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.

The result is a highly critical and impossible-to-dismiss examination of the administration's rush to war that is sure to move both sides of the political spectrum to apoplexy.

A frequently hilarious exercise in one sex desperately trying to figure out the other.

Well-paced, scathingly funny satire of the fashion industry and its eminently lampoonable pomposity.

Most contemporary horror films derive shocks from mere torture. Let the Right One In locates most of its fright-power in the needs and confusions of people who are usually overlooked.

The astonishingly versatile Kinnear proves note-perfect as a huckster who slowly rids himself of slime.

Accomplishes a delicate balancing act, that of entertaining the audience with the thrills and adventure of the Andrea Gail's final journey.

Hannibal isn't art. But for filmgoers with a taste for the absurd and a tolerance for the blackest of black humor, it's one heck of a thrill ride.

It's a documentary about acknowledging genius, about just desserts, about artistic muses that refuse to give up. It's about great camaraderie and great music.

A grand, sweeping nostalgia trip that evokes the sickness of an era even as it tries to find its essential humanity.

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

This picture is jagged and exciting; it tells several plots imperfectly, yet makes them add up to a great American story about integrity challenged and triumphant.

This is Mitchell's show, and his performance lives up to his triple billing as writer, director and star.

An insightful, clear-headed look at relations within a Chinese-American family.

A souped-up roadster of a film, a relentless action flick that looks great and moves with more grace and speed than seems possible.

The Station Agent has craft and pace and that far rarer quality, fellow-feeling.

Isn't an act of expiation but a gift of understanding.

The movie never undercuts his brilliance and his unexpected charisma. No matter how high his degree of malevolence, he cuts a bigger figure after you see the movie than he did before.

Dense, ironic and thoroughly engrossing caper melodrama.

The movie is supremely nonjudgmental and balanced.

L’Auberge Espagnole (The Spanish Hotel) is unexpectedly entertaining because it captures the point in young adulthood when life is unseriously serious, or maybe seriously unserious.

The movie's best moments belong to Bill Murray,

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

Sugar is a near-great movie with qualities more unusual than some all-time classics. It resists cliche at every turn and puts something solid in its place: raw yet controlled observation that gives the film the form of a flexing muscle.

The movie has dual strengths that silence most objections. Even more than "X-2" or "American Splendor," it is, in a good way, the most comic-booky movie of the year. It's also the human Winged Migration.

It's every bit as thrilling and engrossing as the best spy thriller or cop flick.

Director and dancers catch the audience up in a web of imagination.

The Saddest Music In the World may not be for all tastes, but maybe it should be.