I don't require that a movie have a message, but in a message movie it is helpful to know what the message is.

Sweet and kind of touching, and I liked it. The difference, I think, is that the new one is lower on cynicism and higher on wisdom, and might actually contain some truth about the agonies of high school insecurity.

[Keaton and Nicholson] bring so much experience, knowledge and humor to their characters that the film works in ways the screenplay might not have even hoped for.

The subjects of their comedies are defiantly non-P.C., but their hearts are in the right place, and it's refreshing to see a movie that doesn't dissolve with embarrassment in the face of handicaps.

Big Fish of course is a great-looking film, with a fantastical visual style that could be called Felliniesque if Burton had not by now earned the right to the adjective Burtonesque.

Honey doesn't have a shred of originality (except for the high-energy choreography), but there's something fundamentally reassuring about a movie that respects ancient formulas; it's like a landmark preservation program.

Beautifully designed, intelligently written, acted with conviction, it's an uncommonly thoughtful epic. Its power is compromised only by an ending that sheepishly backs away from what the film is really about.

Its best scenes come as the characters are established and get to know one another. Sharif at 71 still has the fire in his eyes that we remember from "Lawrence of Arabia," and is still a handsome presence.

In America is not unsentimental about its new arrivals (the movie has a warm heart and frankly wants to move us), but it is perceptive about the countless ways in which it is hard to be poor and a stranger in a new land.

To call it weird would be a cowardly evasion. It is creepy, eccentric, eerie, flaky, freaky, funky, grotesque, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, oddball, spooky, uncanny, uncouth and unearthly. Especially uncouth.

A demented, twisted, unreasonably funny work of comic kamikaze style, starring Billy Bob Thornton as Santa in a performance that's defiantly uncouth.

What I got was a fairly intriguing story and an actual plot that is actually resolved. That doesn't make the movie good enough to recommend, but it makes it better than the ads suggest.

I felt too much of the movie consisted of groups of characters I didn't care about, running down passageways and fighting off enemies and trying to get back to the present before the window of time slams shut.

The acting is on the money, the writing has substance, the direction knows when to evoke film noir and when (in a trick shot involving loaded dice) to get fancy.

21 Grams tells such a tormenting story that it just about survives its style. It would have been more powerful in chronological order, and even as a puzzle, it has a deep effect.

It's another overwrought clunker like "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," all effects and stunts and CGI and prosthetics, with no room for lightness and joy.

In trash as in art there is no accounting for taste, and reader, I cherished this movie in all of its lurid glory.

Dying is not this cheerful, but we need to think it is. The Barbarian Invasions is a movie about a man who dies about as pleasantly as it's possible to imagine; the audience sheds happy tears.

A clunky Western that tries so hard to be Politically Correct that although young women are kidnapped by Indians to be sold into prostitution in Mexico, they are never molested by their captors.

Filmed in the colors of newborn Technicolor, plotted as a tribute to the conventions of Hollywood romance, filled with standard songs, it's by and for people who love those kinds of movies. Others will find it cliched and predictable, but they won't understand.

Like the work of David Lean, it achieves the epic without losing sight of the human, and to see it is to be reminded of the way great action movies can rouse and exhilarate us, can affirm life instead of simply dramatizing its destruction.

Not as inspired as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" but in the same spirit. It's goofy fun. Or maybe we should make that daffy fun.

As you listen to his uncanny narration of Tupac: Resurrection, which is stitched together from interviews, you realize you're not listening to the usual self-important vacancies from celebrity Q&As, but to spoken prose of a high order, in which analysis, memory and poetry come together seamlessly in sentences and paragraphs that sound as if they were written.

The movie sees World War II and the following years through the eyes of those who went away and those who stayed at home, and it tells one small true story that represents the incalculable effect of the war.

The film is told almost entirely without dialogue, but is alive to sound; we spend observant, introspective hours in a Hungarian hamlet where nothing much seems to happen -- oh, except that there's a suspicious death.

What a sad film this, and how filled with the mystery of human life.

This is one of those rare Christmas comedies that has a heart, a brain and a wicked sense of humor, and it charms the socks right off the mantelpiece. Even the unexpected casting is on the money.

The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs, until at times Curtis seems to be working from a checklist of obligatory movie love situations and doesn't want to leave anything out.

It's an old-fashioned romantic triangle, told with schmaltzy music on the sound track and a heroine with a smoky singing voice, and then the Nazis turn up and it gets very complicated and heartbreaking.

To the degree that I was able to put aside my questions, forget logic, disregard continuity problems and immerse myself in the moment, The Matrix Revolutions is a terrific action achievement. Andy and Larry Wachowski have concluded their trilogy with all barrels blazing.

A remarkable documentary by two Irish filmmakers that is playing in theaters on its way to HBO. It is remarkable because the filmmakers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain, had access to virtually everything that happened within the palace during the entire episode.

Most movie characters are like Greek gods and comic book heroes: We learn their roles and powers at the beginning of the story, and they never change. Here are complex, troubled, flawed people, brave enough to breathe deeply and take one more risk with their lives.

Franju constructs an elegant visual work; here is a horror movie in which the shrieks are not by the characters but by the images.

The problem with Die, Mommie, Die, a drag send-up of the genre, is that it spoils the fun by making it obvious.

The movie is smart about journalism because it is smart about offices; the typical newsroom is open space filled with desks, and journalists are actors on this stage; to see a good writer on deadline with a big story is to watch not simply work but performance.

When the suffering of real children is used to enhance the image of movie stars who fall in love against the backdrop of their suffering, a certain decency is lacking. Beyond Borders wants it both ways -- glamor up front, and human misery in the background to lend it poignancy.

There is no cynicism in Radio, no angle or edge. It's about what it's about, with an open, warm and fond nature. Every once in a while human nature expresses itself in a way we can feel good about, and this is one of those times.

The average issue of Mad magazine contains significantly smarter movie satire, because Mad goes for the vulnerable elements and Scary Movie 3 just wants to quote and kid.

Sweet rather than exciting.

It simply looks at the day as it unfolds, and that is a brave and radical act; it refuses to supply reasons and assign cures, so that we can close the case and move on.

The movie does not propose to be a comedy, a musical, a film noir story or a medical account. It proposes to be a subjective view of suffering, and the ways this character tries to cope with it. Understand that, and the pieces fall into place.

Meg Ryan does such an effective job of evoking her sexually hungry lonely girl that it might have been better to just follow that line and not distract her and the audience with the distraction of a crime plot.

A contemptible film: Vile, ugly and brutal. There is not a shred of a reason to see it.

The movie hums along with a kind of sublime craftsmanship, fueled by the consistent performances of Hackman and Hoffman (in their first film together), the remarkable ease of John Cusack (the most relaxed and natural of actors since Robert Mitchum), and the juicy typecasting in the supporting roles.

Despite its flaws, Pieces of April has a lot of joy and quirkiness; it's well-intentioned in its screwy way, with flashes of human insight, and actors who can take a moment and make it glow.

For those who have read the poets and are curious about their lives, Sylvia provides illustrations for the biographies we carry in our minds.

Cate Blanchett plays Guerin in a way that fascinated me for reasons the movie probably did not intend.

Sometimes it works to show their lips moving (it certainly did in "Babe"), but in Good Boy! the jaw movements are so mechanical it doesn't look like speech, it looks like a film loop.

The movie has many scenes of delicious comedy, Clooney and Zeta-Jones play their characters perfectly in an imperfect screenplay.

Kill Bill: Volume 1 shows Quentin Tarantino so effortlessly and brilliantly in command of his technique that he reminds me of a virtuoso violinist racing through "Flight of the Bumble Bee" -- or maybe an accordion prodigy setting a speed record for "Lady of Spain."

I feel such an affection for Chabrol and his work that I probably can't see The Flower of Evil as it would be experienced by a first-time viewer. Would that newcomer note the elegance, the confidence, the sheer joy in the way he treasures the banalities of bourgeois life on his way to the bloodshed?

What's alluring is the way the characters played by John Livingston and Sabrina Lloyd savor each other, in between their troubles. Movies are too quick to interrupt romance with sex. Sarah and Rand fascinate us with their dance of dread and desire.

To see strong acting like this is exhilarating. In a time of flashy directors who slice and dice their films in a dizzy editing rhythm, it is important to remember that films can look and listen and attentively sympathize with their characters. Directors grow great by subtracting, not adding, and Eastwood does nothing for show, everything for effect.

If you have seen the masterful 2002 Brazilian film "City of God" or the 1981 film "Pixote," both about the culture of Rio's street people, then Bus 174 plays like a sad and angry real-life sequel.

Suspension of disbelief, always necessary in a thriller, is required here in wholesale quantities. But in a movie like Out of Time I'm not looking for realism, I'm looking for a sense of style brought to genre material.

If quirky, independent, grown-up outsider filmmakers set out to make a family movie, this is the kind of movie they would make. And they did.

Yes, this is a comedy, but it's also sad, and finally it's simply a story about trying to figure out what you love to do and then trying to figure out how to do it.

True crime procedurals can have a certain fascination, but not when they're jumbled glimpses of what might or might not have happened involving a lot of empty people whose main claim to fame is that they're dead.

A sweetheart of a film, whimsical and touching. It positions itself somewhere between a slice of life and a screwball comedy.

Endearing and vulgar in about the right proportion. The movie doesn't exactly work, but sometimes when a car won't start, it's still fun to look at the little honey gleaming in the driveway.

There's too much contrivance and not enough plausibility, and so finally we're just enjoying the performances and wishing they'd been in a more persuasive movie.

Once in the jungle they have all sorts of harrowing adventures, and I enjoyed it that real things were happening, that we were not simply looking at shoot-outs and chases, but at intriguing and daring enterprise.

What redeems the film is its successful escapism, and Lane's performance. They are closely linked.

Who was Joseph Fiennes channeling when he chose this muddled tone? Obviously he was reluctant to gave a broad, inspirational performance of the kind you find in deliberately religious films.

I think the screenplay, written by director Isabel Coixet, is shameless in its weepy sentiment. But there is truth here, too, and a convincing portrait of working-class lives.

By the end of the movie, I frankly didn't give a damn. There's an ironic twist, but the movie hadn't paid for it and didn't deserve it. And I was struck by the complete lack of morality in Demonlover.

At a time when so many American movies keep dialogue at a minimum so they can play better overseas, what a delight to listen to smart people whose conversation is like a kind of comic music.

[Figgis] has made a thriller that thrills us only if we abandon all common sense. Of course preposterous things happen in all thrillers, but there must be at least a gesture in the direction of plausibility, or we lose patience.

Not brilliant and it has some clunky moments where we see the plot wheels grinding, but it has its heart and its grin in the right places.

A gentle and sweet whimsy, attentive to the love between the two brothers, respectful of the boy's growth and curiosity.

It's so impossible to care about the characters in the movie that I didn't care if the vampires or werewolves won. I might not have cared in a better movie, either, but I might have been willing to pretend.

Sayles handles this material with gentle delicacy, as if aware that the issues are too fraught to be approached with simple messages.

What makes the film astonishing is that it follows a real boy on a real journey, and the boy is in England at this moment.

There are laughs in the movie, and a lot of good feeling, but it seems more interested in its Italian stereotypes than its gay insights.

The movie adds up to a few good ideas and a lot of bad ones, wandering around in search of an organizing principle.

Lohman in particular is effective; I learn to my astonishment that she's 24, but here she plays a 15-year-old with all the tentative love and sudden vulnerability that the role requires, when your dad is a whacko confidence man.

I understood the general outlines of the story, I liked the bold strokes he uses to create the characters, and I was amused by the camera work, which includes a lot of shots that are about themselves.

I loved this movie. I loved the way Coppola and her actors negotiated the hazards of romance and comedy, taking what little they needed and depending for the rest on the truth of the characters.

There are laughs, to be sure, and some gleeful supporting performances, but after a promising start the movie sinks in a bog of sentiment.

Culkin plays Alig as clueless to the end, living so firmly in his fantasy world that nothing can penetrate his chirpy persona. Whether this is accurate--whether indeed any of the facts in the film are accurate--is not for me to say, but it works.

The movie is both interesting and unsatisfying. The Keitel performance is over the top, inviting us to side with Furtwangler simply because his interrogator is so vile.

Max is played by Jean Gabin, named "the actor of the century" in a French poll, in Jacques Becker's Touchez Pas au Grisbi, a 1954 French crime film that uncannily points the way toward Jean-Pierre Melville's great "Bob Le Flambeur" the following year.

Supplies us with a first-class creature, a fourth-rate story, and dialogue possibly created by feeding the screenplay into a pasta maker.

It evokes the atmosphere of a Sergio Leone Western, sneaking up under the movie's human comedy and adding a smile.

Everyone in The Other Side of the Bed, alas, has the depth of a character in a TV commercial: They're all surface, clothes, hair and attitude, and the men have the obligatory three-day beards.

Made with sublime innocence and breathtaking artistry, at a time when its simple values rang true.

It is admirable and well-made, but unutterably depressing and unredeemed by any glimmer of hope.

The movie is passable as a story but fascinating as a document. It gives a more complete visual picture of the borders, the Palestinian settlements and the streets of Jerusalem than we ever see on the news.

Isn't bad so much as jumbled...You get the sense of too much input, too many bright ideas, too many scenes that don't belong in the same movie.

A disposable entertainment, redeemed by silliness, exaggeration, and Chan's skill and charm. I would not want to see it twice, but I liked seeing it once.

Who is this movie for? Not for most 13-year-olds, that's for sure. The R rating is richly deserved, no matter how much of a lark the poster promises. Maybe the film is simply for those who admire fine, focused acting and writing.

Murphy has a kind of divine ineptitude that moves beyond Marilyn's helplessness into Lucy's dizzy lovability. She is like a magnet for whoops! moments.

This film is delightful in the way it finds its own way to tell its own story. There was no model to draw on, but Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, who wrote and directed it, have made a great film by trusting to Pekar's artistic credo.

Passionada assembles the elements for a soap opera, and turns them into a bubble bath.

An imperfect but deeply involving and beautifully made Western.

Sweet, in its meandering way. It has no meanness in it, no cynicism, no desire to be anything other than what it is, an evocation of the fun of living your life as a skateboarder.

It is piffle, yes, but superior piffle.

While there are too many characters in too much story for the movie to really involve us, it's amusing as a series of sketches about how the French think they are a funny race (or the Americans, take your choice).