Brokeback Mountain is a tragedy because these men have found something that many people, of whatever sexual persuasion, never find - true love. And they can't do anything about it.

Marvelously enjoyable.

Spiritual redemption is a big theme of Narnia, but on a purely entertainment level, the movie also goes a long way in redeeming the current sad state of children's fantasy filmmaking.

This film would be better if it wasn't so slick. Still, parts of it are enjoyably shaggy, and Hopkins is very endearing.

The best, and perhaps the only, reason to see Duncan Tucker's Transamerica is for Felicity Huffman's touching, shape-shifting performance.

The hardy fools - I mean, visionary pioneers - in this movie are so gravity-defying that I had to look at the press notes afterward just to make sure no computerized special effects were used.

Plowright's performance as a genteel widow in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is a small-scale gem, deeply felt without being in the least bit showy.

The Ice Harvest isn't a subversive piece of work; it's not making some grand statement about the dark side of the holiday spirit. But what it IS saying in its grimly funny way is that we can't always control the timing of our disasters.

Now that it is at last on screen, my reaction is ... what's all the fuss?

Pound for pound, Ami is a heavyweight.

As the depraved John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, Johnny Depp adds yet another sly sleazoid to his burgeoning portrait gallery.

Syriana falls down at the most basic storytelling level, and this incoherence damages even the good parts.

There's ample reason to stay with this series. When Harry says "I love magic," you believe it.

Cash was a true anomaly: a poseur who was also the genuine article. A better movie would have made that contradiction its core.

A first-rate crime thriller from 1960.

Cillian Murphy plays a hyper-feminine transvestite who spends much of the movie traipsing about an increasingly violent landscape in search of his long lost mother. His whirligig encounters, political and sexual, rarely soar.

Stay home.

In the end, the finest achievement of Wright's movie is that it fully captures what Martin Amis, writing on Pride and Prejudice, said of Austen: "Money is a vital substance in her world; the moment you enter it you feel the frank horror of moneylessness, as intense as the tacit horror of spinsterhood." All that, and a great love story, too.

Bee Season, at its core, is about something powerful: The ways in which family members wreak destruction on each other with the best of intentions.

This thinly autobiographical gangsta odyssey never achieves liftoff, and Jackson is unconvincing.

The visuals are irrepressibly witty and so is the script, which morphs from the classic fable into a spoof on "War of the Worlds." I prefer this version to Spielberg's.

Despite all the heavy artistic artillery Mendes has brought to bear, his movie isn't all that far removed conceptually from "Top Gun" - which was also about military men itching for a chance to rock 'n' roll. The only difference is, "Top Gun" was unabashedly a popcorn movie while Jarhead is a box of unpopped kernels passing itself off as a full meal.

The Legend of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas as the masked one, made me long to re-watch "Zorro the Gay Blade," the great spoof starring George Hamilton. In that film, the Spanish accents were meant to sound deliberately fake.

Frankly, the most disturbing thing about Prime is that Uma Thurman is now officially an Older Woman.

The film is certainly worth seeing, but it should be better than it is.

The film is better than the recent "The War Within," which tried for the same things, but ultimately, and perhaps unavoidably, we are left face to face with the unknowable.

The film's final seven-minute shot is one of the great denouements in film history.

Whether intentionally or not, Martin has given us something truly spooky: A full-fledged portrait of a hollow man.

If you're the kind of moviegoer who likes puzzling out the plots of insoluble movies, then by all means rush to see Stay, a great big blurry mess.

Black, who wrote "Lethal Weapon," makes his directorial debut, and he puts a fresh spin not only on that film but also on a whole slew of films noirs.

Given the decibel level of this movie, it's a miracle that these guys were able to give creditable performances. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the achievement: Imagine delivering a stirring rendition of the Gettysburg Address while standing under Niagara Falls.

It may not be much of a movie, but it's a terrific concert.

Harrelson does his considerable best to redeem the hackneyed role of the dreamboat do-gooder. No matter how conventional his roles may be, he always gives them a feral quality, an eccentricity, that lifts them out of the ordinary.

The actors, all of whom seem too posed and pretty, are not particularly accomplished, and director Luis Mandoki lacks the visual imagination to bring the story to a boil.

The uneven Nine Lives has an impressive cast, but the best section features the great Mexican actress Elpidio Carrillo as a prison inmate kept from her child.

A solid achievement, but those in the press who have been trumpeting its greatness may be going in for a bit of self-congratulation. The movie plays very well to the choir.

No great claims should be made for In Her Shoes. If the aim here was to show how chick lit can become just plain lit, the effort failed. But there is something to be said for froth when it's expertly whipped.

The young cast members, including Justin Long and Ryan Reynolds, are often spirited and funny, and restaurantgoers are left with a valuable lesson.

Baumbach captures the ways in which children takes sides in a war they can't even begin to comprehend.

On the personal betrayals that accompany Capote's ache for literary transcendence. The betrayals were necessary to create "In Cold Blood." This is why Capote is such an unsettlingly ambiguous experience.

At best, Helena's wiggy adventures recall such Jean Cocteau films as "Orpheus" and "Blood of a Poet." At worst, they resemble the Vegas act of Cirque du Soleil.

What goes on inside the mind of a terrorist who is willing to blow himself for the cause? The War Within is one of the few films that attempts to deal with this subject in a nonexploitative way.

It ranks high on the Cronenberg scale as one of his more disturbing forays into depravity.

Altogether remarkable, a near-masterpiece.

But at its highest level of ambition, Proof fails to deliver. The film becomes a psychological whodunit where Catherine is shown to be either a martyr to her father or else his intellectual equal. None of it is terribly convincing.

The presentation has verve. But the story is confusingly told - everything is NOT illuminated - and, as the seeker, Elijah Wood is a big blank.

Lively documentary about McGovern's disastrous run for the US presidency. The interviews with him are worth the price of admission.

Essentially two movies for the price of one. But those halves add up to more than most movies right now.

Gilliam has rarely been more inventive, energetic, or just plain funny.

Frequently funny, sometimes sad, often electrifying.

This modest drama is a touching tribute to the late Argo, a character actor you'll instantly recognize.

Required viewing for anyone interested in the struggle for American racial equality.

Patrick McGrath's novel provides a solid and suspenseful story, even if it loses much of its bite in Mackenzie's hands.

Informative and illuminating.

Brilliant, poetic, and utterly unique.

Can a misguided adult start afresh with a new set of values and priorities? This ambitious drama, directed by one of France's most resourceful filmmakers, explores that crucial question in depth and detail.

Filmed to perfection by the great Christopher Doyle and others.

This deliciously offbeat Canadian comedy gets its charm from marvelous acting and from a screenplay bursting with ideas. Great fun.

Ballard filmed across hundreds of miles of South African desert, and there are times when the whole throbbing universe seems to resound for him.

At once dreamily surreal, acutely intelligent, and strikingly tough-minded, this pitch-dark dramatic comedy recalls David Lynch and "Donnie Darko" while remaining fresh and original to its core. A stunning directorial debut.

This low-key drama is a miracle of mood, atmosphere, and sensitivity.

An eye-opening movie, both socially and politically.

Virtually every person in the story is fabulously cute, picturesquely forlorn, adorably ditzy, or winsomely philosophical. In short, there's plenty of smooth storytelling but not a hint of reality here.

Mighty monotonous after a while.

The subject and the film clips are great, although the documentary as a whole is a bit gimmicky.

The movie's underlying theme is the complex relationship between objects and memories, worked out through a taut, compelling story and superbly understated acting. Ryuichi Sakamoto composed the atmospheric score.

The story is winning but the telling, with Dai adapting and directing from his own novel, is too sentimental in the long run.

A romantic kung-fu comedy with a good heart.

The first half is high-quality science fiction, the rest is a high-tech chase adventure with a gleeful yen for destructive thrills.

The coach is certainly an offensive goofball, and the Bears are certainly a pack of hard-to-handle whippersnappers. But the picture's point is that surfaces don't tell the whole story about people, about teams, or about anything.

If you're not in the mood for "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" meets "Last House on the Left," stay very far away. Horror fans will find what they're looking for, though.

It's always hard to predict what Winterbottom will try next, but this experiment isn't worth repeating, the lively concert scenes notwithstanding. Be forewarned that the sexual scenes aren't simulated.

A true American tragedy, directed with skill and conviction.

An ingeniously scripted psychological thriller.

Informative, but very slow going.

On the screen, Burton turns out to BE the ideal filmmaker for this deliciously bizarre yarn. He's given free rein to his fantasies in past movies, but rarely as wittily and consistently as he does here.

There are a few good laughs, but not nearly enough clever ideas to keep things hopping for two hours.

There are marvelous moments and dull ones. The best asset is first-rate acting; the worst liability is Roos's overuse of cinematic gimmicks.

The filmmaker keeps things lively by roaming far and wide with her camera, returning to the statesmanship side of the documentary often enough to let us follow relevant events as they unfold.

A travelogue unlike any other.

The end product is so clunky, scattered, and all-around soggy that sometimes you can't help laughing. At least Connelly and Reilly give their all, and Tim Roth is terrific as a weird lawyer.

It's fun to watch superheroes who aren't quite at ease with their abilities, but "The Incredibles" - last year's similarly themed animated film - is livelier and funnier.

The subject is compelling but the story is very, very slow.

This is a lively, life-affirming documentary no viewer is likely to forget.

Its leisurely, deliberative style is a perfect complement to the emotions it deals with - emotions so penetrating that I warn you at the outset how jarringly intense you may find Bergman's most brilliant drama in decades.

The film begins strongly and violently, then simmers down to a standard-issue suspense story.

Earnest, if not as informative as it might have been.

Some of his theories seem cockamamie compared with current intellectual norms, though, so it's too bad the filmmakers don't give him time to make a coherent case.

As stylish as it is suspenseful.

This is a brilliant, if challenging, film.

The film isn't quite excellent, though, since it sags in the middle and starts to seem repetitive.

Weerasethakul's latest has received mixed responses on the film-festival circuit, yet while it's anything but commercial, it's also anything but unadventurous.

It's a pity that such vital, thought-provoking material has been rendered so lifeless and inauthentic on the screen.

A romantic comedy that's pleasant, if not exactly spellbinding.

The results are visually striking, but conceptually they oscillate between poetic, pretentious, and philosophically dubious.

As a zoological spectacle the movie is riveting. But the narration tries to make us think of these adorable animals as if they saw the world in human terms.

Superbly acted, especially by Giocante as the teasing 16-year-old instigator.

Suspenseful, surprising, and psychologically rich.