Melvin Van Peebles gets the idolatrous treatment in this documentary by first-time director Joe Angio that traces his subject's career as San Francisco cable-car conductor, rap pioneer, filmmaker, Broadway producer, stockbroker, and all-around womanizer.

Van Sant gives no pat or easy answers. Instead he makes us squirm, worry, and think. That's why Elephant is a must-see movie.

Very difficult to characterize and that's why I like it. The best I can do is to call it a sunny tragedy.

Manville carries it all off effortlessly.

Along with its disappointments and its narrowness of intellectual focus, Doubt offers up the crackling pleasures of performance and a narrative that snaps shut like a mousetrap. It's the movie equivalent of a rousing night at the theater.

Jim Carrey proves that he's the most inspired clown in movies today, but parents should be warned that much of the picture's humor is extremely rude and crude.

Wong Kar-Wai, whose energetic and inventive style isn't enough to give the shallow story the substance and resonance it needs.

Hallström conveys a bit of the circuslike atmosphere of the times. But he overreaches in trying to turn the film into a commentary on the politically corrupt 1970s.

Smart and charming.

Debrauwer brings crisp conviction to what might have been an overly sentimental tale, filming it with a straightforward style and good-natured sincerity that ring consistently true.

This drama has won an armload of international prizes, including multiple honors in Spain's equivalent of the Oscar race, marking Mañas as a director with a bright future.

The most startling aspect of this slow-building horror movie is how unexpectedly it morphs from a quietly romantic suspense yarn to a flat-out tale of terror that may have some viewers hiding under their seats.

The result is a fine production with splendid singing by Angela Gheorghiu, Ruggero Raimondi, and Roberto Alagna. It joins the very short list of first-rate opera films.

Absorbing.

At the very least, look for it on 10-best lists next month, and there's every chance it will be a strong contender at the Oscars. Filmmaking so sensitive and intelligent deserves its weight in honors.

The film targets the spinmeisters, hired by or associated with corporate interests, whose job, despite their lack of scientific training, is to discredit the science of climate change doomsayers. The fact that some of these spinmeisters proudly base their method on the machinations of tobacco-industry lobbyists is doubly damning.

The remarkable thing about Smith in The Lady in the Van is that, even though the role is no longer fresh for her, the performance certainly is. She gives it everything she’s got because, you feel, she wants to honor this character. She wants Miss Shepherd to live on.

Revealing and harrowing.

In some ways, this glossily enjoyable movie is a lot closer to Hollywood than Beirut. At times, I thought I was watching some oddball Lebanese variant on "Barbershop."

Very inventive, but stay away if you can't stomach over-the-top violence.

Harrelson is effective, but the film isn't helped by the inevitable comparisons to the far superior "L.A. Confidential" and "Bad Lieutenant" movies.

The mood is often more coarse, crude, and nasty than needed to make his cautionary points and also by that "distancing effect," which diminishes whatever feelings of empathy or sympathy the story might otherwise inspire in its audience.

Kaling’s naive earnestness in the role is very winning, and Thompson makes her boss lady clichés seem almost fresh. Not quite fresh enough, though, to rescue the movie.

Isn't for everyone, but horror fans with strong stomachs will find it a memorable monsterfest that rarely loses its bite.

The action is skillfully directed by Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, and there are many bursts of razor-sharp social satire. But the story amounts to a celebration of brute force in a crudely etched law-and-order context.

Tuneful, colorful, delightful.

It's a sophisticated fantasia that adults should enjoy equally. (In other words, it's the perfect family entertainment.)

Although flawed by incoherence at moments, their version is a model of literary adaptation - intensely dramatic, sharply cinematic, and full of passionate performances. In all, it's quite a turnaround from Huston's last book-inspired effort, the misfired adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's amazing ''Wise Blood." [5 July 1984, p.25]