The willingness to blend professionals and nonprofessionals is Duvall's most interesting directorial trademark. Most commercial filmmakers hesitate to use this technique, but he doesn't see it as risky.

Here's hoping other filmmakers will follow its spirit, if not all of its methods.

Taylor is utterly believable even when the screenplay (from an Anne Tyler novel) is too self-consciously quirky, and Pearce nicely portrays the guy she obsesses over.

A swiftly told, smartly acted yarn, and it even has an idea or two on its mind.

Todd Solondz's movie begins like a suburban ugly-duckling tale with many comic overtones, but it grows darker as it goes along, evoking dangers that youngsters must be alert to in today's world - from drugs to child abuse - and showing how cruel children can be to one another when grownups aren't around.

This visually intricate fantasia combines his (Greenaway's) extraordinary cinematic imagination with a story and characters less compelling than those in his best works.

Caine is reason enough to see any movie. He gives this clever, somewhat lumbering caper movie a deep-seated soul.

The Town might have amounted to something more than an occasionally good movie about crooks in trouble. There's a knife-edge here, but it's been blunted.

A wide range of concert and media clips lend vigor and variety to the documentary.

Both a blood-churning war movie and a mind-stirring antiwar movie, focusing not on guts and glory but on the stark realities of real battlefield experience.

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.

La Vie en Rose elevates Piaf the archetype over Piaf the artist. Although I question this approach, I'm not sure it could have been done any differently, at least given the facts of Piaf's life. If there is such a way, Duhan didn't find it.

This disturbing drama has many telling moments, but it ends with an out-of-the-blue shock episode that raises more questions than it answers.

Hellboy II comes across as an original. But being original is not always the same thing as being wonderful.

Be warned that the results are in aggressively awful taste from beginning to end.

The young cast is mostly callow and TV-bland and the special effects don't quite seem worth that hefty price tag, but overall this is a presentable addition to the franchise.

Solondz is a courageous social commentator and a canny provocateur at the same time. He'll never get to Hollywood if he stays on this track, but cinema will be a lot duller if he ever mends his incendiary ways.

The ultimate feel-good movie about feeling bad. And within those limits, it succeeds all too well.

A slight but winning heart-tugger.

While it's often harsh in style and melancholy in subject, Kandahar taps into veins of humor and compassion as well.

The story is so complicated that the movie can't quite make it clear, but the picture has impressive energy and high-intensity performances from Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, and Guy Pearce.

Too often ambles into inconsequentiality. And, predictably, Ned becomes a kind of family savior – the idiot becomes the sage. It's Frank Capra for dummies.

It’s a major performance (Ruffalo) in a minor movie.

Crammed with show-biz jokes that younger kids won't fathom, but the action is so quick and colorful that they probably won't mind.

It would be easy to overrate I've Loved You So Long, which often dampens its best effects with undue tastefulness, but the image of Scott Thomas, with her despairing resilience, stays with one.

She emerges as an energetic, narcissistic, and totally self-deluded woman.

If you don't compare it with the novel, it's one of the season's better films.

The movie's style is fairly staid, but it's hard to imagine how Neeson could be better, and the subject is handled with taste and tact.