It has enough humanity to let the humor tickle, and a subject that will evoke memories for anyone who has ever smoked a joint or just said no.

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

If you have a sneaky taste for the monstrous and a hearty appetite for the outlandish, the pulpy yet engaging Night Watch should leave you merrily sated.

Isn't nearly the landmark comedy it thinks it is, but its quirkiness should appeal to the highbrow funny bone in all of us.

Weitz doesn't manage Pullman's feat of being rational and magical simultaneously. But he rapidly and intelligently opens up Pullman's world.

The movie has a vibrant, sturdy pathos in the manner of Dickens.

The year's most unsettling movie experience - and in this case, that's a very good thing.

The Beautiful Country is not a happy film by any means, but it does offer a fragile hope, that beauty exists at the end of every journey, if only one has the strength to finish the trip.

The real hero here is Ghobadi, whose love and respect for the culture in which he was raised shines through every frame.

But the fine performances of all three leads rise above the cliches, giving the film a sense of reality that both impresses and inspires.

About a third as funny as it thinks it is. Still, that's pretty funny and about twice as funny as most American comedies these days.

Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow are so immensely appealing, and their chemistry together is so unforced, that their presence alone makes a movie worth seeing. Thankfully, Bounce has even more going for it.

Latifah's performance and the film's gentle heart should prove enough to win over even the most churlish.

This movie leaves 'em laughing - and gasping.

Shower makes for a lovely and poignant journey.

At its best, the movie combines the musical and psychological meanings of a fugue. Sons and daughters and mother take up themes of dislocation and identity loss, and deepen them at every turn.

La Promesse...presents an unflinching view of the victimization of vulnerable people, but the center of the film is not the immigrant experience. It is the portrayal of a father-son relationship and that turning point where a child must choose between a loved parent and his own sense of morality.

Chaos, in miring itself in the inequities (not to mention obscenities) of male-dominated culture, is after greater truths.

Wastes amusing beginnings.

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

So understatedly good.

Looming large over all this is Jackson, who glowers and growls and acts the hero better than any actor out there.

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

This is not a great film by any means, too filled with stock characters in stock situations for such praise. But if offers screen time for some fine young actresses, and addresses its story to an audience of teen girls who deserve something to identify with.

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.

Whenever its noble aims miss, Bruce Willis saves it.

Siegel takes us to the brink of operatic melodrama, then lands us in a tragicomic spot: a psychological landscape of alternate life and make-believe death.