Funny and moving, and more entertaining than some of the movies you are considering this weekend.

It's not technically true to say the movie cheats, but let's say it abandons the truth and depth of its earlier scenes.

Evolution aside, there are some wonderful images in Aliens of the Deep, even if the crew members say how much they love their jobs about six times too often.

I would have loved to see a genuine love story involving Ice Cube, Nia Long, and the challenge of a lifelong bachelor dating a woman with children. Sad that a story like that couldn't get made, but this shrill "comedy" could.

The movie is well and fearlessly acted, and the writer-director (Fatih Akin) is determined to follow her story to a logical and believable conclusion, rather than letting everyone off the hook with a conventional ending.

All classic and airtight, and handled by Richet with economy and a sturdy clarity of action; he doesn't go overboard with manic action scenes.

Jackson has the usual big speeches assigned to all coaches in all sports movies, and delivers on them, big time. His passion makes familiar scenes feel new.

Plays like a collision between leftover bits and pieces of Marvel superhero stories. It can't decide what tone to strike.

But when you think of the "Babe" pictures, and indeed even an animated cartoon like "Home on the Range," you realize Stripes is on autopilot with all of the usual elements: a heroine missing one parent, an animal missing both, an underdog (or underzebra), cute animals, the big race.

Does it by the numbers, so efficiently this feels more like a Hollywood wannabe than a French film. Where's the quirkiness, the nuance, the deeper levels?

Antoon injects an occasional note of rancor, but the more radical point here is showing how freely Baghdad residents now speak in public on politics and how widely their views range. [12 Nov 2005, p.35]

In Good Company is a rare species: a feel-good movie about big business. It's about a corporate culture that tries to be evil and fails.

It has greatness in moments, and is denied greatness overall only because it is such a peculiar construction; watching it is like channel-surfing between a teen romance and a dark abysm of loss and grief.

The movie tries for tragedy and reaches only pathos, but then Bobby lost his chance to be a tragic hero by living this long in the first place.

Does the film have a message? I don't think it wants one. It is about the journey of a man going mad. A film can simply be a character study, as this one is.

I don't think Fat Albert is up to speed; in its meandering, low-key way, it seems destined more for a future on de-ved, returning to the video world where the characters say they feel more at home.

Bacon is a strong and subtle actor, something that is often said but insufficiently appreciated. Here he employs all of his art.

Told with the simplicity and beauty of a child's fairy tale, but with emotional undertones and a surrealistic style that adults are more likely to appreciate.

The movie is pleasant enough, but never quite reaches critical mass as a comedy.

I am recommending a movie that I do not seem to like very much. But part of the pleasure of moviegoing is pure spectacle -- of just sitting there and looking at great stuff and knowing it looks terrific. There wasn't much Schumacher could have done with the story or the music he was handed, but in the areas over which he held sway, he has triumphed.

Deep movie emotions for me usually come not when the characters are sad, but when they are good. You will see what I mean.

This is one of the year's best films.

There is no one in the movie to provide a reasonable reaction to anything; the adults are all demented, evil, or, in the case of Mr. Poe, stunningly lacking in perception, and the kids are plucky enough, but rather dazed by their misfortunes.

The movie is not quite the sitcom the setup seems to suggest; there are some character quirks that make it intriguing.

Because I had, in a sense, already seen this movie, it didn't have surprises or suspense for me, and the actors on their own aren't enough to save it.

It is also probably relevant that Spacey, in preparing the project, knew something we could not guess: He is a superb pop singer.

This is simply the story of one man. Yes, and on those terms I accept it, and was moved by the humanity and logic of the character.

The characters deserve a better movie, but they get a pretty good one.

A masterpiece, pure and simple, deep and true...The best film of the year.

The movie is all about behavior, dialogue, star power and wiseass in-jokes. I really sort of liked it.

The damnedest film. I can't recommend it, but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it.

Dolls isn't a film for everybody, especially the impatient, but Kitano does succeed, I think, in drawing us into his tempo and his world, and slowing us down into the sadness of his characters.

A mess. It lacks the sharp narrative line and crisp comic-book clarity of the earlier films, and descends too easily into shapeless fight scenes that are chopped into so many cuts that they lack all form or rhythm.

The movie is a record by well-meaning people who try to make a difference for the better, and succeed to a small degree while all around them the horror continues unaffected.

They are all so very articulate, which is refreshing in a time when literate and evocative speech has been devalued in the movies.

Forget about the plot, the characters, the intrigue, which are all splendid in House of Flying Daggers, and focus just on the visuals.

I couldn't believe a moment of it, and never identified with little David.

Jeunet brings everything together -- his joyously poetic style, the lovable Tautou, a good story worth the telling -- into a film that is a series of pleasures stumbling over one another in their haste to delight us.

[Stone] gives us provocative notes and sketches but not a final draft. The film doesn't feel at ease with itself. It says too much, and yet leaves too much unsaid.

Doesn't have anything wrong with it that couldn't be fixed by adding Ebenezer Scrooge and Bad Santa to the cast. It's a holiday movie of stunning awfulness that gets even worse when it turns gooey at the end.

It is straightforward, heartfelt and genuine.

National Treasure is so silly that the Monty Python version could use the same screenplay, line for line.

Assuming that few members of SpongeBob's primary audience are reading this (or can read), all I can tell you is, the movie is likely to be more fun than you expect.

Pedro Almodovar's new movie is like an ingenious toy that is a joy to behold, until you take it apart to see what makes it work, and then it never works again.

May be a sardonic view of Japanese corporate culture, but that's not all it is. The movie is also subtly sexual and erotic, despite the fact that every scene takes place in the office and there is not a single overt sexual act or word or gesture or reference.

Skillfully made, but it's not necessary...On the other hand, should you see it, the time will pass pleasantly.

Actually two movies, one wretched, the other funny. The funny one involves the Jennifer Tilly scenes.

Surprisingly moving.

A jolly movie and I smiled pretty much all the way through, but it doesn't shift into high with a solid thunk the way "Bridget Jones' Diary" did.

The strength of Kinsey is finally in the clarity it brings to its title character. It is fascinating to meet a complete original, a person of intelligence and extremes.

The third act departs from Chekhov and is original with Miller; it not only makes a nicely ironic point, but, because he takes his time with it, allows for a meditation on the distance between art and life.

There's a point at which the plot crosses an invisible line, becoming so preposterous that it's no longer moving and is just plain weird.

A movie for more than one season; it will become a perennial, shared by the generations. It has a haunting, magical quality because it has imagined its world freshly and played true to it,

The movie is pieced together out of uneven footage, and the idea of a documentary seems to have occurred in the midst of filming.

On its own terms, it's funny at times and finally sad and sweet.

The visual style is all Zeffirelli, and it is interesting that the opera-within-the-film is not skimped on, as is usually the case in films containing scenes from other productions.

Grown-ups are likely to be surprised by how smart the movie is, and how sneakily perceptive.

The movie would be worth seeing simply for the sound of the music and the sight of Jamie Foxx performing it. That it looks deeper and gives us a sense of the man himself is what makes it special.

An efficiently made thriller, cheerfully gruesome, and finally not quite worth the ordeal it puts us through.

An effective thriller precisely because it is true to the way sophisticated people might behave in this situation. Its characters are not movie creatures, gullible, emotional and quickly moved to tears. They're realists, rich, a little jaded.

Most movies remain at the top level of action: They are about what happens. A few consider the meaning of what happened, and even fewer deal with the fact that we have a choice, some of the time, about what happens and what we do about it.

An imperfect movie with so many moments of truth that you forgive its stumbles. You also note that it's probably of historical value, because it centers on the first performance of an actress who is going to be a big star.

The characters are played not by the first actors you would think of casting, but by actors who will prevent you from ever being able to imagine anyone else in their roles.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, the nominal star, has been in her share of horror movies, and all by herself could have written and directed a better one than this.

Pulling off a premise this creepy and cockamamie would require a lot of skill, far more than can be found in the director of "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" and the writers of "A Very Brady Sequel."

The director Brad Anderson, working from a screenplay by Scott Kosar, wants to convey a state of mind, and he and Bale do that with disturbing effectiveness.

Green takes us to that place where we keep feelings that we treasure, but are a little afraid of.

This is not a "horror" film or an "underground" film, but an act of transgression so extreme and uncompromised, and yet so amateurish and sloppy, that it exists in a category of one film -- this film.

The movie consists of the journey, the conversations, the scenery, the little human stories. No big drama. No emergencies. Just carrying the mail, which over the years has supplied the threads to bind together all of these lives.

The problem is that the film is at such pains to make its points that it doesn't trust us to find our own connections.

Sex Is Comedy is not sure what it's really about, or how to get there; the director is seen as flighty and impulsive, the situations seem like set-ups, and we never know what the Actor and Actress are really thinking -- or if thinking has anything to do with it.

Like a cocky teenager who's had a couple of drinks before the party, they don't have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible.

Conventional as it may be, Shall We Dance? offers genuine delights. The fact that Paulina is uninterested in romance with John comes as sort of a relief, freeing the story to be about something other than the inexorable collision of their genitals.

Annette Bening plays Julia in a performance that has great verve and energy, and just as well, because the basic material is wheezy melodrama.

Fascinating because it require us to see the younger character through two sets of eyes -- our own, which witness an attractive woman drawn to a younger male, and the women's, which see a lost love in a new container.

This was for me the best film at Cannes 2004, a story vibrating with urgency and life. It makes a powerful statement and at the same time contains humor, charm and astonishing visual beauty.

Saints and Soldiers isn't a great film, but what it does, it does well.

Williams has extraordinary success in channeling this other person.

The strength of Leigh's film is that it is not a message picture, but a deep and true portrait of these lives.

The movie demonstrates the power of sports to involve us; we don't live in Odessa and are watching a game played 16 years ago, and we get all wound up.

Her dad was right about one thing. Something terrible did happen to her (Duff) in Los Angeles. She made this movie.

The movie, unfortunately, doesn't really work; it's one of those films where the characters always seem to be Behaving, as if ordinary life has to be jacked up into eccentricity.

It is maddening, fascinating and completely successful.

Claire Danes is as fresh as running water in this role, exhibiting the clarity and directness that has become her strength; her characters tend to know who they are, and why.

In a film that is wall-to-wall idiocy, the most tiresome delusion is that car chases are funny.

It is a remarkable film, immediate, urgent, angry, poetic and stubbornly hopeful.

Because it is attentive to these human elements, Ladder 49 draws from the action scenes instead of depending on them. Phoenix, Travolta, Barrett and the others are given characters with dimension, so that what happens depends on their decisions, not on the plot.

The movie lacks a port of entry for young viewers -- a character they can identify with. All of the major characters are adults with adult problems like debt, romance, and running (or swimming away from) the mob.

Individual moments and lines and events in I Heart Huckabees are funny in and of themselves. Viewers may be mystified but will occasionally be amused. It took boundless optimism and energy for Russell to make the film, but it reminds me of the Buster Keaton short where he builds a boat but doesn't know how to get it out of the basement.

His film is pro-Kerry, yes, but the focus is on history, not polemics, and provides a record of the crucial role of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The movie pays off in a kind of emotional complexity rarely seen in crime movies.

I like the way the slacker characters maintain their slothful gormlessness in the face of urgent danger, and I like the way the British bourgeois values of Shaun's mum and dad assert themselves even in the face of catastrophe.

All heart and has the best intentions in the world, but what a bore. It's a beat slower than it should be, it makes its points laboriously, and the plot surprise would be obvious even if I hadn't seen the same device used in exactly the same way earlier this year in "Chasing Liberty."

The Forgotten is not a good movie, but at least it supplies a credible victim (Moore).

Seen simply as a film, The Motorcycle Diaries is attenuated and tedious. We understand that Ernesto and Alberto are friends, but that's about all we find out about them; they develop none of the complexities of other on-the-road couples, like Thelma and Louise, Bonnie and Clyde or Huck and Jim. There isn't much chemistry.

Not a well-oiled enterprise but more of a series of laughs separated by waits for more laughs. It has a kind of earnest, eager quality, and it's so screwy you feel affection for it.

There are scenes here where Breillat deliberately disgusts us, not because we are disgusted by the natural life functions of women, as she implies, but simply because The Woman does things that would make any reasonable Man, or Woman, for that matter, throw up.

Monotonous, repetitive and sometimes wildly wrong in what it hopes is funny.