Entertaining, thrilling and honestly sentimental, it's an equal-opportunity crowd-pleaser.

It's one of the most ambitious biographical films ever made in this country, and one of the most unusual, moving and exciting.

This picture boasts a story about a yarn-spinning Southern father (Albert Finney) and a sober-sided son (Billy Crudup) that gives it ballast and staying power beyond anything in previous, precious Burton fables like "Edward Scissorhands" or "Ed Wood."

A thoughtful, bittersweet film biography of the Cuban writer that captures both his irrepressible spirit and his sometimes overwhelming melancholy.

Experiencing this film is like hurtling down a verbal slalom.

A snarling satire of Hollywood single-mindedness and its lack of any moral underpinning.

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

There are no surprise twists, no characters who rise above themselves, no cheap happy endings. There are just people struggling with emotions and situations they think are beyond their control.

A Dirty Shame is certainly dirty, and maybe it's even a shame. But this is the John Waters we've come to know and cherish, and that alone is cause to celebrate.

Baseball, Boston and Drew Barrymore. Certainly sounds like a winning combination.

Passionately acted and grittily convincing.

One False Move doesn't make a single false move its own self: It's as tough and gripping as they come. It's the first movie I've seen in months where, when I was walking out, I thought to myself, "Damn! I wanna see that one again!"

Lightning in a Bottle has breadth, both in its multitude of perspectives and its spectrum of performances.

Gloriously funky in the good old meaning of the term. Its vulgarity may be offensive, but it's also pungent and real, and it fuels some ferocious humor.

All about mood, and not one bit about action - which explains why it's at once both the most passionate film of the year so far, and the most determinedly inert.

In the full-house ensemble of Henry Bromell's Panic, Neve Campbell is the wild card.

There's a good heart beating at the core of Victor Vargas, one that belies its R-rating.

Filled with delightful sequences.

Ron Howard has made his best movie with Frost/Nixon, an electric political drama with a skin-prickling immediacy.

A bittersweet joy. Its humor and romance are refreshing because the writer-director, Greg Mottola, realizes that maturity is a two-steps-forward, one-step-backward process.

Bright Star delivers a prismatic depiction - tart, funny and piercing - of the romance between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne in the three years before he died, in 1821, at age 25.

What makes this movie an up is that even when its characters are crying for help, they're also crying for Help!

Screwball farce, romance, domestic tragicomedy and literary frolic rolled into one.

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.

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.

The film mixes the psychological with the supernatural, the profane with the ridiculous, the self-indulgent with the understated, and dares you to assume anything. It's all great fun.

Italian for Beginners, on its own small scale, is a one-of-a-kind movie: a baggy-pants spiritual comedy.

Gloriously retro, unashamedly celebratory of the joy of moviemaking and the love of old-fashioned heroism.