Enchanting, multilayered fable.

Against the lush backdrop of the Andes, Crowe and Caruso define on-screen cool: good guys in a match of wits and firepower who even talk about their emotions.

The plot somehow manages to be both hackneyed and convoluted.

The first Ang Lee film I've seen that I've liked without qualification.

The best short on this program of five is Bradley Rust Gray's 18-minute "Hitch."

The elaborate climax set in a Paris bakery is the least boring part of this trained-animal movie.

Ridiculous enough to be hilarious, but this didn't prevent me from thoroughly enjoying Philip Kaufman's silly romp.

Mesmerizing dark fable, which also contains moments of comedy and action that don't disrupt its oddly earnest tone

Boyd brings no new insights to this drama of men in a confined space, a situation that's been the basis for many powerful war films.

Entrancingly lurid live-action fantasy.

The unusually thoughtful dialogue and soul-searching performances make this romantic drama seem deeper than it is.

The plot turns on the complicated lives of the daughters, who are played by Sabine Azema, Emmanuelle Beart, and Charlotte Gainsbourg; they, Fabian, and Rich are the main reasons for seeing this picture.

Tom Courtenay is quite good in the title role, and Julie Christie makes a memorable early appearance .

This movie is a clone itself, a far cry from "Total Recall" but vastly superior to "End of Days."

The makers of this eclectically animated adventure, a follow-up to "The Rugrats Movie," know their audience, though all the "Godfather" references will be thoroughly puzzling to at least half of it.

Adam Sandler displays no virtuosity and stirs no pathos in this special-effects comedy.

Definitely worth checking out.

The real drama is the city itself, steeped in history yet undergoing a Western face-lift.

Lonergan's validation of big-minded small-town life has been neatened up to the point of blandness.

I don't know the actual budget of this adventure yarn, but it feels like a middle-range effort whose heart is with the bargain-basement offerings of yesteryear.

Engagingly corny drama.

After a slow setup, this charming fable wisely spends most of its time on the golf course.

Rowlands and Unger deliver sensitive performances, Shields is surprisingly good.

The first third or so offers all the dominatrix fantasies one might wish for, but then fantasy gives way to the aggressiveness of the special effects and optical effects.

Has memorable characters and images. Yet the story is elusive and occasionally puzzling, and some of the ideas are amorphous and self-conscious.

A pretty good chronicle of a certain phase of French working-class life.

A sense of authenticity overshadows any contrivance in this subtly classic drama.

This concept comedy-drama would be even better if the intercutting among households had been timed to add dramatic content rather than simply advance the subplots.

Pretty funny caper comedy.

More grim and less sentimental than other Iranian films featuring plucky children, this strikingly photographed work stresses the harshness of daily life in Iranian Kurdistan.

Sitting through this barrage of all-purpose insults aimed at obvious targets was an unenlightening chore.

The violence is suggested in a way that's neither overwhelming nor insulting to a child's intelligence as this crafty fairy tale ultimately finds a way for human and vampire characters to live and let live.

A charming, albeit slightly overextended (even at 81 minutes) multiracial sex comedy.

A straight exploitation story.

The plots of animated features are often excuses for visual showboating, but here the lilting story line, based on west African folktales, complements the alternately sumptuous and austere images.

Most fascinating about this PBS documentary is the unflinching look at the dynamics of the three generations involved.

Well crafted and mindless in the best Hollywood tradition.

A fleet, enjoyable Jackie Chan romp.

One more sluggish, artfully framed thriller with Rembrandt lighting set in a New York borough--a kind of picture that's awfully hard to do in a fresh manner.

The truth is that this programmatic Christian parable is pretty unbearable--glib, often myopic, and reeking with sentimentality and self-pity.

Prior to its hyperbolic final act, this is one of Robert Altman's most skillful and least bombastic features in some time.

Insulting to audience and cast alike.

This watchable 1998 psychothriller deflects its cliches with canted angles, metonymic cropping, and a creeping pace, making it as much a parsing of "Twilight Zone"-brand irony as an example of it.

A delicate balance of fantasy and realism, caricature and character study that isn't driven primarily by its plot or even the development of its protagonist.

What emerges is oddly ineffectual and uninvolving.

Bridges and Allen are so bracingly good that you're encouraged to overlook how manipulative the proceedings are.

It's almost always night and almost always raining.

Writer-director Raymond De Felitta has crafted a pleasant, low-key script that's full of small surprises, nice turns, and engaging, naturalistic dialogue, and he keeps the big, emotional family scenes, which often render this sort of material cliched and hackneyed, to a minimum.

Yang seems to miss nothing as he interweaves shifting viewpoints and poignant emotional refrains.

This is basically sloppy, all-over-the-map filmmaking with few hints of self-criticism and few genuine laughs.

Scenes that should have been uproarious are weaker than many of the movie's smaller moments.

This bleak vision directed by Darren Aronofsky ("Pi") is pointless with good reason.

A persuasively feminine coming-of-age story.

Includes extensive performance footage but never drags, and it isn't exposé or self-mockery.

The leads, Denzel Washington and particularly Will Patton, are so good they occasionally make you forget the material is shameless.

Sally Field's direction is pedestrian, though she does manage to get winning performances out of Driver and Eisenberg.

In general, the dogs-as-mirrors theme--the crazy things people do with and in relation to their pets--is what keeps this going, and the laughs are sporadic but genuine.

Doesn't do much with its pseudosavvy characters.

This gently satirical farce is atmospheric when dabbling in religion--the chef turns to spiritual magic to defuse her passion for her husband--and moving during her heart-to-hearts with her friend.

My only reason to recommend this movie is that there's nothing quite like it.

In the manner of a southern gothic, they never fail to fascinate.

Has the enthusiasm and naivete of a first feature.

This sharp, convincing, and utterly contemporary political film calls to mind some of Ken Loach's work, full of passion as well as precision.

The luminous images--as much the filmmakers' as the painter's--are occasionally transcendent.

To my taste, the only serious drawback to this absorbing film is Harris's unimaginative adherence to documentary convention, which obliges him to "illustrate" the voice-overs even when the material matches the narratives only in fictional terms.

This comedy-thriller that has no particular motive for changing tones.

Much of this fractured drama and dark fantasy takes place inside the mind of Charlie (Futterman),

Slight but savory.

This has much of the warmth and feeling for adolescence that Crowe displayed in his first feature ("Say Anything"), though the slick showboating of "Jerry Maguire" isn't entirely absent either.

A lot of uninteresting and unpleasant people torture, abuse, and fire guns at a lot of other uninteresting and unpleasant people, in a repulsive, interminable would-be crime thriller.

Carax has a wonderful cinematic eye and a personal feeling for editing rhythms, and his sense of overripeness and excess virtually defines him.

Tavernier gives the children vivid, sharply delineated voices; working with a largely nonprofessional cast, he strips bare the characters' frailty but grants them a decency and honesty that redeems them despite the mounting hardships and tragedies.

People frequently cover the camera lens with their hands or refer to the "documentary" being filmed, as if to assure us that what we're seeing is real.

This offbeat and unpredictable comedy-thriller throws so many curveballs, one right after another, that I doubt I've had more fun at an American movie this year.

Despite a melodramatic score that at times seems almost facetious, the movie's tone is sober and sincere, its unlikely ending persuasive.

This thriller largely succeeds in putting quotation marks around its use of genre conventions, mixing subtlety and overkill to create a pensive mood that transcends the plot.

This gross sex farce actually has a point, though about half the population won't like what it is.

The wavering style and tone fragment the movie, undermining both characters' development, though each retains her power as a symbol.

Has the expressionistic simplicity of Kurosawa's other late films.

An eye-opening tale of how part of our population lives, and as an authentic image of material suffering it makes something like Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark" seem even more dubious.

Stylish but insubstantial thriller .

Has an adolescent energy and a tempered sexuality.

A graceful, understated sense of period allows the behavior of the characters in this love story to be unusually nuanced, making their experiences seem uncontrived as well as archetypal.

The gangster-movie plot, themes, and allusions aren't nearly as intriguing as the earnestly kitschy black-and-white wide-screen images or the mesmerizing, minimalist sound effects.

Affecting and offbeat.

None of these guys has much interesting to say.

An engaging look at what baseball might have been like in the era before big money, with players who love the game struggling to survive.

A sparing use of exterior shots during the mesmerizing buildup to the match heightens their impact, while invasively tight close-ups put the actors to the test.

I'm not sure how much has been gained in the updating.

Failed romantic comedy.

The acting--especially Dreyfuss's ability to roll with the mood swings--is impressive if not redemptive.

May have some of the trappings of an exotic thriller, but it's basically a character study.

Writer-director Aiyana Elliott gives her father his due in this evenhanded yet impassioned documentary.

Lee performs magic. He's preserved and expanded the experience of an adrenaline-pumping, uproarious night of racism-, classism-, and sexism-subverting humor.

Misshapen and obfuscating biopic.

Almost no plot here and even less character--just a lot of pretexts for S-M imagery, Catholic decor, gobs of gore, and the usual designer schizophrenia.

For all the high-tech allusions and middle-tech illusions, the movie--the 23rd in an immortal series--draws its power from its grittiness and unresolved allegory.

Horrendous dialogue and horrific directing dominate this thriller.