State of Play is far from a great movie, but it's sentimental in all the right ways.

The wonderful Polish actor Jerzy Stuhr plays the harried papal spokesman. It's a marvelous movie until the halfway point, when it unaccountably devolves into silliness.

Goony, so-so comedy.

Schmaltz this thick requires a director who can at least make us feel that our tears are not being shamelessly jerked. But St. Vincent is too clunky to hide its tear-slicked tracks. Maybe that’s a good thing. At least that’s more endearing than being worked over by a smooth operator who knows exactly which buttons to press.

Stirring on religious and humanitarian levels, and very timely notwithstanding its 1979 setting.

This is the 10 zillionth film about a friendly-seeming villain invading a contented home, but exploitation of child abuse and baby-stealing make this one a particularly nasty business.

Some may find the movie too crowded and preachy to serve as a meaningful history lesson, but it will delight anyone who thinks our cynical age could benefit from recalling the vigorous idealism and venturesome artistry of a bygone era.

As director, Harris takes this classical sense of the western too far, though, until it seems that the movie is carefully trying to keep the genre alive.

The characters are engaging, but the story is hackneyed and the filmmaking is dull. So is much of the acting, except by Jessica Tandy, who carries her own energy wherever she goes.

The best reason to see this documentary is for the stunning shots of polar bears and walruses in the Arctic Circle. If the filmmakers had just left it at that, they would have accomplished a lot.

The mood is awfully dark for an escapist fantasy, though, and the high-tech mayhem gets repetitious.

Timely, chilling, and grimly instructive.

An enjoyable movie that marks a rattling good directorial debut for Stephen Fry, the English actor who's best known for starring in "Wilde" seven years ago.

In the popularity sweepstakes, Stage Beauty may earn top honors, outdoing the overrated "Shakespeare in Love" as a dramatic comedy about life and love in an era more naive - but hardly more innocent - than our own.

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

As strong as Blood Diamond is in its best moments, I wish it had been even harder-edged. DiCaprio is remarkable - his work is almost on par with his performance this year in "The Departed."

If you've seen "To Sir, With Love," "Dead Poet's Society," "The Corn is Green," or "Stand and Deliver" - to take a random sample - you've already seen much of this movie. Swank is good, though, and so is Patrick Dempsey as her suffering husband.

The Great Santini deserves praise for its willingness to look long, hard, and seriously at a realistic family situation -- a willingness too rarely found at a time when most films are obsessed with futile fantasies. [07 Aug 1980, p.19]

Spielberg wants us to drop the techno-gadgets and join hands, but it’s the VR world that really juices him. He’s the ultimate fanboy making a movie about the need to move beyond being a fan.

Trekkers will be pleased by new characters and stunning special effects.

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.

Steven Spielberg's historical drama is more stilted and didactic than its fascinating subject deserves, gathering great emotional force only in a harrowing scene depicting the Holocaust-like suffering of slave-ship captives.

Complexly intriguing documentary about psychedelic rock icon Roky Erickson.

Hogan's version brings out the story's somber side, showing how the mischief of unworldly characters like Peter and Tinkerbell can do real damage, and how refusing to grow up is an awful idea if you actually try it.

Andrew Niccol wrote and directed this intelligent and suspenseful science-fiction drama featuring strong performances by Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Alan Arkin, and Gore Vidal.

The visuals are spectacular at times, but the screenplay is trite, intermittently vulgar, and just not funny.

Written and directed by Deepa Mehta, this Indian production is not filmed very interestingly, but reveals much about conflicts between traditional and modern attitudes in Indian society.

This delicious fable reflects Merchant's great love of language, his delicate visual sense, and his ability to make you think and laugh out loud, often at the very same time.

The film is preoccupied with whiz-bang adventure rather than storytelling. There's also too much cartoon violence for young kids.

It's all very sweet and occasionally touching. More lasting shots of more beautiful butterflies would have added a lot, though.

As director of the movie, Eastwood takes a conservative approach, with few of the imaginative touches that have made some of his films – "Bird," "The Eiger Sanction" – so memorable.

Eddie Murphy has impressive energy, but he needs mountains of makeup and special effects to accomplish what Jerry Lewis did with sheer talent in the original 1963 version of the comedy.

It's best when the carefully chosen cast throws itself into developing characters and building their relationships. When pure storytelling takes over after an hour or so, the picture becomes less original and engaging.

Viewers expecting a blistering attack on the fast-food business, or an Altmanesque panorama, will be disappointed, but it's a sensitive and humane piece of work.

It’s easy to call this film a video action game starring real people, but that “real” part means a lot.

For western fans, watching this movie is like encountering an old friend after a long absence.

The song-and-dance numbers that make this musical tragedy a celebration of life despite its awfully grim climax.

Mos Def makes it work. It's a truly daring piece of acting because it skirts racial stereotyping and is so out of key with everything else in the movie. But that's just why it is so good.

This dramatic comedy is an Italian style "Mean Girls" when Castellito isn't stealing the show as a dysfunctional dad.

Sometimes disturbing but consistently fascinating.

This is not a happy tale, and its ending will have moviegoers reaching for every handkerchief they can find. But its compassion is as clear as the talents of the folks who made it.

Talky and mostly humorless, but interesting as a reflection of Breillat's experiences directing her own popular film "Fat Girl" in 2001.

Directing the action from a screenplay he wrote with Michael Thomas and Stephen Ward, filmmaker Softley keeps the pace reasonably quick and the images reasonably absorbing. [15 Apr 1994, p.13]

Lohan is sparklingly good as the look-alike little girls, and the movie as a whole has enough bounce and energy to overcome a few dull spots and a too-long running time.

A celebration of the gloriously mundane.

Shannon chalks up another line on his rapidly growing résumé of memorable performances. But it's mostly Cardellini's show – she's in every scene. Her portrayal may at first seem opaque, as though she isn't quite sure who Kelli is. But that is, of course, the point. Kelli isn't quite sure who Kelli is.

The filmmakers have devised some clever twists on the earlier films they recall - Raiders of the Lost Ark and Peter Pan among them - and they reserve a good share of the derring-do for their heroine, who's a refreshingly far cry from the helpless ladies-in-distress of old. Under the direction of Robert Zemeckis, the action goes limp and perfunctory at a few key moments, weakening the picture's wallop. But it still packs a healthy amount of self-deflating fun.

The impressive presences of Audrey Hepburn and Ben Gazzara help just a little. Otherwise, it's a hollow and very minor affair. [31 Dec 1981, p.23]

It's a smart and creative comedy that skewers cheaply dehumanizing architecture and self-absorbed yuppie mentalities in a series of skillfully assembled scenes. See it in a theater that's waydowntown, and city life may never look the same.

The movie works hard to be naughty, but its sub-David Lynch style doesn't quite click. Gyllenhaal is excellent and Spader effectively adds to his roster of creepy characters.

Movie-style romance may never look quite the same. Neither will flower petals.

A smart and scary voyage into the uncanny realm where hard realities,mind-spinning myths, and hallucinatory visions blur.

It's a serviceable picture, but hardly a top-notch vehicle for Washington's remarkable gifts.

What might have been a treat for history buffs and a refresher course for the rest of us turns into just another occasion to watch Gibson shoot guns, swing tomahawks, and wreak other kinds of havoc on enemies we've been primed to hate.

It's all tease in the first half, and all implausibilities in the second. Still, Thomas is always worth watching, in French or in English, whether her mood be chilly or tropical.

The filmmakers are clearly on Wise’s side, but they are also eminently fair.

The picture has more charm than credibility, and its conquistador-like attitude toward women is mighty questionable; but the story becomes resonant if you see it as a fable about Brando vicariously regaining his youth by teaming with Depp in this all-stops-out movie fantasy.

She (Weisz) accomplishes the near-impossible here: She humanizes a Gothic conceit and, in so doing, turns stage blood into real blood.

He uses Vacth, a beauty who somewhat resembles the young Nastassja Kinski or Dominique Sanda, for her eerie, implacable hauteur. There is a mask behind her mask.

In this exquisitely filmed adaptation Pacino is as vivid a Shylock as we're likely to see. Despite all the scholarly excuses for this drama, though, it's shot through with outrageously anti-Semitic attitudes.

Bottom line: Kingdom of Heaven is the most exciting action-adventure yarn so far this year. Just don't expect anything deeper.

Faucher's filmmaking is exquisite, Naymark's acting is luminous, and superb use of music lends a crowning touch.

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

Amiably bland actors can be fun to watch, as Tom Hanks has proved. Freeman is no Hanks, though, and The Hitchhiker's Guide won't boost anyone's career into hyperspace. Or give your mind a workout.

It's a sweet and disquieting excursion made by filmmakers whose eyes and ears and imaginations are in marvelous sync.

Wilkinson’s acting is likely to be undervalued simply because it seems effortless.

The movie's TV-style production values are a little too slick, but the real-life stories are fascinating to watch.

The performances are excellent and the filmmaking is remarkably restrained, although moments of perverse violence are necessary to the real-life story being told.

What distinguishes the movie is its inventive, multifaceted way of questioning whether the "truth" of past events can ever be separated from the memories, longings, and scanty evidence that inextricably surrounds it.

This is fire-breathing melodrama masquerading as social commentary.

On the surface, The Game is an unusually imaginative thriller that bends its offbeat plot into so many twists that you actually have to pay attention - something few Hollywood movies demand nowadays - to understand its evolution and enjoy the multiple payoffs at the end.

Well acted, capably directed, not as substantial as it might have been.

A compassionate, life-affirming Spanish comedy-drama.

One of the many, many things wrong with Joe Wright's Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley as literature's most famous adulteress – take that, Emma Bovary! – is that one never feels the love. It's a conceit in search of a movie. It could just as easily have been titled "Décor."

The only genuine moments of emotion come not from the lead actresses but from that great trouper Blythe Danner.

Plenty of terrible movies know how to work your tear ducts. Here's a weepie that, in Pfeiffer's performance, touches you on the highest levels.

Auteuil is a superb actor. Still, the real-life Sade would be dismayed to see himself portrayed more as an eccentric old codger than the world-changing firebrand he worked hard to be.

For close-up views of large African animals in the wild, this IMAX spectacle is hard to beat. However, the film takes up too much of its brief running time tracking down the photogenic beasts.

High-energy comedy.

Whether you deem this project an extravagant boondoggle or a masterpiece, you have to admire Christo’s tenacity in finally making it happen, as chronicled in the documentary Walking on Water.

The rural atmosphere is well wrought and so is the depiction of phony evangelism – but it all devolves into the usual heebie-jeebies by the end.

Alexander Payne's equal-opportunity satire persuasively argues that no ideological group has a lock on "values" or "correctness," and reminds us that fanatics can be found on every side of an issue.

Even though the various patients too often come across as cutesy case studies, Fleck and Boden for the most part avoid working their lives up into some grand-scale "Cuckoo's Nest"-style microcosm of humanity.

He was the Beatles of the hair business.

The language of that poem, which periodically pours out from the screen, is the best thing in the movie. The worst thing: the interpolated animated sequences that are meant to "illustrate" the poem but which can't begin to compete with the imagery evoked by Ginsberg's words.

Tom Hooper, who directed "The King's Speech," is not great with action and big set pieces, but he gets the job done. What makes Les Misérables work are the up-close moments when he can focus on performance and song.

Has there been a more upfront title since “Snakes on a Plane”?

The movie is more a family album than a historical study, but you'll learn a lot and your toe will tap, tap, tap.

The animal action is often gripping and suspenseful. As a whole, a giant step beyond Annaud's earlier animal movie, "The Bear," a more gimmicky film of 1988.

Imagine a movie where every character is more self-centered than Ted Baxter in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" of old, add a caboodle of idiotic jokes, and you have some idea of this ugly, unfunny farce.

Eastwood gets all noirish for us but, like Jolie's performance, there's a rote quality to it all. Even the mournful little ditties that Eastwood composed for the soundtrack seem canned.

I wish the film had probed more deeply into why anybody would face those odds. George Mallory’s “Because it’s there” has never quite cut it for me.

Humane, unsentimental, eye-opening.

The strongest exchange in the film comes when he is confronted by several angry black activists who believe what he is doing is self-abasing and hurtful to the cause of civil rights. It is left for you to be the judge. I think he’s a hero. Every little bit helps.

Stallone's writing and direction pull off a considerable level of pathos and suspense as Rocky mourns his wife's passing and tries to develop a closer relationship with his resentful son.

My main complaint -- there's too much emphasis on action -- will strike the film's young target audience as a see-worthy virtue rather than a fault.

The film has a transcendent spookiness.

It should all resemble a vanity project except for one thing: The film lays out the case for reform with steadfast rigor.