The injustice of the girl's thwarted career goes only so far, though Feret pushes it in some interesting directions.

The comic juice tends to spill out in all directions.

What eventually emerges isn't nearly as achieved or convincing as the neighborhood portrait, but even when it ultimately overwhelms the characters, it's full of juice, humor, and nuance.

Satisfying in a purely infantile way, and the familiarity of everything is oddly comforting. In terms of action, moreover, this makes "The Matrix Reloaded" look like a clodhopper's jamboree.

Schwarzenegger is presented as a lumbering slab of dumb, destructive strength--the image is more geological than human--and Cameron plays his crushing weightiness against the strangely light, almost graceful violence of the gunplay directed against him. The results have the air of a demented ballet.

A nervy as well as somber piece of work, not only for the way it confounds and even frustrates certain genre expectations, but also -- and especially -- for the way it confronts the viewer with the moral implications of that frustration.

The purpose of the Bond girl, and of the Bond film, is still to stroke the male ego. Bond changes just enough to stay exactly the same.

As in "My Favorite Year," the laughs all come from seeing a nervous innocent pulled into the star's debauchery, the heart from our growing realization that debauchery is just emptiness with the volume cranked.

A somewhat adolescent if stylish antiauthoritarian romp about an irreverent U.S. medical unit during the Korean war

I'm no boxing fan, but there's something admirable about fighter Johar Abu Lashin's love of his sport, chronicled in Duki Dror's tautly constructed 2002 documentary.

The tone is both goofier and darker than the Potter pictures, and some of the magic battles built around New York City landmarks are eye-popping; there's also a genuinely affecting romance between Baruchel and fetching newcomer Teresa Palmer.

Levin's curiosity and evenhandedness distinguish the movie.

Thomas Hardy it's not, but as far as middlebrow British romances go, better this than "Love Actually."

Michael Sheen, who adds to his gallery of public figures (Tony Blair, David Frost) with a sharp performance here as the legendary UK soccer coach Brian Clough.

Julie-Marie Parmentier is fetching as the vulnerable younger sister, and the duo generate considerable erotic tension; unfortunately Denis' detached and indifferent camera never gets inside the story, its characters, or its milieu.

McCann's tone, perversely comic at first, gradually darkens, transforming this into a savage noir exploration of the war between the sexes.

A small but achingly authentic piece of kitchen-sink realism, this might never have made it across the pond without babe du jour Keira Knightley, excellent in a supporting role as a smacked-out waitress. But the real wonder is Parker, whose vulnerability and wraithlike beauty are devastating.

Morrow and his collaborators so clearly believe in this project that I was carried along, often charmed and never bored.

The actors keep this interesting, but as a story it drifts and rambles.

Concise and thoughtful.

The film is split down the middle, with many elegant symmetries and curling plotlines bridging the two halves: one part is a bracing, funny, almost Keaton-esque comedy starring Harry as a deadpan center of disaster; the other is a brooding, brutal film noir, starring Sondra Locke as a vengeful femme fatale.

Like the painter, it's painstakingly serious about what it's up to.

Fair amount of grit and charm.

Given the tension dogging her every step, I wondered if this would end in bloodshed, but Abu-Assad opts for a more hopeful conclusion, making his film -- strange as it may seem -- a comedy.

It still holds up as splashy fun of a sort, if you can handle its sexual politics and its depictions of Native Americans.

Allouache's script is so packed with incident that the characters have little time for debate, but the tension between fundamentalist and modern morality is woven into the action.

I found it pretty entertaining, as well as provocative in some of its comments about contemporary life.

Rides high on its old-fashioned sentiments and the precocious charms of its teenage star, who can be both obnoxious and endearing.