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

The film stays true to its characters and keeps the laughs coming in what may be the closest thing in spirit to the old Warner Bros. Looney Tunes to hit the screen in years. And when it comes to animation designed primarily for laughs, praise doesn't come any higher than that.

The union of thought and feeling becomes flesh and blood thanks to four brilliant performers in Iris.

The combination of 3-D photography and puppet-animation - centered on actual figures designed by hand and manipulated frame by frame - creates a world that's dense, active and fluid: a sensory Jacuzzi.

The movie's jabbing originality is what sticks in your memory.

The movie's sweetness, wit and charm go beyond its can't-we-all-just-get-along premise.

Until the final shot, the movie keeps you wondering how it will turn out.

Garden State is filled with characters you long to know more about, in situations to which almost anyone can relate. And that's as near a can't-miss movie formula as one can get.

The love that heals and the love that kills are one and the same in the exhilarating Head-On, Fatih Akin's overgrown dead-end-kid romance for live-wire adults.

Offers plenty of honest, good-natured laughs in the process. That's something young and old can appreciate equally.

Soars on the strength of strong acting and a script that stubbornly refuses to go all sappy and preachy.

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

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 potential for action never lets up; you never know what's coming around the next corner.

To discover why movie fans are screaming for more Will Ferrell, and to savor the work of improv wizards like Carell, go see Anchorman.

Paints a vivid and darkly humorous picture of a world where directors are all-powerful and vampires are real; whether you want to buy into either fantasy is up to you. I did, and had a grand old time.

Greengrass and his tremendously smart and emotionally agile lead actor, James Nesbitt, paint their portrait of a good politician without illusion or sentimentality.

It's the rare film that trusts both its audience's intelligence and its emotions.

An unrelentingly dark vision that's as hard to watch as it is impossible to walk away from.

Bolt proves a refreshing throwback to the animated classics of yore.

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.

Alien, even with some scene tinkering that has left this "director's cut" one minute shorter than its original release, is still one of the creepiest, scariest, most shocking films ever.

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.

A sophisticated thrill. And incandescent Thandie Newton is a worthy successor to Audrey Hepburn in 'Charade.'

It's intelligent and emotional, not studied or sappy.

Paul Giamatti - that huddle of broiling instincts, out-of-control impulses and aggravated ardor epitomized in "Sideways" - you feel his soul's absence as dearly as its presence.

Probably the most sweet-spirited sex comedy ever made. It's pretty funny, too.

Will be hailed for its macabre imagination and inventive farce. But it also elegantly renders an archetypal teenage tale.