The movie gets as overblown and masochistic as the worst Joan Crawford vehicle. Its saving grace is that Bernal really does have his own deep-set, smoldering variation on Bette Davis eyes.

Too often when actors portray complicated or enigmatic characters, they seem to be flirting with the audience, playing hard to get. Not Williams.

This movie has an aura of forced tragedy, like a fourth-generation version of "Requiem for a Heavyweight."

You have to grasp at straws to make even "poetic" sense of the narrative.

One happy surprise after another, even when the content is bittersweet or sad.

Promises may want to unite the audience in humanitarian emotions, but it's more useful as a prod to examine what these children are learning from their schools, their leaders, and their media.

A scary movie that's also funny, touching and good for you.

As magical as it is realistic.

Beguiling, moving and just plain fun documentary.

The movie may be Nine Queens, but it slakes your thirst for surprises and thrills because of its Nine Jokers.

Casino Royale marks a shrewd relaunching of a franchise. But Campbell and company show too much of their sweat. If these movies continue to follow Fleming's profane pilgrim's progress, the next Bond movies should be more emotional and funny, with a bit of brass-knuckled charm.

Largely devoid of the usual Western histrionics, this 1957 film, thanks to the steady hand of veteran director Delmer Daves, represents one of the more sober depictions of the clash between chaos and order that has always been at the center of the movie Western. [26 Aug 2007, p.3E]

Bergman's creation of family banter that turns irredeemably cruel remains without peer.

An exquisite return to cinema at its most intimate, allusive and humanist. Without a firebomb, muscle-bound star or gunfight in sight, it explodes with the most fragile and combustible substance on earth: human nature.

The movie rides the very thin line between art and trash, between exploitation and illumination. It's true, certainly, that it takes one into a universe of such moral squalor that one feels tainted afterward.

I love Rabbit-Proof Fence as drama, as protest, as moviemaking and as poetry.

Whale Rider is one long, sensitive downer capped by an uplifting finale. A martyr fantasy that turns victorious -- it's a surefire recipe for arthouse crowd-pleasing.

We'll never know what might have been, as eye candy and food for thought replace real thrills in the cool but cold Minority Report.

Like "Hairspray," it's not just a spinoff but a wised-up family comedy that's spirited and inventive. It retains the farcical belligerence of the TV comedy but also heightens the series' oddball warmth and expands on its Hellzapoppin' slapstick.

The risks these guys take seem outlandish, their accomplishments otherworldly.

Few films even try to render the full range of emotions and sensations in female sexuality as the aptly titled Lady Chatterley, directed and co-written by a Frenchwoman, Pascale Ferran.

This movie has a tone, look and mood all its own - it's a joyously bittersweet piece of visual music about isolation, melancholy and everyone's yearning for transcendence, through love, art or both.

It's not another rah-rah football film. Thanks to Nolte, it has its own form of true grit.

You go to Good Night, and Good Luck expecting inspiration, and you get it. It's also unexpectedly subtle, tense, and challenging, complex both in its take on its subject and in its craftsmanship. So the movie brings you to your feet - and, at times, to tears.

A working-class drama that has its heart in the right place but undercuts itself by stacking the deck, letting its main character off too lightly and being overly impressed with its own profundity.

Deep Water is a movie that will connect to anyone whose private fantasies and creative plots have landed them in hot water.

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.

You won't see a brighter, truer affirmation of the All-American messed-up improvisational family than Little Miss Sunshine.