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.

Romance, intrigue and old-fashioned movie glamour make a dazzling return in Girl on the Bridge, Patrice Leconte's sumptuous love story with a razor-sharp edge.

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

This documentary could have been a simple downer. Instead, it's a giddy, manic-depressive roller coaster - because it brings us eye to eye with Gilliam.

Its knockout success is a testament to Gore's eloquence and humanity and to the dexterity of his director, Davis Guggenheim.

Brilliant, brutally poignant.

There's no innocence left in Shrek 2. The helter-skelter story and throwaway gags emerge from a sensibility that confuses gossipy knowingness and jadedness with wit.

It's a top-notch action film, albeit on the bloody side, complete with decisive action, mysterious characters and a nobility and sense of purpose that allows its excesses to be forgiven.

The whole movie swings broadly from slapstick and mock suspense to song. But the film develops a strong amorous undertow; Kelly's script neatly allows for all the potential couples to get the fate or comeuppance they deserve.

A celebration of movie-studio ohana that should warm the hearts of moviegoers everywhere.

The title represents size and power, speed and hubris -- the very things the ship has come to stand for and the things that Cameron has restored to the cinema with grand, generous style.

Lovely, heartfelt and unforced.

Instead of being supple and expansive like the book, this Little Children is heavy-handed and snarky.

If you change the course of history, the world will experience a different kind of chaos. That's a time-honored movie cliche. Terminator 2: Judgment Day chooses to go against that philosophy, noisily and with some monotony.

Black and white has never looked more stark.

Critically lacks Highsmith's sixth sense for drawing you into the heart and soul of sociopaths, then jolting you with the realization that things are much worse even than they seem.

The giddy excitement of Startup.com comes from feeling as if you're inside the bubble as it soars into the stratosphere - and pops.

Well worth the wait.

Ceaselessly amiable, moving whimsically toward an ending that, while predictable, is a rousing, unfettered joy.

Experiencing this film is like hurtling down a verbal slalom.

Fantasy, not honesty, is the point of The Kid Stays in the Picture.

By the end, Hamer's crisp, prickly compositions go soft.

Spielberg's inchoate attempts at cultural observation stretch the movie out and dilute the giddiness instead of adding a pleasurable spike. When the movie doesn't feel inflated, it feels soggy.

A down-home-exquisite musical dramedy.

Baadasssss is about feeling pain and frustration, about having a sense of purpose that overwhelms everything else, about great cost and great risk, the pain of isolation and the intoxicating effect of fighting against the odds.

It's hard to stomp on a movie that pulls together a rich lay-about, hippies, a punk girl and an Amnesty International worker in a sort of Peaceable Kingdom, but About a Boy shows the limits of affability.

Without proclaiming itself a wake-up call for the West, In This World cries out for some new method of achieving international trust.

Guerrilla provides one huge compensation: the getting of historical wisdom.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated performs a great service, though not especially well.

Generally, Orlando is too busy having witty fun to turn into a cautionary tale against one sex in favor of the other. It's more like an extremely vivid drawing-room comedy imposed on the background of a historical epic.

Unsparing and uplifting - a wickedly difficult combination to pull off, but one that gives the film an emotional weight that's impossible to dismiss.

The movie is an inspired comedy-drama about artistic temperament.

Infuriating and funny, the film forges a disturbing diagram from the avarice and chaos of a slapdash, heartless system.

Falls victim to flimsy characters and a love story that strains reality.

Black Hawk Down, in the end, is a docudrama. But it's sensationally well done, and it opens up a battlefield that needed to be documented.

It's the pushiest film around - "in your face" is still in-your-face, even if the dancers are in white-face.

Humpday mixes hilarity with upset as the irresistible force of male pride meets the immovable object of sexual identity.

The Sea Inside brings us outside and inside ourselves, and takes us to brave new aesthetic depths.

The best sections of Flushed Away, those featuring a nefarious French operative known as Le Frog (a hilarious Jean Reno), are also the most peculiarly British; no one lampoons the French with a better mixture of hard-earned loathing and grudging respect than the Brits.

Avoids pretension by never trying to be more than it is -- an acknowledgment that things frequently are not as bad as they seem. That's a concept that deserves a little spreading.

Almost everything that happens - and almost everything happens within Flama's apartment - is food for dry humor and very recognizable humanity.

Serenity may be short on exposition, but it's smart and fun.

Jumping off from the brilliant novel by Giles Foden and changing a key character entirely, it dramatizes and wrings humor from the way a white Western renegade can view a self-made Third World despot like Amin as a superman blowing fresh air into a fetid atmosphere.

It's a startling physical transformation, as Noland goes from flabby desk jockey to lean, mean fishing machine. But even more remarkable is the mental transformation Hanks effects.

As Laura, Rueda hits sublime notes of confusion, grief and wrath. She's sympathetic enough to make you root for her and complex enough to get you arguing afterward about whether Laura did anything to deserve all this.

As they've proven before and doubtless will prove again, Soderbergh and his cast are capable of better, weightier, more substantial stuff. But for now, slumming has rarely seemed more appealing.

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.

Munich is so broad-stroke it cuts itself at every turn. It's also a thoroughly lifeless movie.

And the movie, likable for short stretches, ends up seeming worn and frayed, like Christmas decorations left hanging until spring.

Vintage Chan, with amazingly well-choreographed fight scenes.

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

Unwisely bills itself as a comedy.

Journey is weary, yet imaginative.

Liam's deck is stacked. It's too bleak and filled with abrasive characters who don't deserve our sympathy to reveal much new about the human condition.

Darger made art as if the lives of his subjects depended on it. That's how Yu has made her movie.

There's a persistent innocence to this movie that will work wonders on all but the most churlish.

This documentary (like the fact-based 2004 feature Miracle) demonstrates how powerful true sports stories can be when they delve into the mystery of leadership instead of falling back on nostalgia.

It was a time in history eminently worth celebrating on film.

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

The performances of Bell, Walters and Lewis make this movie worth seeing - as long as you silence your cynical side and bring some Kleenex.

This movie leaves 'em laughing - and gasping.

Sparkling, believable performances by young actors, the steadying presence of veteran Maggie Smith, an elegant musical score by Zbigniew Preisner (including a song co-written with Linda Rondstadt) and, especially, an uncommon respect for the stately pace of the source combine to make a lovely movie.

In The History Boys, as in all of Bennett's work, irony is what the characters live and breathe - and I mean irony in its truest sense, of using language to present opposite and often sly alternatives to accepted wisdom.

A Mighty Heart has the surface tension of a first-rate docudrama but neither the passion nor the vision to encompass its powerhouse subject.

Though Them benefits from a well-motivated script, it suffers from the same hackneyed ingredients that characterize most films of the same genre. [22 Jun 1954, p.12]

Vanya's journey to find his mom is not easy or picturesque or heartwarming. But it's also never without hope.

The Duchess of Langeais is a romantic dance of death.

Because Bar-Lev fails to go the extra mile either as a filmmaker or a friend, My Kid Could Paint That is at best "documentary silver."

The movie is supremely nonjudgmental and balanced.

Sin City is a seedy tribute to rugged masculinity disguised as a rogue's gallery, all the better to please college boys who like their sentimentality slicked with grunge.

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

Shower makes for a lovely and poignant journey.

You don't have to be a Metallica junkie to get this film.

The sensuousness of Lemon Tree is its glory.

In every important way, Breach isn't just a solid thriller; it's also an ambitious and engrossing piece of narrative journalism.

It's a zombie flick that moves -- no stumbling, staggering living dead here -- in an atmosphere that feels like a Gothic docudrama, and it's freaky beyond all reason.

The glory of Japanese Story is that even after a daringly abrupt plot turn, the cast maintains its empathy and lucidity without interruption.

Surprisingly moving and intellectually satisfying.

A genuine odyssey: a journey to self-knowledge.

With everything this film has going for it - humor, intelligence and a splendid ensemble - Richard Linklater's nightmare drug movie, A Scanner Darkly, should be continually compelling. But it loses its fizz after a strong series of pops.

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

Only David Lynch could make the incomprehensible so compelling.

By the time it's ended, past and present have fused inextricably to create a movie that, in its own down-home way, is nothing less than epic.

Near letter-perfect.

If any man should be more than the sum of his parts, it's an artist. But Todd Haynes' I'm Not There makes Bob Dylan less than the sum of his parts. It's like a tony art-school parlor game.

The Son's Room is the anti-"In the Bedroom." I mean that as a compliment.

Himalaya does for yak caravans what "Red River" did for cattle drives: it sees them as the stuff of epic conquest.

Isn't serious enough to fulfill its ambitions, or funny enough to compensate for its failures.

Greengrass has a fine sense of pacing, keeping events moving. It's rarely hard to guess what's going to happen next, but events unfold with such gusto that there's barely time to notice that.

By turns grisly and hallucinatory, The Proposition is one of those grand, mythic Westerns, full of wide-open spaces and dank little hellholes, detestable bad guys and virginal women, laconic lawmen and wary natives.

Designed to shock and rock the viewer with disturbing imagery, the film misses the point once too often.

The perfect film for anyone who finds the Keystone Cops a little too understated and I mean that as a compliment.

When the cast and their director are really cooking, they conjure a bipolar sense of high school-age emotion -- and use it to fuel outrageous fantasy.

De Niro and Stiller combine to bring on laughs you don't have to feel guilty about.

I'm Not Scared presents an interesting picture of youthful innocence challenged, but not a truthful one

Spurlock's movie is the real-life slapstick record of a kamikaze Mac attack. Schlosser's book is the contemporary equal of Upton Sinclair's classic meatpacking muckraker "The Jungle."

Heading South is a hydra-headed love story, as dangerous as it is heated and complex.

The result is a flabby, episodic phantasmagoria.