Vanya's journey to find his mom is not easy or picturesque or heartwarming. But it's also never without hope.

Alpha Dog may well go down as the most dispiriting film of 2007.

The movie lives and dies on the energy of stepping.

Touching and insightful.

Freedom Writers is the rare inspirational-teacher film that is filled with genuine, jaw-dropping coups of real-life poetry.

The movie finally comes to life when Liu turns up.

Most of the fun to be had with Thr3e is to spot the movies from which it cribs. Beyond that, what one has is a conventional psychological thriller that cheats too often and depends on actors determined to play only one note.

It's first-class entertainment for bookish lads and lasses of all ages - and for those who never have or never will crack a paperback's spine. And it might inspire today's nascent artists to open up their sketch-pads as well as their hearts and minds.

With a surgical saw instead of a hatchet, del Toro takes apart patriarchy and opportunistic religion as well as fascism.

Perfume offers eau de crud.

Arthur and the Invisibles tries way too hard.

Pearce makes you see why Edie found Warhol as irresistible as he found her. His otherworldly eyes focus on both who she is and what she represents. He sees her as a star.

Graeme Obree was a champion bicycler who, by all accounts, rarely took the easy way out. Too bad this movie version of his life doesn't follow suit.

Notes on a Scandal isn't humorous or witty enough to sustain black comedy, and it isn't insightful or deep enough to suggest a contemporary tragedy. All it does is put an eloquent veneer on petty meanness.

As great as the film looks, the story, adapted from a novel by P.D. James, never quite comes into focus.

If only De Niro or screenwriter Eric Roth had the instinct to play some of this for laughs or even outrageous burlesque. Despite their conviction and intelligence and their game, amazing cast, all they do is eke out a series of straight-faced dramatic reversals and personal betrayals that leave the dramatis personae, and the audience, numb.

The sad truth is that the film squanders almost all of its inspiration in the first 20 minutes or so.

The result is a movie that inspires without pontificating and plays on the heartstrings without pounding on them incessantly.

Venus is a magnificent tribute to actors by filmmakers who know they are the essential human material of theater and the screen.

In Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou tries to top the breathtaking poetic spectacle of his masterpiece, "House of Flying Daggers," and instead plummets into self-parody.

Even with the great Ken Watanabe lending command and compassion to the role of General Kuribayashi, it's a formless slog across a treacherous field.

No one has caught the pride, remorse and pain of an unloved and possibly unlovable husband better than Edward Norton in The Painted Veil.

The original Rocky would have found a way to ground that encounter in reality, to engender honest emotion and give audiences an Everyman hero both noble and believable. This film is too busy worshiping its hero to bother.

The ovation that Hudson wins from the movie's audience is one of those miraculous moments when a performer's artistry breaks through the screen and makes you feel part of a live audience. I haven't experienced anything like it since Barbra Streisand sang "My Man" at the end of her astonishing debut in Funny Girl.

It's the whole constellation of relationships that Winick and company create in and around the barn that brings the movie its kaleidoscopic charm.

A sword-and-sorcery saga that desperately wants to be another "Lord of the Rings," Eragon succeeds in being only the palest of imitations.

The tough beauty of the picture is that it lets each viewer weigh the costs and benefits to Gardner. It's a genuinely transporting inspirational movie because it's also a cautionary tale. It doesn't downplay the hero's occasional clumsiness or pigheadedness.

No matter how good-natured, The Holiday ends up a glutted farce.