation that somehow never gets the best of him.

His [Director Mike Figgis's] techniques do make the film at least watchable.

Some dazzling in-camera special effects, especially the ingenious idea of filming the story's ghost at a slow speed, six frames per second, giving the being a strange, otherworldly way of moving.

A pleasant little confection that leaves behind the sneaking suspicion it should have amounted to so much more.

Read like a long, anguished prayer, but on screen it looks an awful lot like blasphemy.

A quirky and satisfying love story.

(Penn)'s is a lovely, soulful performance in a movie that manages to imbue tragedy with just the right grace note of insouciance -- a movie worthy of Woody Allen himself.

McTeer delivers a messily cheerful performance as a woman who thinks nothing of brushing her teeth with beer.

Idiotic, ugly and ridiculous.

Prove(s) once again how ingenious, artful and flat-out entertaining animation can be.

It's obvious and stereotypical. It's leaden and unconvincing. It's not nearly as outrageous as it thinks it is.

The movie's already peaked, even before the opening credits.

An uneven, if lively, diversion.

Almodovar has created an ecstatic homage to the women who have inspired him all his life.

A thoughtful, engaging film.

Well worth the wait.

Offers a welcome continuation of what has proven a fascinating journey both for the film's 11 subjects (three of the 14 opted out of the project this go-round) and its audience.

Suffused with a sophomoric sensibility that belies its more serious underpinnings.

Compulsion, self-deception and the slippery nature of evil are explored with fidelity and supreme control .

A quietly resonant movie about the painful alliance between single mothers and their daughters, and the complicated drama of separation.

The story's more sober elements are regularly leavened by hip visual flourishes and even some quiet comedy.

Much of Light It Up has a familiar feel. But there are enough redeeming insights to make the time you spend at this school worthwhile.

With its incomprehensible plot, flat visual style and indecipherably mixed messages (violence is good; no, wait, violence is bad!), this movie seems chiefly to be an excuse to sell even more trading cards.

Cheerful and unpretentious.

Tells an important story about a story that might never have been told at all.

Absorbing, artfully executed.

A revealing, intimate, quirky and generous portrait of nothing less than the American Dream.

There's a ton of joy in The Legend of 1900 -- but it's laid on so thick that one ends up more numbed than stirred, overcome by one too many Hallmark moments.

Tear-inducing feel-gooder that only a curmudgeon could find fault with.

This smart, fanciful and brilliantly staged comedy takes a truly one-of-a-kind premise and makes it, of all things, a weirdly profound meditation on consciousness, identity, fame, gender and reality.

So much of Three to Tango is calculated to push the proper emotional buttons that it's ultimately unsatisfying.

All the young talent in Hollywood is not enough to energize a movie that takes forever to get nowhere.

Say 'I do' to Best Man.

Filled with so much heartbreaking beauty, Bringing Out the Dead might be best described as an artist's sketchbook, a series of tableaux and ideas that provide a telling glimpse of a director whose work is always evolving.

In its own B-film, let's-make-them-jump-out-of-their-seats way, Bats is quite the hoot.

Never makes the Jordans' tribulations feel like anything more than yuppie angst.

An engaging yarn and a moving character study, but it's also a sweet, sad glimpse of everyone's future.

Keeps filmgoers wondering what will happen next even as they are repulsed by what's happening in front of them.

Just another tepid entry into this year's Death-as-Turn-On Sweepstakes.

A wonderfully complex character at the center of a gratifyingly satisfying yarn.

What it is not is funny.

Too sketchy about her protagonist's interior life, and too fast and loose with the details of this story, to make much of an impact beyond its initial shock.