Not always successful, but packed with energy and a lively Oscar-winning performance by Burstyn.

Engrossing.

Winterbottom, a Brit who's shot several films in India, carefully notes the local customs and mores that contribute to the young woman's tragic fall.

The long odds against Smith only make his unexpected surge against Carnahan more exciting, and Popper sticks close to the fierce campaigner and his young, mostly inexperienced staffers, capturing all the energy, idealism, dour humor, and unreasoning hope of a Cinderella candidacy.

The best (which also means the sexiest) Campion feature since "The Piano," featuring Meg Ryan's best performance to date and an impressive one by Mark Ruffalo.

Absorbing docudrama.

Flaky, funny, and sexy.

Movies about the trajectory from outsider to insider in LA social and professional circles--the two always seem inextricably linked--are a dime a dozen, but this one is fresh, thanks to a script by lead actor Jon Favreau that lets us know Mike knows he resembles a character in a movie even if he doesn't know he is one.

Fairly predictable, but the two leads' impressively nuanced performances make it less so, and Berri makes skillful use of both actors.

If you're willing to suspend disbelief, this is a pretty good ride.

This remake is good fun, aided in no small degree by Colin Farrell's strutting, dead-eyed performance as the bloodsucker.

The cast is certainly impressive, and probably reason enough for seeing this.

Clooney directed with an actor's appetite for vivid star turns, and he certainly gets them from Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Paul Giamatti.

May have more heart than head, but it's also just as interesting for what it leaves out of its romantic story as for what it retains.

A fascinating allegory of modern-day Iran.

This lacks the heft of "The Insider" (1999) or the snap of "Erin Brockovich" (2000), but it's a thoughtful entry in the growing subgenre of whistle-blower dramas.

Chanodr has said that he wanted to portray the 2008 financial meltdown in all its complexity, assigning everyone a fair share of the blame. But the real strength of his debut feature is how persuasively it depicts the fishbowl world of high finance, whose executives seem incapable of seeing past their towering salaries and privileged lives.

Vincent Cassel sets a new standard for Gallic cool as the title character.

An unusually successful attempt to mate good drama with political analysis.

This loses focus and begins to get a little soggy and moralistic toward the end, but on the whole it's a sensitive and well-observed comedy that's especially adept at handling the characters' rage.

The coincidences that bring some characters together and keep others apart in this romantic comedy are plotted with musical grace.

While Walters is no Cukor, he's not without his pleasures. His simple but polished shooting style, once a routine satisfaction of the cinema, carries the aura of a long-lost classical grace.

The racial satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but there's something exhilarating about so blunt a weapon being swung with such wild abandon.

Despite the familiar story, both kids are three-dimensional characters, and first-time director Patel embraces their generational dilemmas with feeling and wit.

Henry Hübchen is dynamic as the title character.

Much of the film's impact comes from the nimble editing of Chris King (whose previous work includes Exit Through the Gift Shop) and Gregers Sall.

John Steinbeck's painful biblical allegory—Genesis replayed in Monterey, California, circa 1917—is more palatable on the screen, thanks to the down-to-earth performances of James Dean as Cal/Cain and Richard Davalos as Aron/Abel.

The 3-D element is unobtrusively handled, except when it perfectly re-creates the woman who's always perched on her boyfriend's shoulders in front of you at a concert.