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.